Don't Google "Nobel Peace Prize" in China

If you are in China and want to find out who won this year's Nobel Peace prize, good luck!

With news media across the globe reacting to this year's Nobel Peace Prize announcement, authorities in the winner's homeland are racing to delete his name from all public domains on the internet and off.

Type "Liu Xiaobo" -- or "Nobel Peace Prize," for that matter -- in search engines in China and hit return, you get a blaring error page.

It's the same for the country's increasingly popular micro-blogging sites. "Nobel Prize" was the top-trending topic until the authorities acted to remove all mentions of the award.

Propaganda officials have also pulled the plug on international broadcasters -- including CNN and BBC-- whenever stories about Liu air.

For most ordinary Chinese, the only glimpse of the story came when an anchor read a short statement from the foreign ministry on state TV, blasting the Norwegian Nobel committee's choice of an imprisoned Chinese dissident for the prize "a blasphemy."

Tweets are coming in from China over Twitter, but many Chinese are doing so at their own risk.  One user tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."

This is al unfortunate and awful for the people of China.  Even relatives of Liu are being cautios of what they say for fear of what may happen to them.