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A “complete farce” celebrating a convicted criminal, or a necessary reminder to China of its obligations to uphold international human rights standards?



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Responses to the effort in the United States Congress to rename a section of the street that runs in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington “Liu Xiaobo Plaza,” after the imprisoned Chinese Nobel Peace laureate, are gathering heat.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, dismissed the congressional move as a “complete farce,” and restated the government’s position that Mr. Liu is a criminal who broke Chinese law and has been punished accordingly. Asked if China would retaliate by renaming the street in front of the United States Embassy in Beijing, she gave a big smile and asked, “Do you believe China should take the same action as the U.S.?”

She did not answer her own question, but many Chinese comments online contained suggestions both irate and amused that China do just that. Proposed names included “Torture Prisoners Street,” “Snowden Street,” “Osama bin Laden Road” and even “Lewinsky.”



On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2015 State and Foreign Operations Bill that would direct the United States secretary of state to rename the street, giving the Chinese Embassy the new address of No. 1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza, according to the committee’s website. The embassy’s current address is 3505 International Place, NW. The amendment, proposed by Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, was adopted by the committee on a voice vote.

In a news release, Mr. Wolf said that the name would be changed so that “every piece of incoming mail to the embassy would bear the name of the imprisoned Nobel laureate.”

There is precedent for the United States government renaming a street to make a political point: In the 1980s, the street outside what was then the Soviet Embassy was renamed Andrei Sakharov Plaza, after the Soviet political dissident.

A news release from Mr. Wolf’s office, dated May 29 and signed by about a dozen other members of Congress, makes it clear that the move was timed to the 25th anniversary of the military suppression of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 3-4, 1989. Mr. Liu supported and participated in those demonstrations, which shaped his life.

The group wrote:

By renaming the street in front of the Chinese Embassy after Dr. Liu, we would send a clear and powerful message that the United States remains vigilant and resolute in its commitment to safeguard human rights around the globe. The timing is auspicious for such a move with the Tiananmen anniversary fast approaching. This modest effort would undoubtedly give hope to the Chinese people who continue to yearn for basic human rights and representative democracy and would remind their oppressors that they are in fact on the wrong side of history.

In 2009, Mr. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of subversion for co-authoring Charter ’08, a call for greater democracy in China and an end to one-party rule by the Communist Party. The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a gesture that incensed China. His wife, Liu Xia, remains under house arrest, although she has not been charged with a crime.

Online in China, meanwhile, a post on Sina Weibo was getting a lot of “forwards.” It reminded readers that in 1966, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards renamed the street outside the Soviet Embassy in Beijing “Anti-Revisionism Road.”

Another post, from a commenter with the online handle “Black America,” complained that the congressional action was an example of “American imperialism.”

But, in what appeared to be an illustration of the rights issues members of Congress said they wanted to highlight, the commenter was unable to break through Chinese censorship to write the name “Liu Xiaobo.” Instead, he referred to “Someone Someone Someone.”