@Richard – This has come to be the standard approach to anything from outside the country which the CCP doesn’t like: block the original and manufacture a domestic alternative that is under their control. It was so predictable in fact that even I saw it coming, so did Math for that matter. Of course you will be familiar with this tactic from your days with Global Times.

The choice of Lian Zhan is hardly inspired though. In Taiwan he is a busted flush, a failure superseded in the KMT by younger, more photogenic, more intelligent, and above all, more Taiwanese politicians like Ma Yingjiu. His popularity on the mainland goes back to his visit in 2005, but it is difficult to see what he personally actually achieved – politicians before and after him have done far more in the way of striking deals between the CCP and the KMT than Lian ever did, or was capable of.

December 10, 2010 @ 1:01 am | Comment

Hey, I’ve said before, if people don’t like how and to whom the Nobels have been awarded, they should put their money where their mouth is, and go and make their own internationally renowned and respected award that is meted out according to their own preferred specifications. So looks like China has come up with the award. Kudos at least for putting their money where their mouth is. As for internaionally renowned and respected…well… that might be a different story.

December 10, 2010 @ 5:03 am | Comment

No doubt this event is going to be lampooned as a farce.

It would have been kind of funny if it weren’t for the fact that the State Department just announced the World Press Freedom Day, given recent events. Irony Indeed.

Come next year, if Julian Assange wins the Nobel Peace Prize as the Russian are suggesting, while sitting behind bars in Guantanamo for “treason”, I doubt the creation of Freedom Peace Prize would be far behind. I called this one first!!!

At very least Julian Assange has done much more than whatever LXB has ever done.

December 10, 2010 @ 4:39 pm | Comment

@Falen
I agree with you that Julian Assange would have been a more deserving recipient.
It’s ironic that the awarding of a peace prize should become so divisive… some might say explosive!

December 10, 2010 @ 6:54 pm | Comment

This rival award just goes to demonstrate the imbecility of those who came up with it. They are so dumb and stupid that they didn’t even have a clue that by giving this shitty award of theirs to Lien Chan, they are actually putting the former Kuomintang leader in a fix and embarrassment. And they are actually slapping President Ma Ying-jeou (Lien Chan is a elder in Ma’s KMT) right in the face since Ma had formally congratulated Liu Xiaobo for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and called for his release.

December 10, 2010 @ 8:04 pm | Comment

Well at least Lian Zhan had the sense not to acknowledge the prize, unfortunately he din’t have the guts to flat turn it down. They ended up giving it to an unknown little girl, pure comedy:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/12/10/2003490553

December 10, 2010 @ 9:18 pm | Comment

Farce, indeed. A friend sent me the CNN clip and I thought it was The Onion.

December 10, 2010 @ 9:38 pm | Comment

Via NY-Times:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/taiwanese-animators-skewer-chinas-response-to-peace-prize/?scp=1&sq=apple%20daily&st=cse

December 11, 2010 @ 8:11 am | Comment

If the CCP is going to do the anti-Nobel thing in a self-respecting manner, hopefully she will come up with Confucian Prizes in literature, medicine, etc. Otherwise it would just be silly…oops, too late.

So Nobel regretted inventing dynamite, and left an endowment from which to award prizes for people who excel in various areas for the betterment of mankind. I wonder what the back story is for these Confucian Prizes. Did Confucius do or say something he came to regret? Did he leave an endowment? (at least he did leave a legacy in the form of his ideas). Perhaps there is something the CCP regrets, for which these prizes are meant to atone. But then why “Confucius Prize”. They should’ve just called it the People’s Choice award for Peace, which would be literally appropriate, metaphorically ironic, and whose abbreviation (PCP) should be provided to the winners so that they can think they actually won the “other” award. (oh, but I guess “People’s Choice” is already taken…rats…back to drawing board)

December 12, 2010 @ 5:08 am | Comment