The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". The laureate, once an eminent scholar, was reportedly little-known inside the People's Republic of China (PRC) at the time of the award due to official censorship; he partook in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and was a co-author of the Charter 08 manifesto, for which he was sentenced to 11 years in prison on 25 December 2009. Liu, who was backed by former Czech president Václav Havel and anti-apartheid activist and cleric Desmond Tutu, also a Nobel Peace Prize winner, received the award among a record field of more than 200 nominees.
The decision, while widely praised by foreign intellectuals and politicians, was quickly condemned by the Chinese government and the state media. A number of countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, also denounced the award and what they regarded as interference in China's domestic affairs. Following the announcement, official censorship was applied within China—on the Internet, television and in print media. The government strongly denounced the award and summoned the Norwegian ambassador in Beijing to make a formal protest. The Chinese authorities arrested citizens who attempted to celebrate. Liu's wife was put under house arrest before the decision of the Nobel Committee was announced.
Chinese diplomats moved to pressure other countries not to attend the award ceremony, which was scheduled for 10 December. The diplomatic missions of democratic countries in Oslo received warning letters from their Chinese counterparts; the deputy foreign minister also warned countries of "the consequences". In December, the Chinese Foreign Ministry continued the rhetorical assault, stating "more than 100 countries and international organisations [had] expressed explicit support of China's position". In the end, 46 countries attended of the 65 invited (the People's Republic of China and 19 other nations declined invitations). China's official news agency, Xinhua, attacked the West for its "Cold-War or even colonial mentality" and for daring to "regard themselves as the judge, the teacher [who] assume that they can forever distort the fact and block the truth by using political maneuvers." Strong rhetoric and denunciations of the West continued from official sources until after the ceremony.
Liu was the first person of Chinese nationality to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the first to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. Liu was the third person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention after Germany's Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). As the laureate was absent, Liu's place on the podium was unoccupied; Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann read "I Have No Enemies", an essay that Liu had written for his trial in December 2009, in place of the acceptance speech.
Nomination and announcement.
The Nobel Committee disclosed there were a record number of nominations in 2010—a total of 237, of which 38 were organisations. Although the committee has a policy of keeping nominations confidential for 50 years, some nominators made announcements. Among the nominees were Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, the International Space Station, the Internet and its three founders Larry Roberts, Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee. Also on the list were Chinese dissidents Liu Xiaobo, Hu Jia, Gao Zhisheng, Chen Guangcheng, Bao Tong, and Rebiya Kadeer.
Liu was nominated by International PEN, the worldwide association of writers. Interested in Western philosophy, Liu made his reputation as a literary critic with a treatise on the state of modern Chinese literature: an article he published in 1986 that criticised Chinese writers for their dependence on the state, and their deficit in free-thinking, caused a stir in the Chinese literary world. His challenging ideas caught the attention of the intellectuals; he lectured all over China and abroad. He was in New York when the 1989 pro-democracy movement erupted in China; he returned immediately to China and spent most of his time amongst the protesters in Tiananmen Square. This, and his subsequent leadership role in the "Charter 08" pro-democracy manifesto for China, led the Chinese authorities to censor his views as subversive. Liu was jailed for 11 years on 25 December 2009, for "inciting subversion of state power". A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said "It would be completely wrong for the Nobel Prize committee to award the prize to [Liu]". In January 2010, Václav Havel and others—including the 14th Dalai Lama, André Glucksmann, Vartan Gregorian, New Zealand politician Mike Moore, Karel Schwarzenberg, Desmond Tutu and Grigory Yavlinsky—published an article endorsing Liu. A professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Xu Youyu, and others, addressed an open letter "to the European People" in support of Liu, while 14 exiled dissidents urged the Nobel Committee to pass over Liu's nomination, arguing that Liu had maligned other dissidents, forsaken the oppressed Falun Gong and that his stance against the Chinese leadership had become too "soft".
Agence France-Presse reported that at a June meeting convened by the Chinese embassy in Oslo, Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying warned the Nobel Institute director and secretary of the Nobel Committee, Geir Lundestad, that giving the prize to Liu Xiaobo would be seen as an "unfriendly gesture" that would have negative consequences for relations between Oslo and Beijing.
On 7 October 2010, Norwegian television networks reported that Liu Xiaobo was the front-running candidate for the Prize. Irish bookmaker Paddy Power paid out two days before the announcement following an increase in bets. Shortly before the announcement, Liu's wife, Liu Xia, declined telephone interviews, saying the police were at her home. Her telephone went unanswered once the announcement was made. Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjørn Jagland made the announcement on 8 October 2010 in Oslo, mentioning that the choice of Liu had become clear early in the process. The monetary component of the prize would be 10 million Swedish kronor (US$1.5 million). 
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace. Such rights are a prerequisite for the 'fraternity between nations' of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will ... The campaign to establish universal human rights also in China is being waged by many Chinese, both in China itself and abroad. Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China.
