China scrambles to censor novelist Mo Yan's Nobel Prize

HONG KONG It didnt take long for the Chinese government to try to take control of the conversation about Mo Yan.

Days after the 57-year-old novelist thrilled his country by winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Chinas central censorship organ issued a directive to media companies instructing them to strictly police online discussion for anti-party chatter or mentions of two other Chinese-born Nobel winners.

China Digital Times has atranslationof the leaked directive:

To all websites nationwide: In light of Mo Yan winning the Nobel prize for literature, monitoring of microblogs, forums, blogs and similar key points must be strengthened. Be firm in removing all comments which disgrace the party and the government, defame cultural work, mention Nobel laureates Liu Xiaobo and Gao Xingjian and associated harmful material. Without exception, block users from posting for ten days if their writing contains malicious details.

Liu Xiaobo, a human rights activist and author, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, but he remains in prison in China. Gao Xingjian won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000 after giving up his Chinese citizenship in 1996.

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Official media has also been trying to steer the public toward acceptable lines of thinking about Mo Yan. In the state-run Peoples Daily, an editorial urges people to adopt one of three mentalities about Mo Yan that can be considered correct.

These prescribed perspectives are: seeing his victory as a blessing for those in China who have long had the Nobel Prize complex; seeing it as a good thing that should not be over-interpreted; and rejecting those who criticize his work.

The last order presumably targets those in China who reacted to Mos victory with anger. While the overwhelming response was celebratory, a number of reform-minded Chinese knocked Mo Yan for having an apparently cozy relationship with authorities. Mo Yan remains a member of the Communist Party, and the vice chairman of the party-run Writers Association. He also contributed to a book of calligraphy in tribute to Mao Zedong.

Liao Yiwu, a celebrated author who was imprisoned for writing about the Tiananmen Square massacre, called the prize a woeful example of the West's fuzzy morals, in an interview with Der Spiegel in Germany, where he has lived since fleeing China in 2011.

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China scrambles to censor novelist Mo Yan's Nobel Prize