The announcement last week that the Chinese scholar and jailed democracy activist Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize is a reminder that in an authoritarian state the voice of the people is to be found not in the frenzied public claims of the regime, but among nervous taxi drivers and unnoticed dissidents.

Now, as then, the award was greeted with official bluster and threats. China’s Foreign Ministry called the announcement a “desecration” of the Nobel, named Liu a “criminal” and said the move would hurt Norway’s relations with the world’s second-largest economy.

While Beijing blustered to the world, however, the regime worked desperately to ensure silence at home. Chinese media and major Web sites carried no reports about the first Nobel Prize ever awarded to a Chinese national. According to media reports, even CNN was blacked out whenever Liu was discussed, as were SMS messages and Internet forums containing his name or the phrase “Nobel peace prize.”

Many commentators in the West have openly questioned the wisdom of the Nobel Committee’s decision, suggesting it does not serve the cause of world peace to disrupt China’s already troubled relations with the West. What, they wonder, is the connection between Liu’s advocacy of democratic rights and the Nobel Committee’s mission of world peace? Are the Chinese ready, they ask, for the “Western” style of democracy advocated by Liu?

Different regime, different dissident, same old story.

It happens to every dictatorship. To survive, an authoritarian state must dominate the public discourse and expend vast energies on policing what is said and by whom. Yet, despite its best efforts, time always works against the oppressor. With each passing year, more and more citizens come to realize the growing rift between the regime’s rhetoric and their own political reality. As its popularity shrinks, the regime must employ ever greater levels of dissimulation to maintain power, thus further eroding its support among the people.