Apparently this is one of the most contentious Nobel Peace Prize awards in recent memory.
New York Times article
December 8, 2010
China’s Answer to Nobel Mystifies Its Winner
By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — The newly created award, named after the venerated Chinese sage whose teachings have been recited for thousands of years, was meant to rival the Nobel Peace Prize, and to lend an air of respectability and gravitas to China’s rise on the world stage.
But those lofty goals appeared lost on the Taiwanese politician honored as its first winner. In fact, on Wednesday, the politician, Lien Chan, had yet to hear officially that he had won. Or that he was to appear at the ceremony in Beijing on Thursday to claim $15,000 in award money. Or that there was even such a thing as a Confucius Peace Prize.
“Are you asking about the peace prize thing?” Mr. Lien’s office director said in exasperation when reached by phone. “Regarding this event, our answer is ‘no comment,’ because we know nothing about it. Nobody has ever contacted us on this issue, and we only have secondhand information from journalists.”
So went the attempt by a group of patriotic Chinese to steal the thunder of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which in Oslo on Friday will bestow this year’s Nobel Peace Prize and its promise of $1.5 million on a Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, who is serving an 11-year sentence for writings demanding political reform, human rights guarantees and an independent judicial system.
In contrast, the designated winner of the Confucius prize has an agenda closer to China’s heart: pushing for closer ties between Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party.
The origins of the group behind the Confucius prize are still a mystery, but it was first conceived only a few weeks ago here in Beijing, as the Nobel ceremony began to loom.
Tan Changliu, the leader of the Confucius prize committee, said in an interview on Wednesday that the new award had considered a variety of candidates who had made major contributions to world peace, before settling on Mr. Lien. A former Kuomintang Party chief, Mr. Lien visited China in 2005 in the highest-level exchange between Taiwanese and mainland politicians since the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war.
“Bill Gates is one of our candidates for his effort in bridge the gap between the rich and the poor,” Mr. Tan said. “Jimmy Carter is also a candidate. He continues contributing to world peace, even at such a senior age. Chinese people love Americans, and we hope Americans love us back. Sino-U.S. peace means world peace.”
Mr. Carter, the former American president, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Mr. Tan said other candidates for the Confucius prize included Nelson Mandela, the former South African president who also received the Nobel; Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president; and the Panchen Lama supported by the Chinese government. (A separate Panchen Lama endorsed by the Dalai Lama was abducted as a child by Chinese officials.)
Word of the Confucius prize first emerged late on Tuesday night in a report by The Associated Press. Mr. Tan told The A.P. that his group was not a government organization, though it worked closely with the Ministry of Culture.
Mr. Tan and his colleagues are apparently patriotic Chinese who agree with the government line that the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Liu is an attempt by Western nations to belittle an ascendant and authoritarian China. Mr. Liu was arrested and tried last year because of his role as one of the main authors of Charter 08, a manifesto on the Internet that calls for gradual democratic reforms. His wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest and cannot travel to Oslo to collect the award on behalf of Mr. Liu. In recent weeks, security officials have also prevented other Chinese intellectuals from leaving the country.
The idea for the Confucius prize was apparently first voiced by Liu Zhiqin, the Beijing representative of a Swiss bank, in a commentary published Nov. 17 by Global Times, a patriotic populist newspaper. He criticized the Nobel award and advocated the establishment of a Confucius Peace Prize “to show the world our comprehension of peace and perception on human rights.”
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, he said that he had not been contacted by Mr. Tan’s group and that he had not received an invitation to the ceremony on Thursday. But he said he supported the new prize and asserted that its winner would truly represent the goal of world peace, in contrast to that of the Nobel Peace Prize.
“The Nobel Peace Prize should set an example for the world’s people to follow it, to learn from this winner,” he said. “Can you tell me what we can learn from Liu Xiaobo about world peace? We can learn nothing.”
Zhang Jing contributed research.
