World View:

Enter the dragon.

Newport Mesa has just kicked off Ancient Paths, Modern Voices, a six-week extravaganza showcasing the riches of China’s artistic, musical and cultural traditions.

The festival should bring much excitement and fanfare to the area, as a procession of Chinese artists, musicians and other performers splashes down here during the coming weeks.

This cultural coup, which can only help foster warmer Sino-American relations, was pulled off in no small measure through the clout of the Segerstroms, the family who largely built Costa Mesa into what it is today.

I intend to see action filmmaker John Woo’s war epic “Red Cliff.” I also want to catch one of tonight or Saturday’s performances of the Quanzhou Marionette Theater. But I’ll be sure not to miss Saturday and Sunday’s ping pong diplomacy rematch at South Coast Plaza (which was built, of course, by Henry Segerstrom).

Ping pong players will be battling it out as they commemorate the watershed 1972 opening of China meeting between President Nixon and Chairman Mao. I’m a sucker for presidential biographies and all the intrigue and machinations of global power plays between the superpowers.

Lest we forget

The page one headline for Thursday’s package of stories that introduced the Chinese festival fittingly referred to our Chinese visitors as ambassadors of a “first-rate culture.” China’s culture is very old and rich, indeed, but as a representative of the fourth estate, a free speech institution, I would be irresponsible to fail to remind this newspaper’s readers that the system of government and human rights record of the world’s most populous country is far from first-rate.

The Chinese artists, musicians and other performers who are coming to town are expressing themselves freely, so I would hope. And they’ll be visiting a country whose democratic system and freedoms of expressions are enshrined in the Constitution. The Chinese government often has lashed out at the West for criticizing its poor rights record at home, and for interfering in the internal affairs of other nations with which it trades and engages in relations.

China in the early 21st century wields so much influence in the world that, it could be argued, the People’s Republic is now the sole economic superpower. But its dictatorial behavior has rubbed off on smaller and more vulnerable countries that have been pulled into Beijing’s orbit.

Take Sri Lanka, one of four countries to which I belong (the others being France, Britain and the U.S.), and which most of my fellow Americans know little about. Because China has been buddying up with Sri Lanka in recent years, that island-nation the size of West Virginia — where a 26-year civil war just ended — is in danger of drifting toward dictatorship. Sri Lanka had long been a parliamentary democracy modeled on the British system. But a huge infusion of Chinese military aid, which effectively turned the tide of war in the Sri Lankan government’s favor, has encouraged its autocratic government to commit a litany of human rights abuses.

In exchange for military aid, Sri Lanka, which is strategically located on the Indian Ocean’s main shipping lanes, has allowed the Chinese to build a deep water port there. Once completed, it would allow the Chinese navy to fan out and patrol Chinese oil shipments from the Persian Gulf. A Chinese military presence in Sri Lanka could pose an indirect threat to U.S. oil shipments from the gulf.

Nobel president

Much has been made in the past week about whether President Obama deserved to be named as this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

A lot of Americans disagreed with this. As for me, I don’t think that the big O necessarily has done much on the world’s stage during his short time in office so far to deserve the coveted prize. But I do think that he deserves it because of what he represents: having become the first black man to break the color barrier in the Oval Office, which has sent ripples of hope for change worldwide.

Now I’m pretty skeptical that the prize’s Norwegian custodians gave it to Obama out of a feeling of peace and love for all mankind. Europeans have a pretty poor track record when it comes to race relations and immigration — as do we Americans.

My gut feeling tells me that the Europeans named Obama the winner out of a sense of guilt for all the injustices that Europe’s former colonial powers inflicted on people of color. Europeans may think that Obama is one hip cat, but, as a half-European, I can tell you that because Europe tends to lag a decade or two behind the United States, you won’t see a person of color in charge of a European nation — where elitist rule is entrenched — for at least another 10 years.

Finally, in my view, Obama is a far more deserving recipient of the Nobel than doctor doom himself, Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advisor and secretary of state, who was awarded the peace prize in 1973.

It was Kissinger’s secret mission to China that paved the way for the ’72 Sino-American summit that will be celebrated in Costa Mesa this weekend.

But peace comes at a price. The master diplomat may have settled the conflict in Indochina, but the peace that he brokered left behind a wake of death and destruction.

City Editor IMRAN VITTACHI may be reached at imran.vittachi@latimes.com or at (714) 966-4633.