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BEYOND NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, WILL HARMONY RENAISSANCE PRIZE BE FAR BEHIND?

By Francis C W Fung, Ph.D.

Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese felon convicted for agitation aimed at subverting the Chinese government, was
once quoted saying “China needs to be colonized for 300 years”. This may be the real reason that the
Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu. Perhaps the Committee once again
could not resist the temptation of using the prize as a political tool. This award to Liu disregards the
original testament of Alfred Nobel, the founder of the century old Nobel Peace prize. According to
Nobel’s wishes the peace prize should be awarded to person(s) who “shall have done the most or the
best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the
holding and promotion of peace congress.”

In 1989 the Committee awarded the peace prize to Dalai Lama, who took the advice of the Tibetan elite
priest class that he should be the absolute ruler of all Lama Buddhist believers in China. In such
undertaking he has single handedly disrupted Chinese ethnic harmony for over 50 years. The 2010
decision of the peace award to Liu again shows that a few Westerners desire to interfere in Chinese
domestic affairs. It was a pity that the Nobel peace prize was used as a political tool by the Western
power unsuccessfully bent on slowing China’s growth. Again, Liu is a very convenient tool this time. By
his own statement “China needs to be colonized for 300 years” Liu made no attempt to disguise his true
intention of abiding by the Western bidding.

As to how far the Norwegian Committee has departed from the spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize one need
only to read the soul searching book “The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted” by Fredrik S.
Heffemehl. According to Heffemehl, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has come under increasing
political, geopolitical and commercial pressures to make inappropriate awards. Heffemehl called it a
wrong decision and illegal to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, according to the website
of the Swedish Newspaper Dagens Nyheter. On Oct 10, Heffemehl further criticized that the 2010
selection of the peace prize winner has violated Nobel’s intended purpose in a posting published on the
website of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS), founded in 1965 at Stanford
University. Nobel’s hope of breaking the vicious circle of arms races and military power games appears
to be dashed in the recent years by the Committee. This particularly inappropriate 2010 award is
certainly a setback of East and West Harmony and so will fraternity between nations as Nobel hoped.
Nobel’s hope of redeeming his own misdeed of dynamite invention is far from fulfilled by this type of
awards decision which incites differences among East and West culture. Heffemehl concluded “With all
due respect to Liu Xiabo, this is yet another example that this is no longer Nobel’s Prize, it is the
“Political” prize of the Norwegian Storting (The Supreme Legislature in Norway)”.

Human yearning for peace is an intuitive desire over a troubled world, whether the trouble is caused by
armed or ideological confrontations such as the Cold War of the 20 th Century that still has not ended in
the minds of some nations. Because peace will not take hold without Harmony among nations, that is a
dynamic balance of cultural influence of a multi-cultural world. In a harmonious world respect and

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tolerance of other cultures is a prerequisite. With the ushering in of fast growing developing countries
in the 21st century, the world cannot wait for the revival of the universal common value that is Harmony.
For peace to take hold harmony among nations must flourish. Peace is a static state arising from the
dynamic harmony balance of the cultures of a multi-polar world that will come.

To increase world understanding and tolerance for all major cultures East and West, the world must
bring back the universal value of harmony that worked in many regions for centuries. Not to undermine
the Nobel peace prize, a new “Harmony Renaissance” prize can be initiated to reward those who
worked hard to establish long term peace and world mutual understanding and not divisive judgments.
This trend of Harmony Renaissance has gathered momentum recently as witnessed by many world
harmony organizations and websites sprouting all over the world. This inevitable growth of world
harmony organizations is a clear indication of the world desire for Harmony Renaissance.

At the 2004 U.N. General Assembly meeting, Hu Jintao, President of China made a speech urging the
gathered nations to work for world harmony through mutual win-win development. The speech was
warmly received. He called for the world to be tolerant, accepting and respecting other nation’s
cultures big or small, weak or powerful. The days for Western culture to dominate the world by
awarding Western standard “peace prizes” are numbered. A more universal “Harmony Renaissance”
prize to work for world cultural diversity and unity in diversity will be welcomed. For the first ever 2010
“Harmony Renaissance” prize, President Hu Jintao is most deserving for the first to set the priority for
world harmony at United Nations. Any other nominations?

Francis C W Fung, Ph.D.

World Harmony Organization

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