MCLC: Mo Yan 'lost faith in the Party'

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Mo Yan 'lost faith in the Party'
***********************************************************

For the long list of "responses" to the post, see the link below.

Kirk 

===========================================================

Source: China Digital Times (8/16):
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/10/mo-yan-has-lost-faith-in-the-party/

Mo Yan Has “Lost Faith in the Party”

Novelist and vice chairman of the state-run Chinese Writers’ Association,
Mo Yan has met with praise and scorn in equal measure since he was award
this year’s Nobel prize in literature. He and the Nobel Committee were
sharply criticized for giving way to the Chinese Communist Party–until Mo
Yan asserted his belief that fellow Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo should be
freed from prison. This has not stopped the scrutiny, however. Weibo “VIP”
@NoVforMe (@本人无V), who has over 16,900 followers, posted this comment
<http://weibo.com/1400713067/z0uaedZBq> on October 14:

<<NoVforMe: Call for Proof: This is Too Crazy–Pierre Haski
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Haski>, a reporter formerly based in
Beijing for the French newspaper Libération, interviewed Mo Yan in 2004.
During the interview, Mo Yan said that he is the child of a farmer. During
the Great Leap Forward
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/great-leap-forward/> and Great Famine,
he ate charcoal to keep from starving. He thanks the military and is still
a Communist Party member–even though he’s lost his faith in the Party.
When the reporter asked him when he lost his faith, he replied that from
that year onward, he only retained his Party membership to avoid bringing
on unnecessary trouble.

本人无V <http://weibo.com/benrenwuwei>： 【求证：这个太猛了】法国解放报前驻京记
者哈斯基04年走访了莫言 ，莫言在访谈
中表示，他是一个农民的孩子，大跃进、大饥荒曾因饥饿难忍而吞食炭灰。他感谢军队，他
依然是党员，尽管对党已经失去信心，记者询问何时失去信 心，莫言回答从那
一年开始，他之所以继续保留党员证，是不想增添不必要的麻烦。>>

So far, the post has been commented on and reposted over 1550 times and
remains untouched by both the author and the censors. Some have replied
that @NoVforMe, and the public at large, should leave Mo Yan alone, while
others redouble the call for verification of the interview. Still others
are struck by the novelist’s courage and humanity, working within the
Party system but not supporting it blindly. Indeed, many ordinary Chinese
join the Party as a prerequisite to job promotion and for other
non-political purposes. Party membership often has very little to do with
an individual’s beliefs.

Some readers hang on Mo Yan’s mention of “that year,” a likely reference
to 1989, the year of the Tiananmen
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/tiananmen/>protests. “That year” was
blocked from Sina Weibo search results
<http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/06/sensitive-words-the-tiananmen-edition
/#thatyear> around the anniversary of the military crackdown this summer.