Chapter 3: The Literary Community
Founded in 1953, the CWA, like the similar associations for visual artists, musicians, and film and television professionals that fall under the umbrella of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, was established to promote Mao’s principles. For decades, in practice this meant protecting and advancing the careers of those writers who toed the Communist Party line and limiting opportunities for those who did not. Today, few of China’s citizens view Mao’s legacy uncritically, and the 9,000 members of the CWA include many who would not have passed his rigid test of ideological purity. But the CWA remains the principle vehicle for party patronage, and when President Hu Jintao addressed the association at its eighth national congress in Beijing in 2011, he sounded familiar notes on the responsibility of writers to the Party, urging CWA members to study the most recent decrees of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) central committee and carry the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics.72 A survey of Mo Yan’s work suggests how much more elastic the definition of carrying that banner is today than when his parents would warn him, “mo yan,” or “don’t speak,” when he went outside to play in the 1950s and 1960s—a warning to stay out of trouble. His novels The Garlic Ballads and The Republic of Wine, for example, include stinging critiques of elements of Chinese society, and his most recent novel, Frogs, centres on China’s controversial one-child policy. But Mo Yan has also credited state censorship with spawning the literary innovations in his work. “Many approaches to literature have political bearings, for example in our real life there might be some sharp or sensitive issues that they do not wish to touch upon,” Mo Yan told an interviewer in 2012. “At such a juncture a writer can inject their own imagination to isolate them from the real world or maybe they can exaggerate the situation—making sure it is bold, vivid and has the signature of our real world. So, actually I believe these limitations or censorship is great for literature creation.”73 And Mo Yan has been frank about his affiliation with the CWA, and thus with the state. “A lot of people are now saying about me, ‘Mo Yan is a state writer,’” he said in another 2012 interview. “It’s true, insofar as like the authors Yu Hua and Su Tong, I get a salary from the Ministry of Culture, and get my social and health insurance from
them too. That’s the reality in China. Overseas, people all have their own insurance, but without a position, I can’t afford to get sick in China.”74 Such benefits come with obligations. As a member of China’s official delegation to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2009, Mo Yan joined his fellow delegates in walking out of a panel to protest the presence of dissident writers Dai Qing and Bei Ling. Mo Yan justified his actions by saying, simply, “I had no choice.” Dai Qing wasn’t always labeled a dissident writer. Raised by a high government official after her parents were executed by the Japanese during World War II, Dai first worked as an engineer before becoming a well-respected journalist in the early 1980s. It wasn’t until her book, Yangtze! Yangtze!, a collection of essays and interviews with scientists, journalists, and intellectuals who opposed the Three Gorges Dam Project, was published in 1989, shortly before the June Tiananmen crackdown, that she waded into trouble with authorities. Following the crackdown—which not only targeted democracy activists but chilled free speech in general— the book was banned and Dai Qing was jailed for 10 months. Though she continues to write widely on environmental and social issues, she has been unable to find a publisher in mainland China ever since.75 This kind of blacklisting of writers who work outside the umbrella of the CWA continues despite the recent diversification of China’s publishing industry. The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), the government agency responsible for the regulation and distribution of news, print, and Internet publications, traditionally has held the final word on what may or may not be published. Today, though, venerable state-owned publishers compete with independent presses that scout and publish books with an eye not necessarily to ideology but to popularity. Still, GAPP seeks to maintain a measure of control by monopolizing ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers). Private publishers must buy ISBNs from the government, and can have their supply cut dramatically for publishing controversial works. This ensures a level of self-censorship even among the independent presses, and those that become too adventurous can be forced to close. For example, in June 2011, officials shut down Zhuhai Publishing House after it published a memoir by Hong Kong newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai.76
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