A group of scholars from China and Taiwan has proposed to the presidents of both territories, Xi Jinping and Ma Jing-Yeou, as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize this year, for both the summit held in Singapore in November after 66 years of conflict between Beijing and Taipei.
"It was a historic and important meeting for world peace," said a letter to the Nobel Committee in Oslo, responsible for granting the award, signed by several prestigious university professors.
The letter, also sent Efe also noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping made an important breakthrough in the field of disarmament after announcing on September 3 last year during a military parade in Tiananmen Square, which China would reduce its armed from 2.3 to 2 million effective forces.
"Ma Xi and are an example to the world and regional peace," reads the document, which has among the signatories to the rector of the Faculty of International Relations of the People's University of China, Jin Canrong, or Professor of Architecture at the University Tsinghua Peng Peigen.
"Alfred Nobel said before he died that the prize should go to people who promote integration and friendship between the various nations and the meeting between Xi and Ma has contributed to the relationship of the two parties and their peaceful development," he told Efe Peng, a leading Chinese architect.
Other promoters of the initiative are the president of the National Foundation for World Peace, Li Ruohong, and the rector of the University of Culture in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital Jinghu Zhang.
The proposal contrasts with the criticism that the Government of Xi has accumulated since coming to power in 2013, increased persecution of dissidents, journalists, lawyers, human rights activists and other prominent Chinese civil society.
Organizations such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, as well as political leaders in the United States or the European Union have condemned the treatment of the Chinese communist regime to these groups.
The last case that has sparked international condemnation was the expulsion of the French correspondent Ursula Gauthier, who had to leave China last December 31 for an article on terrorism that triggered the ire of Beijing.
In another vein, the results of the recent summit between Ma and Xi, in which both sides agreed to strengthen dialogue and contacts could be canceled within weeks, if forecasts are met legislative and presidential elections that Taiwan celebrated on January 16.
The current Taiwanese opposition, independence and more reluctant to online contacts with Beijing, is clear favorite to win those elections, after eight years of Kuomintang Nationalist Party government, historically linked to the mainland, where it was founded.
The Nobel Peace Prize has only been awarded twice to citizens born in Chinese territory, and in both cases openly opposing personalities tried the communist regime.
It is the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, awarded in 1989, and the writer Liu Xiaobo, awarded in 2010, a year after being sentenced to 11 years in prison for "subversion" following a letter, the "Charter 08" , which publicly called for the democratization of China.