6:42 pm HKT May 30, 2014
A man walked in front of a poster of Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo in Oslo in 2010. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
You say commemorative, I say provocative.
That was the message Friday that came from China Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Qin Gang in response to a proposal by U.S. House of Representatives members to rename part of a Washington D.C. street – where the Chinese Embassy sits — in honor of jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
According to the Washington Post, a bipartisan group of 13 House members including Republican Frank Wolf and Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter petitioning Washington Mayor Vincent Gray to rename the street in honor of the Chinese dissident. Mr. Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and is currently the only jailed winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The backers of the move in Washington said that the act would draw “renewed international attention to Chinese human rights violations” ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Responding to a question about the proposal Friday during a routine press briefing, Mr. Gang called the move provocative. “Liu Xiaobo is a man who has violated Chinese laws, he has been convicted in accordance with the law,” he said.
The move isn’t without precedent: During the 1980s, the U.S. changed the name of the street in front of the Soviet Union embassy in Washington to Andrei Sakharov Plaza in protest of the treatment of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.
Relations between the U.S. and China have been particularly fraught after the U.S. earlier this month indicted five People’s Liberation Army officers it said were responsible for cyberattacks against U.S. corporations.
Nonetheless, relations are by no means as bad as things were between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the 1980s.
Still, naming a street after Mr. Liu would be certain to anger Chinese leaders, who know how to wield propaganda. Indeed, if the Chinese wanted to escalate and get Americans’ goat, they could easily rename the street that runs by the U.S. embassy in Beijing after Edward Snowden.
From :http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/30/u-s-politicians-want-to-name-a-street-after-liu-xiaobo-china-not-pleased/