Reply to Liao Yiwu

In a mail of December 7, 2012, Liao Yiwu 廖亦武writes: “That the Sweden Academy of Letters (sic!) is in concurrence with the Chinese totalitarian regime has, in part, something to do with the academy’s life tenure system. Mr. Göran Malmqvist has kept a cozy relationship with China’s officially-sanctioned  writers, and  even become close friends with some of them. Such relationships impedes his judgment of literary creation in current China.”'

Liao Yiwu is badly informed about the activities of  Professor  Göran Malmqvist. Since the 1960s, Malmqvist has translated some fifty volumes of Chinese literature, Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary and several hundred short-stories, essays and poems, published in journals. His translations of works by contemporary writers include about 95% of the writings of Gao Xingjian 高行健 (altogether 2 009 pages), 95% of the poetry by Bei Dao 北島 (altogether 770 pages), four novels by the Shanxi writer Li Rui 李銳 (altogether 1 106 pages), two novels by another Shanxi writer, Cao Naiqian 曹乃謙 (altogether 490 pages). 

His translations of works by Shen Congwen 沈從文 amount to 538 pages. In several anthologies of  modern and contemporary poetry he has published works by Wen Yiduo 聞一多 (the collections Sishui死水and  Hongzhu 紅燭), Ai Qing 艾青 (most of his poetry from the late 1930s)  and the Jintian 今天group of poets Gu Cheng 顧城, Shu Ting 舒婷, Mang Ke 芒克, Yang Lian 楊煉, Jiang He 江河 and Yan Li 嚴力。

Liao Yiwu is not aware of the fact that Malmqvist  was considered persona non grata in the  People’s Republic of China from 1959 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1994, altogether twenty seven years. Nor is he aware of the fact that Malmqvist on the 16 of May 2011 informed the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm that he no longer intended to have any contact with official China.
Whenever the need has arisen, Malmqvist has written extensive letters to the Swedish press and to the Chinese authorities, protesting against the treatment of dissidents like Wei Jingsheng 魏京生，Liu Binyan 劉賓雁, Fang Lizhi 方勵之, Liu Xiaobo 劉曉波 and Ai Weiwei 艾未未。