Taipei (Taiwan News) — A creative writing competition held by Hong Kong's government has returned with new rules that have sparked outrage, reports said Thursday (May 2).
Flouting new rules for the Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese competition can lead to disqualification. Infractions include writing about national security, sexual and violent content, or just “low-brow” material. Obscene language and behavior will similarly lead to disqualification, per Ming Pao.
The literary community has responded by saying it is worried by the scope of the new rules and troubled by the vagueness of the wording for the new rules. Organizers did not explain the reasoning behind the changes, merely stating the competition should be run according to the law.
Legislator Tang Fei (鄧飛) said the governing body has the right to make any changes deemed appropriate. He argued that the judges and writers still have some creative freedom.
Historian and Legislator Lau Chi-pang (劉志鵬) said greater clarity was needed for the new rules. For example, he argued, that what constitutes bad language is a matter of debate.
Writer Wu Mei-ji (吳美筠), a former judge for the competition, slammed the new rules for being restrictive. She said it's not possible to shy away from talking about violence if, for example, the subject is martial arts.
Previously, the government disqualified the winner of the Awards for Creative Writing in Chinese, in 2021. The writer's poems were believed to reference the Umbrella Revolution and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波). This prompted the organizer to conduct an internal investigation and suspend the competition until now.