Beijing's attempt to seize the media spotlight from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo descended into farce yesterday when the newly created Confucius Peace Prize was handed to a six-year-old girl.
She was standing in for the intended recipient, former Taiwanese vice-president Lien Chan, who was a no-show, with his office saying he was unaware he had been chosen or even that there was such a prize named after the famed Chinese sage.
The event was meant to rival today's ceremony in Norway, at which the imprisoned laureate, Liu Xiaobo , will be honoured for his two decades of non-violent struggle for human rights.
Little Zeng Yuhan , whose background the Confucius award committee refused to reveal, looked puzzled by all the attention at a chaotic news conference and was hidden behind members of the staff as reporters jostled to ask whether she knew why she was there.
'Leave her alone, please. She's just a little girl who knows nothing. She is not as complicated as you think,' a staff member said as she tried to keep reporters away.
The inaugural Confucius prize, which comes with a purse of 100,000 yuan (HK$116,750), puts forward the Chinese 'viewpoint of peace', according to the award committee, which is made up of professors from three Beijing universities.