Mo Yan was assailed on Saturday in the Chinese dissident community as a “prostitute” after his Nobel lecture, which was acclaimed in the communist state’s media.
In the Nobel lecture in Stockholm on Friday, Mo, the vice-chairman of the government-backed China Writers’ Association, took a swipe at his critics, saying their target “had nothing to do” with him, and urged them to read his books.
Mo has walked a tightrope during his stay in Stockholm, where he will pick up the award on Monday, with some pundits supporting his own claims that he is ”independent”, and others casting him as a Beijing stooge.
In China, his lecture did little to dispel the divide.
“In the last few days, he has defended the system of censorship... then in his lecture he talks about story telling – to use a Chinese expression, he is like a prostitute insisting her services are clean,” dissident poet Ye Du, a member of the non-government Independent Chinese Pen Center, said.
Ye said Chinese intellectuals had hoped Mo would use the lecture to renew his call for the Chinese government to release jailed 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, but instead he voiced support for China’s system of state censorship.
