Liu Xiaobo is only one among many so-called Chinese dissidents, but he happens to be the most articulate and the most unbending. He has been offered many opportunities to leave China and live comfortably on some American campus. Liu, however, knows that the good fight must go on, and he has no desire to lose contact with his fellow Chinese citizens or squander his legitimacy by going into exile. Moreover, Liu has articulated most explicitly what many Chinese want: a normal life in a normal country. What Liu calls “normal” is genuine democracy and free markets, not the corrupt Chinese version of those concepts.
The Chinese apparently have a very attenuated sense of irony. Outraged that one of their political dissidents should be given international honor they've now retaliated by confining Liu's wife to house arrest.You can read about Liu's fight for human rights here. The bio will also give you a pretty good idea why you should not allow yourself to think that China is on the way to being anything like a free and open country.
Brave souls like Liu and so many others whose names we'll never know struggle in anonymity to bring a flicker of the light of freedom into the nightmarish darkness of oppressive regimes like those in China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and much of Africa. Most of these people will never be recognized in this life, but they are heroes and saints all the same. What Gore and Obama ever did to be ranked among them is something I'll never understand.