Chapter 3: The Literary Community
only way to continue working and be safe would be to flee China. He left for the United States in January 2012. His biography on Liu Xiaobo was published in Hong Kong in the summer of 2012, and in October, Yu Jie received the Civil Courage Prize in New York City. As more Chinese writers have found new spaces to create as well as increasingly appreciative audiences, the Chinese government has countered with ever more audacious efforts to shape discourse beyond its own borders. The announcement that Liu Xiaobo would receive the Nobel Peace Prize sparked an unprecedented push to punish the Norwegian government and industries economically and an unseemly campaign to press other nations not to attend the award ceremony. There has been a more subtle but no less determined effort to control events in the cultural sphere. As the designated guest of honor at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, the China Organizing Committee pressed its German hosts to withdraw invitations to Bei Ling and Dai Qing, two dissident writers living inside and outside of China. When the Frankfurt organizers, facing international and local criticism, reinstated the invitations, the official Chinese delegation boycotted the events that featured those writers. Bowing once again to the Chinese government, organizers then declined to allow Dai Qing and Bei Ling to speak at the closing ceremonies.
In the past four years since the closing of the Olympics, the air of democracy and freedom over China has thinned day by day and the human rights condition has worsened, causing more and more Chinese writers, journalists, lawyers, and professors as well as ordinary people to be repeatedly repressed. Many were either followed, wiretapped, threatened, detained, “disappeared,” or tortured. I’m no exception. I’ve been watched by the authorities for a long time. In China, my books are not allowed to be published and my plays are not allowed to be performed. Even though my script, “Blissful Encounter with Mr. Cai,” received two awards from non-official theater groups and academic institutions, it’s banned by authorities. When Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to prison, I wrote a poem of four lines:
China was even more assertive when it was the guest of honor at the 2012 London Book Fair. This time, all 21 invited Chinese writers were official writers and members of the CWA, and the London organizers declined to invite dissident writers to participate in official events. “Literature,” suggested Ma Jian, a founding member of Independent Chinese PEN Centre who lives in exile in London, “is being used as a weapon in a political and cultural war.”79 Ironically—and disappointingly—the willingness of some in the international community to accede to Chinese government restrictions on who and what audiences can hear stands in growing contrast to the attitudes of Chinese writers themselves. When PEN’s delegation visited China in 2011, it found widespread dissatisfaction with the climate for expression among both dissident and widely published, officially recognised writers. Everyone the delegation met with expressed exasperation at a censorship regime they characterized as arbitrary, unnecessary, and small-minded, and frustration with restrictions and boundaries that inhibited their ability to develop their art. One successful novelist and longtime member of the CWA insisted that any serious writer who achieves some level of success should abandon the idea of publishing completely, otherwise she or he will not be able to grow as an artist. In a meeting with members of Independent Chinese
The emperor-designated convict was sentenced to eleven years Bizarre injustice happens in the Sacred Land every day Prison is on both sides of the high wall One is imprisoned either inside or outside of the wall! This is the true condition of human rights in China today.
Sha Yexin is an acclaimed playwright and political commentator based in Shanghai. He is a Board Member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre and Honorary Chairman of the Chinese Theatre Association.
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