A group based in Hong Kong that says it is the official organizer of the prize has selected Mr. Mugabe as this year’s recipient. Among the finalists for the award were Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations, President Park Geun-Hye of South Korea and Bill Gates.

The Confucius Peace Prize was first established in late 2010 as a rejoinder to the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded that year to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident Chinese literary critic who is serving an 11-year prison sentence on a charge of subversion. His wife, Liu Xia, is under house arrest.

The Confucius Peace Prize ceremony is scheduled to be held in December. Organizers say the official Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing will be the venue if Mr. Mugabe, 91, agrees to attend. The prize comes with a financial reward of 500,000 renminbi, or nearly $80,000.

“The 21st-century interpretation of Confucianism is ‘universal harmony in the world,’ ” Qiao Wei, a poet and the president of the judging committee of the peace prize, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “Mugabe is the founding leader of Zimbabwe and has been trying to stabilize the country’s political and economic order ever since the country was first founded. He brought benefit to the people of Zimbabwe.”

Mr. Mugabe had his start in politics as a Pan-African nationalist who opposed minority white rule in the former British colony and country then known as Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The Rhodesian government used brutal tactics to try to suppress nationalist movements, and Mr. Mugabe was imprisoned for more than 10 years, but the country finally achieved full independence from Britain in 1980.