Chinese Government on 9 December 2010 conferred the first Confucius Peace Prize on Lien Chan, the former vice president of Taiwan. The decision to confer the award came in the wake of Nobel committee's decision to make Chinese dissident Liu the first mainland Chinese Nobel laureate. Liu, arrested in December 2008 after co-authoring a bold call for sweeping political reform, is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion — his fourth stretch of incarceration since 1989.
Other candidates for the Confucius prize included Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and the Panchen Lama supported by the Chinese government.
China has been angered by the Nobel Committee’s decision stating the move to be an anti-China farce. Chinese high officials who hold Liu to be a ‘clown’ put the first Confucius Peace Prize on higher pedestal than the Nobel Peace Prize. China and 18 countries like Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba etc have pulled out of the Nobel ceremony scheduled to take place on 10 December 2010 after being threatened by the Chinese government.
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