A mysterious Chinese group will today hand out the first ever Confucius Peace Prize in a snub to the Nobel Committee, which outraged Beijing by awarding its more famous peace prize to a Chinese dissident.
The rival Chinese prize will be officially announced the day before the ceremony for this year’s Nobel peace prize in Oslo, which has been won by Liu Xiaobo, a democracy activist serving an 11-year jail sentence for “subversion”.
Named after the ancient Chinese philosopher, the Confucius prize has been awarded to Lien Chan, the former vice-president of Taiwan who helped bring about the rapprochement between Beijing and Taipei. The organisers said because China was the most populous country in the world, “it should have a greater voice on world peace”.