China's Influence Widens Nobel Peace Prize Boycott

c0lo writes "Not only did China decline to attend the upcoming Nobel peace prize ceremony, but urged diplomats in Oslo to stay away from the event warning of 'consequences' if they go. Possibly as a result of this (or on their own decisions), 18 other countries turned down the invitation: Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending)."

Comments

Creating own award

[Unoriginal Nick]

The AP is also reporting that China is creating a Confucius Peace Prize to be given out the day before the Nobel Prize.

Re:Creating own award

[oldspewey]

What will the award winners feel?

Nervous dread? Blinding pain as they are led out into bright sunlight for the first time in months? The cold, wet embrace of cement being poured around their ankles? The anguish of knowing your entire family has been imprisoned? Cold metal against the back of their neck?

The possibilities really are limitless.

Re:Creating own award

[oWj9*7!7dsggh7]

It's true that the Nobel Peace Prize has been unreasonably politicized — not so much with Liu Xiaobo, but certainly with Gore and Obama. Then again, international events are intrinsically political and always have been.

I don't know what to say about the Confucius Peace Prize, though. Confucius was not about either peace or war — he was about extreme social conservatism. I suspect that one of these days, the world is going to stop finding China cute and see it for what it is: a first world colonialist culture with a high developed traditional theory of realpolitik and a chip on its shoulder about not being treated with sufficient respect. China will then be a much more interesting foil to the United States than it is now.

I mean, assuming the United States and China both still exist and haven't destroyed each other or merged into some horrible monster.

Re:Creating own award

[corbettw]

Ignoring pleas of the people isn't exactly the kind of things he advocated.

Are you kidding me? Harmony of the state and living under a strict hierarchy are the linchpins of Confucious thought. The very idea that the "people" should be able to have a voice, let alone use it, would have been anathema to him and his contemporaries.

Confucius was a statist, pure and simple. Trying to paint him otherwise does a disservice to history and distorts the man's beliefs (however much I might disagree with them, I'm not going to deny he had them or that he was proud of them).

Re:Creating own award

[Culture20]

Do you know how Confusion society treated women?

I don't quite.. umm. Hrm. What do you... Huh. I think you're confused.

Re:Creating own award

[silentcoder]

"There was an obligation for the bottom to respect the top, and also for the top to respect the bottom."

In practice - identical to the way class-society worked in Victorian (and earlier) England. The upper classes were meant to have a duty of protection, charity and upliftment toward the lower-classes who did all the work and got none of the benefits of education, wealth or power.

The difference is- the West actually learned that this doesn't work. It was in the context of a country not very long *out* of a full class system (the Victorian "democracy" was starting out at best with almost all the power at that stage in the House of Lords - which was decidedly undemocratic), that Churchill made his famous dictum about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others.

But mind you - Britain didn't really shed the class system as a cornerstone of their society until the 70's. The great class war was fought to the music of the sex pistols !
It took a good hundred years to get to that far and even today British royalty and upper classes are still privileged (though their say in the day-to-day running of the country has been largely destroyed)...

China however, hasn't even made the slightest start.

The entire world has been the kind of complete statist that China is now. We all did it. All our ancestors tried it, practically every Western nation was once an absolute monarchy. The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work. China hasn't learned that yet, but if history is anything to go by - they will.
The real question is - will China fall (like most of those monarchies) in bloody revolution ? Or will they have the sense (like a few of them) to recognize the inevitability of the fall of statism- and implement reforms themselves before it comes to that ? The current Chines politburo's approach and statements (especially the rather telling ones on this peace prize) suggest that we shouldn't bet on it...

Re:Creating own award

[TheLink]

The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work. China hasn't learned that yet, but if history is anything to go by - they will.

I think you ignore the fact "if history is anything to go by" China has had emperors for thousands of years.

This democracy thing is quite "untested" in comparison.

There were countries with democracies in the past and they too collapsed or were destroyed.

India is a democracy, it's not proven that it will do significantly better than China in the long run.

Re:Creating own award

[chrb]

The reality is- we changed it because it doesn't work.

The system worked well enough to make the British Empire the largest empire the world has ever seen, and to give a relatively small nation dominance and influence above it's weight for several centuries.

The system has worked so far in propelling China towards becoming the world's largest economy, and in urbanising and significantly raising the standard of living for hundreds of millions of people who previously lived as subsistence farmers.

