Liu’s wife has been put under house arrest. Trade negotiations with Norway have been put on hold. Also, China tried hard to convince other countries to skip the award ceremony. Not surprisingly, countries like Iran and Sudan readily agreed.
All this was expected. However, on the eve of the award ceremony, a Chinese NGO that allegedly works closely with the Ministry for Culture added a new dimension to China’s propaganda by creating the Confucius Peace Prize, the Chinese version of the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘to promote world peace from an Eastern perspective’. Lien Chan was awarded the first Confucius Prize. Chan, a former Taiwanese vice-president, has made a significant contribution to bridge the Sino-Taiwanese chasm. Incidentally, Chan was not aware of the award beforehand. He only had ‘second-hand information from journalists’ and did not attend the award ceremony.
In any case, the idea of Confucian values being distinct from the universal values that influenced the Nobel Prize panel’s choice reminds me of a short story for children. The story is about an emperor of China who went on a hunting expedition and lost his way. While trying to find their way back, his entourage came across a hermit. The hermit did not pay attention to the royal entourage, which enraged the emperor. The emperor told the hermit that he was the ruler of the world and the world’s most powerful man and asked the hermit to identify himself. The hermit mocked the emperor and said he was amused to learn that the world’s most powerful man needed an army for his personal security. The emperor immediately realised his mistake and the hermit showed him the way to his capital. Towards the end of the story, the readers were told that the hermit was none other than Confucius. The king in the story had not only lost his way but had also forgotten the conduct expected of those in power.
The story is probably apocryphal. But it is revealing that the story identifies fearlessness as the foremost virtue for the common man and the capacity for admitting arrogance and being open to counsel as necessary virtues for those in power.
If fearlessness in face of brute force is the prime Confucian value then Liu Xiaobo deserves the first Confucius Peace Prize as well. It is a different matter that the modern Chinese emperor not only finds it impossible to tolerate those who fearlessly express themselves but also sends them to education camps.
Vikas Kumar is an independent researcher based in Bangalore.
I’m surprised that this was posted with blatant errors. “Lien” is the surname of Lien Chan, not “Chan.” I don’t know the tale about Confucius referred to, but the only emperor in place in Confucius’ time would have been a toothless Zhou emperor, mostly confined to his capital, and the monarch in this tale, if the tale existed, would have been a king.
Dear Edward,
Thank you very much for suggesting that the word ’emperor’ sounds anachronistic in the context of Confucius’ life. When I read the story in the late eighties, this did not strike me. But it makes the story even more interesting because by using a hyperbole – a solitary, (initially) anonymous forest dweller facing an emperor (of a great country) and his army – it amplifies the moral impact of the story.
The audience of the ‘probably apocryphal’ short story, which I reproduced from memory, consists of children. Children who have barely acquired the capacity and patience to read a few sentences at a time and are slowly realizing that there is a larger world outside their town, which is not necessarily similar to their town in terms of culture.
The story identifies Confucius, who lived in a place called China, as an exemplar of certain values that have universal relevance (even for children growing up in small towns of Hindi-speaking North India). The story rightly suggests that in the Confucian scheme of society people ought to correct rulers gone astray whereas rulers ought to be open to counsel. So, while the plot of the story could be apocryphal but its message is not un-Confucian. In children’s literature, message is often given priority over historical accuracy of the plot. But I’m not sure if the king “would have been toothless… mostly confined to his capital”. Confucius’ life would have overlapped with the reign of three to four kings and depending on when the alleged incident happened, if at all it did, the king could have been fit for hunting.
However, I fail to understand why referring to Lien Chan as Chan is a ‘blatant error’.
Sincerely,
Vikas