Chinese peace

I'm glad India has the guts (and the means) to stand up to Chinese pressure. The same can't be said about Sri Lanka, unfortunately. From the Times of India:

India today said its decision to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony tomorrow at Oslo for Chinese dissident Liu Xiabo was not a bilateral issue between New Delhi and Beijing.

"This is not a bilateral question between China and India. This is a Nobel function arranged by the Nobel foundation.... I think India has already taken a decision to be represented as... on earlier occasions through our Ambassador," External Affairs minister S M Krishna told reporters.

Although China has called upon all countries, including India, to keep away from the ceremony, New Delhi is among those which has confirmed their participation.

Oh, and the Chinese 'peace' awards seem to have been a bit of a let-down:

Holding back tears of nervousness, Zeng Yuhan accepted China's first peace prize Thursday at a hotel conference room in Beijing, a day before the Norwegian Nobel committee honors imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo as this year's peace laureate in Oslo.

The six-year-old local girl received a trophy and a certificate in front of a sea of television cameras from the organizers of the Confucius Peace Prize, which also comes with an award of $15,000.

The ceremony's hosts said Zeng was chosen to accept the award on behalf of Lien Chan, the real winner and Taiwan's former vice president, because "children symbolize peace and future."

Members of the prize jury said Lien, who they deemed had made major contributions to bridging the gap between Taiwan and mainland China, could not attend the event for "reasons known to everyone" -- but apparently not to the recipient himself.

"We know who Confucius is, but don't know anything about this prize," Ting Yuan-chao, director of Lien's office in Taipei, told CNN earlier.

The hour-long award ceremony and press conference appeared thrown together at the last minute, jarred by microphone malfunction, awkward moments of silence and egregious English interpretation errors.

And here's an example of what Michael Oakeshott meant when he said that words take on such divergent meanings that they eventually become useless:

"China is a great nation that has been influenced by the Confucian concept of peace for a long time," Tan Changliu, chairman of the prize committee, told CNN before the ceremony. "We want to promote world peace from an Eastern perspective."

"Europe is full of small countries that had fought each other for centuries," he added. "We don't want to see people who don't understand peace to ruin the concept."