The only Chinese person ever to receive a Nobel prize while living in China, the writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo, was able to spread his democratic manifesto, Charter 08, through the internet. The web, he said, was "truly God's gift to the Chinese people", allowing them to skirt official censorship.
By the time he died last Thursday, the internationally celebrated martyr to democracy must have been despondent at what China's internet had become.
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