Liu Xiaobo

The Chinese government has put on trial a prominent civil rights dissident who has already spent more than a year in detention for writing a controversial manifesto calling for political reform. Liu Xiaobo, a 53-year-old poet, literary critic and former professor previously jailed for nearly two years for his role in the 1989 student-led protests at Tiananmen Square, on Wednesday faced a two-hour hearing that was closed to the public. Officials claim that Liu's calls for democracy and free speech are a threat to the ruling Communist Party.

BEIJING - Ai Weiwei is out of the box. China's most famous provocateur is once again tweeting and tweaking, taunting and generally making a nuisance of himself as a critic of the Chinese Communist Party. After an 81-day stay in detention and a year of lying low, Ai is suddenly seemingly everywhere at once. Last month, his first major museum show in the United States opened at the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. He is the star of a documentary, "Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry," and guest-edited (via Skype, since he can't leave China)

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo "for his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. " The award dealt a resounding slap to the Chinese government, which called the decision a "blasphemy" and warned that relations with Norway would be damaged. "Liu Xiaobo is a convicted criminal who broke Chinese law," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement published on the ministry website. "If the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to such a person, it absolutely disobeyed the spirit of this prize and it is a blasphemy to the prize.

Mo Yan's name is Chinese for "don't speak. " It aptly captures the conflict embodied by a writer trying to produce literature in a society where creative expression is still censored. The 57-year-old novelist - who won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday - was born Guan Moye; Mo Yan has been his pseudonym since he began writing in the early 1980s. The pen name is telling for reasons literary and political. It speaks to what colleagues call Mo's quality of being private yet devoted to family and place.

Before he was anything else, a hunger striker or inmate, dissident or symbol, Liu Xiaobo was a bookish literature professor and an essayist desperate to be able to write about politics, art and life without restraint. His dedication to writing has been his defining characteristic, those who know him say, and it's what hauled him into politics ? an intense and dogged desire for the freedom of expression. Everything else, the years of struggle against the Communist Party and his unveiling as this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, flowed from that point.

In 1936, German journalist Carl von Ossietzky was under heavy pressure from the Nazis to turn down the Nobel Peace Prize; Hitler and his cronies saw the award as a slap in the face to the regime because Ossietzky had dedicated his career to exposing German rearmament and militarism. He rejected the government's contention that he was essentially excommunicating himself from German society by accepting the award, writing a letter from his hospital bed (where he was confined as a result of tuberculosis and the torture he had endured in prison)

Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident imprisoned for his efforts to promote democracy in his homeland, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia Friday in a solemn ceremony shunned by Beijing but attended by dignitaries and celebrities from most of the world's countries. A giant photo of Liu smiled out on the audience a few feet away from the potently symbolic empty chair where he would have sat had China allowed him to receive the award in Oslo, Norway. Liu, 54, is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for "inciting subversion of state power" because he helped draft a manifesto known as Charter 08 calling for democratic reform.

ABeijing court last week convicted activist Liu Xiaobo of subversion and sentenced him to 11 years in prison for advocating freedom, democracy and rule of law. This week, the Chinese government executed Briton Akmal Shaikh for heroin trafficking, despite a plea for clemency by the British government on grounds that he was mentally ill. The two cases are unrelated, except insofar as they illustrate China's immunity to international appeals to respect human...

The notes from the Chinese Foreign Ministry to European ambassadors posted in Norway referred to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last month to imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo. "We strongly hope that your country ? will refrain from attending any activity directed against China," read the notes, according to a diplomatic source who ? like most people involved with the issue ? did not wish to be quoted by name because of fear of Chinese retaliation. Behind the stilted language, the meaning was clear: Beijing was lobbying European governments to not attend the Dec. 10 awards ceremony honoring Liu, a dissident whom Chinese officials have denounced as a criminal.

Increasing the pressure on China, a star-studded group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for the world's leading economies to lobby Chinese President Hu Jintao for the release of dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, recipient of this year's award. The letter released Monday by Liu's U.S. lawyers was written at the initiative of Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and signed by, among others, former Polish President Lech Walesa, former U.S. President Carter and the Dalai Lama ?

