Ma Jian Quotes

My musician friends are banned from playing concerts in China because they share the same views as I do. My name cannot appear on the web, because my opinion is different from the Party.

Since it was announced that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has condemned my works and criticized them harshly. All of my works are now banned from getting into China or being published in China. What author would want to return to a country that banned his or her books?

Despite all the gains for democracy in the world, in many countries anyone who wants to publish truths unwelcome to the government risks suppression and criminal punishment.

In addition, we were unable to meet openly to discuss the progress of the book, for we were both on the list of persons banned from communicating with other banned persons.

China's Communist Party is wary of independent-minded movements.

While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel.

The trend in China is toward tighter and tighter control. They are basically improving their censorship mechanisms.

The human rights record within China seems to rise and fall over time, but it's very clear that in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and since then, there's been a greater intolerance of dissent and the human rights record of China has been going in the wrong direction.

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

There is a long tradition in China for writers and journalists to take pen names, partly as protection from retaliation by authorities. If Facebook requires the use of real names, that could potentially put Chinese citizens in danger.

In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.

The surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.

As there is in Germany - as well as in Russia and Italy - no art which is not approved of by the government, any criticizing remark about the present policy made by me would easily be taken as a hostile act. I cannot have my name put up against an official report from Germany without risking very unpleasant consequences.

If the Chinese government gets carried away with denying basic rights, then there will be a pushback from within.

When demagogues and dictators ban art, this is the reason: art is the great solvent of obedient fundamentalism.

Hong Kong has always been a symbol of the vibrant and free exchange of cultures, commerce and ideas. This reputation is threatened, however, in the face of China's efforts to increase its authoritarian control within its sphere of influence.

When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.

Fidel Castro's most scandalous show trial was not mounted against a political figure but against a writer: Heberto Padilla. In 1971, after 38 days of detention, Mr. Padilla was forced to 'confess' at the Cuban writers' union to the charges of 'subversive activities.'

Given an opportunity, Modi has violated the freedom of press both in letter and spirit. He destroys freedom of the press whenever he gets a chance.

If you know anything about Ethiopia, they are very security conscious, a very closed environment. It's a repressive place were journalists and bloggers are arrested all the time.

As the remaining voices for civil disobedience are suppressed, the political spectrum narrows even further.

It's not mainland China that rubs me up the wrong way, it is the dictatorship that rubs me up the wrong way. It's the freedom that we Chinese people are not allowed that rubs me up the wrong way.

I believe in it so passionately because anywhere you look in the world, where governments become too big or become authoritarian, speech and expression is one of the first fundamental freedoms to go.

I grew up under a dictatorship. I knew what it meant for people to not have the ability to freely express themselves.