China’s Nobel winning novelist Mo Yan targeted by growing band of online nationalists
- Celebrated author, whose real name is Guan Moye, has been accused by Weibo users of smearing China and pandering to the West
- Former Global Times editor calls attacks ‘an alarming trend’, says spread of extremist forces must be stopped
When Chinese-born Gao Xingjian won the prize in 2000, he was a French citizen whose work had been banned in China since the 1980s. He never returned to China after he offended Beijing by sympathising with the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
Guan is no dissident. He is part of a state-funded association of writers and spent five years on the country’s top political advisory body.
His novels paint a nuanced portrait of Chinese society, and while they include criticism of China’s family planning policy, those works seem to have stayed within the red line set by Beijing.
But as nationalistic sentiment grows less tolerant of China’s critics, Guan has increasingly become a target for nationalistic voices on Chinese social media platforms, who accuse him of defaming China.