U.S. envoy Michael Posner said Thursday that China was "backsliding" on human rights and that, in two days of talks, Chinese officials had failed to give satisfactory answers about writers, intellectuals, lawyers, churchgoers and artists who have been arrested or have disappeared. The latest talks on human rights, part of an intermittent dialogue over the last two decades, come in the midst of what China experts say is the most serious crackdown since the military stormed Tiananmen Square in 1989.

There are many metrics by which to judge the summit between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, but one has attracted the most attention: Did Obama adequately stand up for human rights in China? Much as we would have preferred a more full-throated criticism of China's abysmal record ? including the imprisonment of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo ? we recognize that Obama was required to balance principle and protocol. The principle part took place largely in private.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, who was toasted Wednesday evening at a White House state dinner, met with a harsher reality Thursday as he heard congressional leaders recite grievances on China's approach to trade, military expansion and human rights. While in Washington for a summit with President Obama, Hu traveled to Capitol Hill to gauge sentiment in a legislative body that has become increasingly perturbed over one of America's largest trading partners. Hu was handed a letter by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.

The rhetoric in advance of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington that begins Tuesday sounds like an endless loop of the Communist Party's favorite buzzwords: Stability. Harmony. Cooperation. It speaks to the image that Beijing wants to project to Americans ? that of a benign giant whose rise will only benefit its neighbors and trading partners. But it's also a matter of self-interest. Selling that image abroad is key to ensuring that China can keep its economy booming at a time when its growth is alarming large parts of the world.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the U.S.- China relationship does not fall "neatly into black-and-white categories like 'friend' or 'rival.' " Clinton, assessing the important relationship in a speech in advance of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington next week, acknowledged that in President Obama's first two years in office the two nations have had "some early successes, but also some frustrations. " She said the U.S. goal with China is to build a "positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the U.S.- China relationship does not fall "neatly into black-and-white categories like 'friend' or 'rival.' " Clinton, assessing the important relationship in a speech in advance of China President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington next week, acknowledged that in President Obama's first two years in office, the two countries have had "some early successes, but also some frustrations. " She said the U.S. goal with China will be to build a "positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship.

Ninety-one Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded since 1901. On Friday, at the Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, there will be an empty chair. This year's recipient, Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer and dissident currently serving 11 years in prison for supporting the pro-democracy and human rights manifesto Charter 08, will not be here to receive the honor. Nor will his wife or any other relatives or close friends, as they have been placed under house arrest or police surveillance, or barred from traveling abroad.

Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a bold stroke that highlighted China's ongoing repression of free expression ? and its toxic distaste for criticism from abroad. The award came despite threats from Chinese officials who sought to dissuade the judges from honoring Liu, a 54-year-old writer who has remained unbowed in his decades-long fight for freedom of expression and democratic reform. Liu's writings have brought him lengthy stints in prison, labor camp and house arrest, and have stripped him of the right to publish or teach in his homeland.

Ask an American about the connection between love and politics, and he'll probably conjure up heartbreaking images of Elizabeth Edwards, of embarrassed philanderers from both sides of the aisle or of the parade of long-suffering, dutiful political wives who, in the famous words of Hillary Rodham Clinton, "stand by their men. " The truth is that we don't generally associate politics or politicians with happy marriages and deep romance, let alone...

The Nobel Peace Prize was placed Friday on an empty chair in Oslo's city hall, creating a potent new symbol of the struggle for human rights and political reform in China. Laureate Liu Xiaobo would have been sitting in that chair, were he not locked away in an obscure prison in northeastern China. Liu, a poet and essayist, is serving an 11-year sentence for penning a manifesto calling for the end of one-party rule and for greater freedoms in China. He has not been seen in public since he was moved to his current prison in May. An enraged Chinese government dismissed the prize as an "anti-China farce" honoring a "criminal," and successfully lobbied 18 countries to join its boycott of the ceremony.