At 2 pm on the day of announcement, a crowd of about 100 journalists, supporters, and friends who had gathered outside the main entrance to the Beijing housing estate where the Lius resided were denied entry. The "South China Morning Post" reported that policemen stationed inside their apartment at the time of the announcement prevented Liu Xia from meeting with journalists and other well-wishers. It was not immediately clear whether Liu Xiaobo was aware of the award. By that time, Liu Xia said she had been told she would be taken to Liaoning to see her husband in prison. Meetings and gatherings to celebrate in several cities were prevented or abruptly broken up by police; one such celebration dinner in Beijing, attended by 20 people, was broken up by police, and the attendees were detained.
Reactions in Greater China.
Chinese media.
The Chinese media avoided the story of Liu's Peace Prize, in marked contrast with their previous announcements of other recipients of Nobel Prizes. The official Xinhua News Agency downplayed all but the literature prize, and most other mainland news portals followed the Xinhua lead; popular internet portals such as Sina.com and NetEase deleted pages dedicated to stories related to all five Nobel Prizes. According to a well-informed Twitter user, cited by the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, the State Council Information Office issued a directive immediately after the announcement that "Liu Xiaobo" and "Peace Prize" would be prohibited search terms for microblog services across the country; fora, blogs and other interactive media were forbidden from releasing any information. At 6 pm, the source said that although the official news release had been issued, all media were ordered by the Central Propaganda Department not to publish it. 
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Quote_box/styles.css" / ;
Standard copy on Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize has been approved for distribution, but all media outlets are not allowed to publish it. This included all print and online media.
Leaked directive from the Central Propaganda Bureau8 October 2010
Major domestic newspapers in China had coverage on their inner pages. "Guangming Daily", "Economic Daily", "Beijing Daily", "The Beijing News", and Shanghai's "Wen Hui Bao" published the Xinhua-sanctioned report the following day. China Central Television's main evening news programme, "Xinwen Lianbo", did not report on it. Chinese journalists and dissidents said the Central Propaganda Department had instructed media to censor or otherwise under-report on Liu Xiaobo and the peace prize award.
The Chinese government ordered the deletion of all print and broadcast stories on the topic; In an editorial, the Communist Party–run "Global Times" attacked the Nobel Peace Prize as a "political tool of Western interests" that was being used to foment "endless political strife in Chinese society, causing a Soviet-style breakup." Another "Global Times" article said the award was "another expression of this prejudice, and behind it lies an extraordinary terror of China's rise and the Chinese model". It said the award was a concerted ideologically motivated attack on China's economic interests by developed nations and foreign business interests who "even hope that China will one day collapse under the West's ideological crusade."
Foreign broadcast coverage, such as from the BBC and CNN, was blacked out whenever Liu was mentioned. In Guangdong, signal carriers for Hong Kong TVB were interrupted for approximately eight minutes during the 6 pm evening news programme, blocking the news item for the Nobel Peace Prize.
After a week of denunciation in China's English-language media, with most journals silent about the award except for perfunctory quotes from the foreign ministry, the country's Chinese-language media launched a concerted assault on Liu and the award, accompanied by renewed attacks in the English-language media. Xinhua argued on 17 October that the Communist Party had made "unremitting efforts to promote and safeguard human rights", and questioned how Liu's actions had contributed to human rights progress for the Chinese people. The agency cited a journal from Saudi Arabia, and one from Russia, that had denounced the award; it quoted the Pakistani Foreign Office as saying, "the politicization of the Nobel Peace Prize for the purposes of interference in the domestic affairs of states is not only contrary to the recognized principles of inter-State conduct, but also a negation of the underlying spirit conceived by the founder of the Prize." In what was described by Chinese media–watchers as a surprise because of its historical professionalism, "China Youth Daily" published an article containing Beijing students' expressions of anger and disbelief over the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu. The journal employed the traditional hard-liner phrase "people with ulterior motives" (别有用心的人)—directed to at least one student. It further denounced the "farcical" Nobel decision to use the award as "a tool ... in their relentless effort to undermine China and frustrate its development".
The "Beijing Daily" published an editorial on the day of the award ceremony entitled "Why not give the peace prize to Julian Assange?". It suggested that Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, was not awarded the prize because he could not "become a tool for Western forces in attacking countries with different ideologies ... even if this tool is serving out a prison sentence for violating the law."
Central government.
Following the announcement on 8 October 2010, Xinhua relayed the Russian state-owned news agency's denunciation of the prize. China summoned the Norwegian ambassador in Beijing "to officially share their opinion, their disagreement and their protest." A PRC foreign ministry spokesman accused politicians from "some countries" for using the award to further their own political agendas: "This is not only disrespect for China's judicial system but also puts a big question mark on their true intention." The ministry's statement, labelling the decision "a blasphemy", was carried on Chinese state television.
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;The Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to people who contribute to national harmony, country-to-country friendship, advancing disarmament, and