China launches Confucius Peace Prize

BEIJING: A Chinese group is to award the first ever Confucius Peace Prize to a Taiwanese politician in a bid to push back against the Nobel Committee, which gave this year's peace prize to a Chinese dissident.

The new prize will be officially announced on Thursday, 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 played an important role in forging the current period of rapprochement between Beijing and Taipei. The organisers said that because China was the most populous country in the world, "it should have a greater voice on world peace".

The announcement of the new prize comes after Beijing lashed out against the award of the Nobel Prize to Mr Liu, who officials describe as a criminal.

The idea of awarding a "Confucius" peace prize was first aired in the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper, three weeks ago.

However, the status of the prize committee remains unclear. Tan Changliu, chairman of the committee, told that it had worked closely with the Ministry of Culture.