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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Amy Hawkins Senior China correspondent

China Nobel prize winner tarred as one of ‘three new evils’ amid rise in nationalist fervour

Chinese Nobel prize winner Mo Yan in 2017
Chinese Nobel prize winner Mo Yan in 2017. The author is celebrated in China but has been targeted by nationalist netizens. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common. But in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valour in cyberspace.

Last month a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan, accusing him of smearing the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China.

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