The Tang Prize, Taiwan’s highest private award for global achievement, has gained increasing global publicity following a report in German news weekly Die Zeit earlier this month that compared the prize to its global counterparts, such as the Nobel Prize, the Tang Prize Foundation said.
Die Zeit in its Oct. 8 edition compared the Tang Prize to other awards, including the Nobel Prize, the Kyoto Prize in Japan and the Shaw Prize in Hong Kong.
The Tang Prize was described as “a biennial prize based in Taiwan that is given in four categories: Sinology, biopharmaceutical science, rule of law and sustainable development,” which the foundation said suggests the prize’s growing influence.
The foundation also cited Guenter Wermekes, the German finalist in the Tang Prize Medal Design Competition in 2013, as saying that the prize “seems to have become much more popular and important in the world, and among the German public.”
The foundation also said that the number of nominations for this year’s Tang Prize has seen a 25 to 50 percent increase from the previous year, suggesting that it is gaining both awareness and participation in the international community.
The diversity of the nominees has also increased, meaning that the prize has garnered approval from the professional world, it said.
The foundation said that Tang Prize laureate in rule of law Albie Sachs is to deliver a lecture at this year’s meeting of The World Academy of Sciences in Vienna Nov. 18.
In December, the foundation is to be represented in Paris at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference, which is to be attended by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, last year’s Tang Prize laureate in sustainable development.
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