Recent international literary awards have shown the world a different side of China.
In 2012, Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature and in August 2015 Liu Cixin won theHugo Award for his science novel The Three-Body Problem.
The latter has become so popular that the venue for his speech “The Future of ChinaThrough Chinese Science Fiction” at the University of Sydney on Nov 3 has had to be movedto a larger auditorium.
However, in China, literary awards have become the subject of an anti-corruption drive.
In late April, the Ministry of Culture announced that 60 percent of awards for literature and artwould be canceled in the first half of this year, in an effort to curb the excessive number ofawards that have led to unhealthy competition and corruption.
Experts say that while literary awards offer recognition and encouragement to writers, theymust be properly managed to promote the development of the Chinese culture.
