Liu Xia (刘霞) is a Chinese poet, painter, and photographer, and the widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. She was kept under extralegal house arrest in Beijing for nearly eight years after the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize announcement concerning her husband, despite never being charged with a crime, and was allowed to leave China for Germany in July 2018.
Profile and timeline
- 1960s — Born in Beijing; reliable sources disagree on the exact birth year, with 1961 commonly reported and 1959 appearing in some exhibition material.
- 1996 — Married Liu Xiaobo while he was serving a re-education-through-labor sentence.
- 2008–2009 — Liu Xiaobo was detained over Charter 08 and sentenced to 11 years in prison; Liu Xia became one of his main links to the outside world.
- October 2010 — After the announcement that Liu Xiaobo had won the Nobel Peace Prize, police confined Liu Xia to her Beijing apartment. Rights organizations reported that she was held without charge and largely cut off from outside contact.
- 2011 — The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found her detention arbitrary.
- 2014 — Reports described worsening depression and heart-related health problems during confinement.
- July 2017 — Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer after being moved from prison to a hospital; Liu Xia was seen at his sea burial and then became largely incommunicado again.
- July 10, 2018 — Left Beijing for Berlin after nearly eight years of house arrest.
- September 2018 — Made a first public appearance after leaving China at an event associated with the Václav Havel Library Foundation in New York.
- 2019 — International reporting described her rebuilding her career as an artist in Berlin.
Art and writing
Liu Xia is known for poetry and black-and-white photography, including the “ugly babies” doll series produced in the 1990s. Her poetry collection Empty Chairs: Selected Poems appeared in English translation in 2015. Her photography has been exhibited internationally.
Evidence and caveats
Key dates surrounding her 2010 confinement and 2018 departure are supported by multiple human-rights and media sources. Her exact year of birth is reported inconsistently, and recent public reporting does not establish her current residence or health after the early years of exile; this profile therefore does not infer a present-day location or condition.
Selected sources
- PEN America — Liu Xia
- Amnesty International — Liu Xia freed, on her way to Berlin (2018)
- English PEN — release from unofficial house arrest
- Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission — Liu Xia case
- The New Yorker profile via MCLC, 2019
- Columbia Italian Academy — The Silent Strength of Liu Xia
Media archive: Liu Xia / 刘霞 — Media Profile & Archive