China today dismissed as "farcical" a US congressional panel's proposal to rename the street in front of Beijing's embassy in Washington after imprisoned Chinese Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.
"It is nothing more than a sheer farce," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing here while replying to a question on the US move.
It is "meaninglessly hyping the so-called human rights issue and the case of Liu Xiaobo," Hua said.
Reports from Washington said the US House Appropriations Committee included a proposal in its 2015 State Department budget to rename the stretch of road in front of the embassy as "Liu Xiaobo Plaza".
Liu, a Chinese human rights activist, is serving an 11-year sentence on subversion charges.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for his contribution towards highlighting the human rights situation in China.
US Republican Representative Frank Wolf in a statement said the change would highlight Liu's "unjust imprisonment".
In the 1980s, the street in front of the Soviet Embassy in Washington was named after dissident Andrei Sakharov.