This is not a question of being "statist" or "not statist", as the terms are too simple... some people would say that the legal authority of the Federal Reserve to print notes is statist. Using the military to enact social and political goals through both war and plain old "defense spending"? Statist. Building highways and railroads? Statist. Even the Wikipedia article fails to give some actual measurable attributes of what makes a thing "statist". All governments must plan growth by investing in infrastructure and technologies, but at what level does this get labelled "statist"?

The more interesting question is - what exactly is it that has given China this competitive advantage now? Does removing human rights protection (and hence democracy, as people would not vote for this) result in huge economic growth? Or is it just the natural result of having a billion-person common market with wages massively below the rest of the world? In response to the recession both the U.S. and China announced the creation of high-speed rail networks - the result being that China will have created the world's largest network in just over a decade, whilst Americans will have spent that decade arguing in the courts. China has flattened entire towns, to be paved over and replaced with newly built cities - this may be more efficient development, but would we be willing to give the government the right to do this in order to remain competitive in the global economy? If democracy and personal freedom (or greed) really is a less efficient way to manage a large national economy, then what do we choose - less democracy, less individual power, more government/corporate power, or stay the same? Which way do you think the powers that be are trying to drive our society in order to become more competitive in this new global age?

And nothing of value was lost

[MrEricSir]

When I think of countries contributing to global peace, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc. don't come to mind in the first place.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[girlintrainingpants]

What about the USA?

Mr. Obama was elected and was immediately awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize before he had a chance to make any change. I wouldn't call him a warmonger, but we're still at odds with the Middle East, and he/we appear to have no plan in sight to change that.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[interval1066]

"I would consider China "freer", but they haven't waged war with just about everything like the US."

No, the Chinese prefer to simply bludgeon their own (Tibet, Tienanmen Square, and constantly threatening war over Taiwan...)

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the 1962 war between China and India count as aggression? Also, invasion of Tibet in 1950.

Re:And nothing of value was lost

[readin]

The funny thing about the Taiwanese is that they are, as a people, mostly willing to return to China.

Opinion polls show more people in Taiwan desire immediate independence than want to be part of China. I suspect far more would rather return to Japan than return to China; Japan treated Taiwan better than China did. Opinion polls the vast majority want to "maintain the status quo" which is of course de facto independence with no formal declaration. It's easy to see why: they have neighbor 50 times larger than them who keeps threatening war if they formally declare independence. Status quo maintains independence without the risk of war.

The government is very much not and alot of businesses aren't either.

The government, which despite Taiwan's democracy is still controlled through bureaucratic inertia by the Chinese and their descendents who showed up in the 1940s, is torn between its loyalty to their Chinese homeland and the preference for being a big fish in a small pond instead of a small fish in a big pond.

Businesses are similarly torn. Businesses, unlike the government bureaucracy, are often run by Taiwanese who are loyal to Taiwan. But there is a lot of money to be made in China. Also, even those businesses run by Chinese nationalists recognize that being part of China means a serious degradation in property rights.

And for us in IT since Taiwanese motherboard makers make up nearly all the retail board makers in the world... Is probably best it not scoot back to China right now...

The people though generally support China, and not Hong Kong style China, but the mainland originally CCP government.

Where are you getting this? I suspect you've landed in a group of Chinese nationalists (which means you probably live in Taipei or in an expat community outside Taiwan). Chinese nationalists and their descendents make up only about 10 to 15% of the population. I include "descendents" because I have noticed that anytime someone from Taiwan has told me they consider Taiwan to be part of China, they have anscestors who came from China in the 1940s or later.

But taiwan is strange in general... Historically when they were the pirate port for Chinese goods over the seas, the Chinese government hunted them down and cut off their heads. Around a hundred years later when Manchuria invaded China and took over, the taiwanese sided with the Chinese government against the Manchurians... Only to have the Manchurians take a huge disliking to them to the point of harsh treatment including a scorched earth tactic on the mainland for around 15 years as they built a navy to sail to Taiwan to put them down. Then China looses Taiwan to Japan before the start of the 20th century as they fail to modernize. And after WW2 Taiwan plays a role again as the former dictatorship of China flees from the CCP and ends up in Taiwan as their new home.

Obviously just some highlights, but it's been an... interesting place...

And let's not forget that the Taiwanese fought for the Japanese in WWII. If you read most of the news reports in English, the Japanese era tends to be overlooked. The statement is always something like "Taiwan and China split amid civil war" but this is misleading. The Chinese Nationalists an the Chinese Communists split, but the Chinese Nationalists were not synonymous with Taiwan. They were newcomers taking over a society that had become educated and industrialized by Japan and had fought against the Chinese Nationalists in WWII.

Much ado about nothing.

[MMC Monster]

The only one in that list that even raises an eyebrow is Russia.

