Question

Name the jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist who won this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his 'long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.'

• A. Went Xiabo
• B. Wen Jiabao
• C. Liu Jiabao
• D. Liu Xiaobo

Hint:

He co-authored Charter 08 and was in prison when he won the 2010 Peace Prize.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Liu Xiaobo is the answer here. In 2010 the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave him the Peace Prize while he sat inside a Chinese prison, serving eleven years for inciting subversion of state power. His real offence, in the eyes of the government, was helping write Charter 08, a document that asked for basic freedoms and political reform in China.

Because he could not leave the country, and his wife was kept under house arrest, nobody from his side collected the prize in Oslo. His chair at the ceremony stayed empty, a moment that drew worldwide attention. Before him, the last laureate honoured while imprisoned was Carl von Ossietzky of Germany, back in 1935, which shows how rare this situation is in Nobel history.

The wrong options play on how close the names sound. Went Xiabo and Liu Jiabao are simply not real names, inserted to trip up anyone skimming quickly. Wen Jiabao, on the other hand, was a real and important figure of that era, but as China's sitting Premier, not as the imprisoned dissident the question describes. So the confirmed answer remains Liu Xiaobo.