{"id":58605,"date":"2024-03-11T13:17:11","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T05:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinamediaproject.org\/?p=58605"},"modified":"2024-03-11T13:40:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T05:40:13","slug":"mo-yan-against-the-martyrs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinamediaproject.org\/2024\/03\/11\/mo-yan-against-the-martyrs\/","title":{"rendered":"Mo Yan Against the Martyrs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of China\u2019s most celebrated modern authors is in the firing line, and the ammunition is a hardline 2018 law<\/a> on the protection of heroes and martyrs. The Nobel Prize-winning writer Mo Yan (\u83ab\u8a00) has irked extreme nationalist bloggers on the internet, one of whom, writing under the account name \u201cMao Xinghuo Who Speaks the Truth\u201d (\u8bf4\u771f\u8bdd\u7684\u6bdb\u661f\u706b), filed a court order late last month to remove Mo Yan\u2019s books from circulation and force him to pay 1.5 billion RMB in damages to the Chinese people and \u201cstop infringing on heroes and martyrs\u201d in his fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blogger\u2019s four-page indictment<\/a>, submitted to the Beijing Procuratorate, meticulously lists Mo Yan\u2019s supposed offenses, including portraying members of the Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War as sexually abusive, \u201cbeautifying\u201d Japanese soldiers, insulting Mao Zedong, and saying that the Chinese people have \u201cno truth and no common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Weibo post from \u201cMao Xinghuo Who Speaks the Truth\u201d details the bloggers accusations against writer Mo Yan. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuch words and deeds have greatly hurt the feelings of the Chinese people,\u201d Mao Xinghuo solemnly claims. \u201cAs an upright and patriotic young man, I feel very angry. How does the country allow such behavior to exist?\u201d The blogger has been trying to bring a case against Mo Yan for months, and has asked publishers not to work with him. Fellow nationalist bloggers rallied to the cause, pointing to the more sexually explicit<\/a> parts of his oeuvre as pornographic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The incident shows how the active efforts of China\u2019s leadership in recent years to enforce nationalist sentiment around the sanitized history of the Party can backfire and turn on cultural figures who are seen as a source of national pride. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Son of China<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Since his Nobel win, Mo Yan has frequently been lauded and upheld by the government and the party-state media as a sign of China\u2019s rising prestige in the world. Upon receiving news of the win in late 2012, Li Changchun (\u674e\u957f\u6625), the Politburo Standing Committee member in charge of ideology, sent a letter of congratulation to the semi-official China Writers Association hailing the news<\/a> and calling it \u201ca manifestation of the steady rise of our country’s comprehensive national power and international influence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prize immediately transformed Mo\u2019s life and legacy into a public resource for national pride, to the extent that one local official in the author\u2019s hometown reportedly told Mo\u2019s father<\/a>: \u201cMo Yan is no longer your son, and the house is no longer your house.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mao Xinghuo\u2019s attack on Mo Yan is not the first time the author has been criticized for his work. But as one commentator with the username \u201cPrincess Minmin\u201d (\u654f\u654f\u90e1\u4e3b) noted<\/a> on WeChat, this time felt like a \u201clarge-scale siege\u201d by a younger generation of internet trolls. An informal poll<\/a> on Weibo asking netizens if Mo Yan should be criminally prosecuted received over 8,000 affirmative votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of the country\u2019s law on the protection of heroes and martyrs, introduced five years after his Nobel win, also adds a new twist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Red Hokum<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Mo is just the latest creative threatened with legal action by Chinese citizens for supposedly insulting the nation\u2019s martyrs. In 2013, historian Hong Zhenkuai was ordered by a Beijing court<\/a> to issue a public apology for his factual deconstruction of the apocryphal story of the \u201cFive Heroes of Langya Mountain\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a ripping yarn about five soldiers holding out against the might of the Japanese army in 1941 to buy their retreating comrades time, before hurling themselves to their deaths. The case was brought against Hong by the sons of two of the five men, lauded as communist heroes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mo is just the latest creative threatened with legal action by Chinese citizens for supposedly insulting the nation\u2019s martyrs.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Such cases are now easier for citizens to bring to court. The Mao Xinghuo blogger seeks to prosecute Mo under the 2018 Protection of Heroes and Martyrs Law<\/a> (\u82f1\u96c4\u70c8\u58eb\u4fdd\u62a4\u6cd5), urged for<\/a> by the descendents of the Langya Mountain braves. There is also an amendment added to China\u2019s Criminal Law in 2021 stating<\/a> that \u201cwhoever insults, slanders or otherwise infringes upon the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs\u201d can be imprisoned for up to three years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xi Jinping has repeatedly urged the nation to fight \u201chistorical nihilism\u201d (\u5386\u53f2\u865a\u65e0\u4e3b\u4e49), a catchall euphemism for any interpretation of the past that runs counter to the patriotic, CCP-approved version of events. Xi believes that the West is trying to use \u201chistorical nihilism\u201d to undermine faith in the founding myths that underpin Chinese Communist Party rule, and has argued it contributed<\/a> to the downfall of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2021, these two laws have led to the arrest of a number of people, including a former investigative reporter for Economic Observer<\/em> (\u7ecf\u6d4e\u89c2\u5bdf\u62a5) who challenged the Chinese casualty numbers<\/a> in a border skirmish with India earlier that year, and a former deputy editor for the finance and current affairs magazine Caijing<\/em> (\u8d22\u7ecf\u6742\u5fd7) who commented<\/a> on WeChat that few Chinese today have ever questioned the official justifications for China\u2019s intervention in the Korean War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these laws also make it more likely for any acts framed as protecting Chinese \u201cheroes\u201d to receive serious attention, regardless of merit. In Mo Yan\u2019s case, his accuser claims<\/a> the court has not accepted his indictment against Mo Yan because he does not have the author\u2019s address.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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