Man Booker bows to China over nominee
Nicola Smith
Neil Connor
ONE of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes has been dragged into a diplomatic spat between China and Taiwan, after it caved in to pressure to change the nationality of a Taiwanese nominee on its website.
The Man Booker International Prize said on Friday that it had changed the national origin of Professor Wu Mingyi, 46, one of 13 authors on the 2018 longlist, from “Taiwan” to “Taiwan, China” after it had received a complaint from the Chinese embassy in London.
China claims the island democracy as its own territory, which will be eventually be reunited with the mainland – by force if necessary – and Beijing lobbies relentlessly to exclude Taiwan from global forums and undermine its legitimacy as its own nation.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s population of 23 million operate their own government, currency, military and foreign policy, and the majority of its citizens identify as Taiwanese. Professor Wu, who was nominated for this year’s prize for his novel The Stolen Bicycle, a book about Taiwan’s 20th-century history, counts himself among their numbers, and on Thursday he publicly criticised the decision. “My nationality on the webpage has been changed from Taiwan to Taiwan, China, which is not my personal position on this issue,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
“I will therefore seek assistance in expressing my personal position to the award organisation,” he added.
Earlier this month, the author was hit with a barrage of criticism from China’s nationalist web users when he reportedly posted online that he was “honoured” that his nationality was initially listed as Taiwan. “We should join together and ban his books from being sold on the mainland,” said one commentator on China’s Twitter equivalent, Sina Weibo.
The Taiwanese foreign ministry instructed its representative office in London to demand a “correction”.
A Man Booker International Prize spokesman said: “We are currently seeking clarification from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the UK’S official position on Taiwan following earlier advice that ‘Taiwan, China’ was the correct, politically neutral form.”