Security forces, some in plainclothes, have gathered around the compound where Liu’s wife has been living under house arrest.  The Chinese authorities have also severed her phone and Internet connections with the outside world.

Other well-known Chinese intellectuals and dissidents have been told they are now prevented from traveling outside the country.

AP reports:

While the imprisoned Liu will be represented by an empty chair in Oslo, Beijing police in recent days have emptied apartments, hustling many activists away from the capital to keep them out of the loop entirely.
Before being escorted to the southwestern province of Yunnan, Zhang Xianliang, the mother of a high school student killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, told The Associated Press she had been shadowed by four plainclothes agents who incessantly demanded she leave Beijing.

"They have become crazy. This is unprecedented. I have never been so threatened in the last 20 years," Zhang said.

"It means that the Nobel Peace Prize has touched a nerve, that they are afraid of what might happen with such an international recognition of our efforts to push for more democracy in China," she said.

The Chinese state has also blocked several foreign news websites as well as foreign newscasts reporting on Liu.

Liu has been imprisoned four times since 1989, after he authored a manifesto in favor of human rights and democratization.

CNN also reported that pro-government crowds of protestors were gathering in front of the Norwegian Embassy in  Beijing. Amnesty International said it had received reports from "reliable sources" that Chinese diplomats in Norway have been pressuring Chinese residents into joining anti-Nobel demonstrations when the award ceremony is held Friday, CNN reports.