Rebel roll call: China's dissident gang of ten

In the first minutes after Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's name was read out in Oslo as the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, a crowd gathered on Beijing's South Yuyuantan Road. The foreign media descended on the apartment block where Mr. Liu lives when he is not in prison, hoping to get the reaction of Liu Xia, his wife and fellow critic of the regime. The journalists were met by a line of police and plainclothes security officers who had arrived to put Ms. Liu under house arrest.

Only when the jostling crowd swelled from the sidewalk onto the street did a clutch of ordinary Chinese stop to see what was going on. I asked a middle-aged woman beside me in the crowd if she had heard of Liu Xiaobo. Despite the fact that he was instrumental in drafting Charter 08, the infamous manifesto calling for freedom of speech, the protection of human rights and the election of public officials - and has lived on the same street as her for years - she shook her head.

Soon Mr. Liu's name was rippling through the crowd, whispered by the locals and spoken more loudly by fellow dissidents, who had flocked to South Yuyuantan Road hoping to congratulate his wife. Still, amid the applause that will greet the awarding of this year's Peace Prize on Friday, it is worth remembering that the most famous of China's dissidents was until recently a relative unknown, even to many of his neighbours.

China's tiny pro-democracy movement, pushed to the sidelines in the 21 years since the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square, will return to the spotlight as its quietly celebrates the great honour being bestowed upon one of its own. Some of those still brave enough to speak out are worthy of accolades and can be compared to the freedom fighters of Eastern Europe and South Africa. Others, however, are mere dilettantes who flirt with the human-rights cause when it boosts their profile, then fade to silence when the going gets tough. (Click here to see a gallery of China's top 10 dissidents.)

Collectively, they have achieved little since the troops and tanks crushed that Beijing Spring. China has changed enormously in that time - becoming richer and stronger - but on the Communist Party's terms. Despite the best efforts of Mr. Liu and his colleagues, the country is no closer to being a Western-styled democracy now than it was in 1989.

The primary reason for that, of course, is the lengths to which the ruling Communists have gone to shut them up. Mr. Liu's chair will be empty on Friday when his name is read out in Oslo by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. He is expected to spend the day just as he has spent most of the past two years, in a cell he shares with five others in northeast China, where he is serving 11 years for "inciting subversion of state power."

He won't be the only one missing. When Liu Xia realized that she would not be allowed to leave China to attend the ceremony, she published an open letter inviting 143 friends and allies to be there on behalf of her and her husband. But amid a harsh crackdown on the movements and communications of the Communist Party's critics - which escalated as soon as Mr. Liu's award was announced - only two people on Ms. Liu's list have thus far been able to confirm their attendance. Most of the others will be under house arrest or close surveillance, or without permission to leave the country.

So, who are these few who still dare to challenge China's authoritarian leaders? And, given the government's seeming strength, do they have any chance of success? Do they, in a rapidly changing China, matter nearly as much as the outside world thinks they do?

Click here to see Mark MacKinnon's profiles of China's top 10 dissidents.