Despite appearances, the
Confucius Peace Prize is not an outcome of Chinese government policy.
If you keep abreast of
world news, as I’m sure most Diplomat readers like to do, you
may have heard that Robert Mugabe, the unhinged president of Zimbabwe, has won
something called the Confucius Peace Prize.
Of
course, the notion that Mugabe could be deserving of anything that can remotely
be described as a “Peace Prize” is laughable. Mugabe has cracked down on human
rights and political opposition. He rules with an iron fist— and he’s driven
Zimbabwe’s economy into the ground. If anything, he merits the a prize for
adhering most closely to the archetype of irascible, power-mad dictator.
Most
headlines have said that the Confucius prize is presented by none other than
“China.” “Zimbabwe’s Mugabe nets Chinese
peace prize,” “China Awards Peace Prize to
African Dictator,” “A ‘peace’ prize for Mugabe: The
double-speak behind China’s answer to the Nobel award,” “How can China reward utter
failure?” and “‘Chinese Nobel’ Awarded to
Dictator and Mass Murderer Robert Mugabe” are just a few examples.
Without
knowledge of the origins of the Confucius Peace Prize, an unwitting reader may
see these headlines and assume that the Chinese Communist Party-led government
of the People’s Republic of China thinks the Alfred Nobel-endowed peace prize,
granted by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, is so unfair to Chinese interests
that it sought to counter this farce with a prize of its own. This, however, is
an oversimplification.
Yes, the
Nobel Peace Prize is often politicized for a range of reasons.
Yes,
famous Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2010,
damaging diplomatic relations between China and Norway and generally upsetting
China.
But,
despite all this, no, the government of the People’s Republic of China is not
actually petty enough to resort to establishing what essentially amounts to a
parody of the Nobel Peace Prize to make its displeasure with the Norwegian
Nobel Committee and Western lionization of Chinese dissidents known to the
world.
This
article isn’t an attempt to absolve the Chinese government of its complicity in
a range of human rights abuses. Instead, it’s an attempt to clarify what many
of the headlines on Mugabe’s Confucius Peace Prize don’t tell you.
The
Confucius Peace Prize was set up in 2010, after Liu received his Nobel Peace
Prize. It was established by a private association of Chinese citizens based in
Hong Kong, known as the Association of Chinese Indigenous Arts in the People’s
Republic of China. Liu Zhiqin, a prominent businessman who originated the
proposal to set up a uniquely Chinese prize, said at the time: “We
should not compete, we should not confront the Nobel Prize, but we should try
to set up another standard.”
Part of
the misunderstanding that the Confucius Peace Prize was endowed and supported
by the Chinese government had to do with the Hong Kong group’s assertions that
it was working with the Chinese Ministry of Culture (which the ministry has
since vehemently denied). Additionally, China’s soft-power spreading Confucius
Institutes had been founded in the mid-2000s and were still spreading globally,
suggesting to some that the Confucius Peace Prize was a similar push for
Chinese values and soft-power.
Since its
inception, the Confucius Peace Prize has been awarded roughly around the same
time as the Nobel Peace Prize. Before Mugabe, Kofi Annan, the former UN
Secretary-General, agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, Russia’s Vladimir
Putin, and Fidel Castro of Cuba have been recipients. Additionally, former KMT
secretary-general Lien Chan of Taiwan won the inaugural edition of the prize, a
development the Taiwanese government found “amusing.”
Differences
in values certainly exist between China and the West, but it’s important to
understand that the government of the People’s Republic of China hasn’t quite
responded to perceived Western affronts with the sort of pettiness that the
Confucian Peace Prize represents. So remember, while it is outrageous that
Robert Mugabe would win anything called a “Peace Prize,” it’s been given to him
by a private group of Chinese citizens based in Hong Kong with no affiliation
with the Chinese government.
The
conversation between China and the West on human rights is important and it is
ongoing, but misconceiving something like the Confucius Peace Prize as
emblematic of the Chinese perspective on human rights is immensely
unproductive. So, take this as a public service announcement of sorts and
please stop treating the Confucius Peace Prize as anything serious or remotely
worthy of consideration as representative of Chinese policy.By Ankit
Panda
No comments:
Post a Comment