A Chinese Peace Prize Names This Year’s Winner. Ummm, Vladimir Putin?
Hanna Beech for Time’s Global Spin blog:
In September, an obscure Chinese cultural organization revealed the finalists for the second annual Confucius Peace Prize, an award that suddenly popped out of nowhere last year after imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The first Confucius Peace Prize, which was ridiculed as a clumsy attempt to divert attention from the fact that the world’s most famous peace prize had just gone to a jailed Chinese dissident, went to Lien Chan, a veteran Taiwan politician. Taiwan’s former Vice President didn’t even know he had won, and in a very curious ceremony a couple days later, a confused-looking little girl picked up the award in his stead.
And the story gets even more bizarre from that point.