Liu Xiaobo Plaza: A Latent Threat to US-China Relations

December 28, 2025 FHKE, A ralley in support of Liu Xiaobo.

By Ryan Kenney

August 11, 2026

A “modest effort” to remind China of the United States’ commitment to “safeguard human rights” has the potential to do more harm than good.

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) led a bipartisan coalition to include an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2015 State and Foreign Operations Bill that would rename the street on which the Chinese embassy is located. The embassy’s address would change from 3505 International Place, NW to No. 1 Liu Xiaobo Plaza in honor of the imprisoned Chinese political dissident.

Before realizing that the embassy was located on federal property, the group affirmed their position in a letter to DC Mayor Vincent Gray and the City Council: “By renaming the street in front of the Chinese embassy after Dr. Liu, we would send a clear and powerful message that the United States remains vigilant and resolute in its commitment to safeguard human rights around the globe.” After clearing the House, the Senate will now decide whether “every piece of incoming mail to the embassy would bear the name of the imprisoned Nobel laureate,” as Representative Wolf posed on his website. ***

In the buzz surrounding the amendment, neither American government officials nor the media seem to be sufficiently acknowledging a fundamental factor that has plagued Sino-American relations from the outset. Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, hinted at it when he told Foreign Policy: "This is the sort of symbolic shaming that the [People's Republic of China] and many politically conscious Chinese really dislike."

That is, American officials’ unfortunate tendency to under-acknowledge the significance of “saving face” in Chinese culture threatens to antagonize an already frosty relationship. A regrettable string of events in the 1990s caused China to lose face at the hands of American officials and planted the seeds of mistrust in what is, by many accounts, the most important bilateral relationship in the world. For example, the United States’ decision to grant Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui a visa in June 1995 “sparked a Chinese political crisis,” and “deepened mistrust of American intentions at both mass and elite levels,” according to former State Department official Susan Shirk. The effects of some of these seminal blunders have developed into persistent mistrust, apparent at this month’s US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

Of course, the delicate, unimaginably complex diplomatic dance that the world’s two largest superpowers engage in is bound to ruffle some feathers on occasion, and the amendment in question is not necessarily comparable in scale to the visa incident. However, it appears that American officials could have done more to mitigate or avoid these unintended consequences by placing more significance on the importance of saving face in Chinese culture in their decision-making.

The United States should continue to do its part as a global example and advocate for protecting basic human rights, which is a significant aspect of Sino-American relations. However, cheap jabs at such a key partner without any clear and direct humanitarian benefit potentially jeopardizes the stability of the relationship as a whole. Before American officials take the next steps on this measure, they should fully consider its potential political and diplomatic consequences.