As for half of the countries that gained global influence during recent times, that's just a veiled reference to the "BRIC" countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Yes, two of the four BRIC countries aren't attending. But it's not like they're a statistical sample.

We won't miss them

[Tablizer]

That list is almost a Who's Who of world assholes.

Consequences

[chebucto]

IMHO this is the consequence of turning the peace prize into a political too. Kissinger? Arafat? Bad enough to have warmongers who happened to make peace. But the Obama prize was the worst. I like Obama myself, but he did _nothing_, good or bad, to deserve that prize. It completely discredited the institution. At this point I wouldn't be too sorry to see it go.

Re:Consequences

[macshit]

But in fact, this years prize seems to actually go in the other direction, of rewarding somebody who truly took personal risks to advance the cause of peaceful political evolution.

Of course China's amazing degree of freak-out about it simply drives the point home.

I'm a bit curious about the reasoning of the various countries that are "not attending" though -- which ones did it to curry political favor with China (at little perceived cost), and which ones did it because they're also busy killing/imprisoning anybody who makes a stand for democratic freedoms...?

Re:Consequences

[ShanghaiBill]

I know nothing (yet) about this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate...

His name is Liu Xiaobo. He is currently imprisoned in China. He advocates democracy. But that is not why he is in prison.

He also advocates abolition of the hukou. That is why he is in prison.

Re:Consequences

[gman003]

The Peace Prize has ALWAYS been political. Five years after it was first awarded (1906), Teddy Roosevelt got one for essentially bullying Japan into accepting worse terms than they should have after winning the Russo-Japanese War. 1973, Henry Kissinger got a Peace Prize essentially for just quitting a war. There's probably more, but that's

Re:Consequences

[koxkoxkox]

Hukou is a way to reduce the movement of populations. China especially fears large migrations from the poor west provinces to the rich east coast and from the rural areas to the cities. It is quite similar to the immigration problems all around the world, except that it is inside the country.

However, Liu Xiaobo is by no means the only one criticizing this hukou system and a lot of people want to reform it, arguing that it creates a very unequal society, where citizens don't have the same rights to education, social security, housing, etc. depending on where their official hukou is.

The reason he is in jail right now is rather that he is the main force behind the "Charter 08". This charter is also what prompted the Nobel Price. I'll let you google it yourself, I can't access it from work.

They're in great company..

[MoellerPlesset2]

The AP is also reporting that China is creating a Confucius Peace Prize to be given out the day before the Nobel Prize.

Well, they're in good company:
"The German National Prize for Art and Science (German: Deutscher Nationalpreis für Kunst und Wissenschaft) was an award created by Adolf Hitler in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel Prize (he had forbidden Germans to accept the latter award in 1936 after an anti-Nazi German writer, Carl von Ossietzky, was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize)."

And of course the Soviets also banned (a bit on-and-off though) their citizens from recieving the Nobel, and Stalin created the Stalin Prize in his own honor.

Re:Good - I hope the world boycotts it

[silentcoder]

>meaningless "peace" prize founded by an arms manufacturer

That last bit is not really accurate. Nobel invented dynamite. Dynamite literally means "safe explosive" - it's invention was NOT intended as a weapon - but as a safer explosive for mining. Compared to Nitro-glycerine dynamite was a major advance.
The truth is that strictly speaking Nobel's invention has saved millions upon millions of lives - not soldier lives, the lives of ordinary people who work in a mine, people with families just doing their job - by making mining hugely safer than it had been prior.

Now of course in retrospect it was pretty much inevitable that dynamite would become a weapon as well - the ability of controlled detonation for warfare was far to irresistible to the kind of people who think warfare is a good thing, but it's quite a slur on Nobel to pretend that this was his intention. Nobel invented a device to SAVE lives, and indeed every day it still does exactly that. It can also be used to take lives, but that wasn't HIS fault.

Re:Chinese Diplomacy

[rtb61]

Please do not confuse Chinese and China. There are many democratic Chinese people living elsewhere in the world that want nothing to do with the corporo-fascist government of China. You can not even call it a Chinese government as the majority of Chinese living in China have little on no influence over the Government of China.

Personally this is a diplomatic mistake as it points out exactly which countries China has financial influence over, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Russia is the interesting one, although it is likely they don't care one way or the other about China's opinion and stayed away for their own reasons. As for Iraq and Colombia, hmm, perhaps they are trying to get out from under the US and looking to build relations with China or more likely Russia. In fact quite a few more likely stayed away to align with Russia rather than China.

In fact it would be interesting to find out why Russia did not attend.