One of China's award winning authors has been getting a lot of flak from his fellow writers and artists after publicly throwing his support for Chinese President Xi Jinping at a time when a severe attack on artistic freedom is being carried out by the Communist Party.

Mo Yan has been embroiled in a fresh controversy for his fawning over the Chinese President and the authorities in the central government amid the increasingly harsh censorship by China on the work and art of his fellow  writers, intellectuals, academics, and artists.

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Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature for his "hallucinatory realism".

Chinese artists and writers lambasted the Chinese author for praising the government, reminding him of their brothers and sisters in the arts who are currently languishing in jail for refusing to toe the government's line.

"I judge that the Chinese Communist Party, more than any other party in the world, wants China to be rich and powerful," the 59-year-old author told a Chinese website of an anti-corruption agency

Mo yan said President Xi wants all Chinese people to live well and announced that his next book will focus on the President's campaign against corruption.

A rising literary star and an, outspoken critic of Beijing, Murong Xuecon said he was appalled by the author's "shameful" comments and went on to deride the celebrated author for ignoring what really is happening in their country.

Murong said that heavy censorship by China on all media has become severely harsh with more websites blocked by firewall, social media platforms disappearing with  the accounts cancelled and blocked, and writers, artists, and activists thrown in prison for criticizing the government.

As more and more writers and artists are being blacklisted, Xuecon asked his fellow writer,Mo Yan,why he is still singing their praises.

Xuecon pointed out that China's censorship has limited the space for freedom of expression and that men of integrity have been arrested and imprisoned who dared to speak out against the Communist Party.

China recently has sent its artists and filmmakers  to the countryside to learn the "correct view of art," an act that the artists resented. According to them, the problem was not about  one's view of art but the tightening control of China on their work.

TagsMo Yan, Chinese Artists, Chinese writers, Freedom of expression, censorship