BEIJING — Two years ago, when the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize, the government reacted with contempt and fury, scrubbing the announcement from the Internet, condemning the award as a “desecration” and calling it a Western propaganda tool intended to insult and destabilize the ruling Communist Party.

Government officials even retaliated against Norway, the country that awards the peace prize, denying visas to Norwegian dignitaries and delaying shipments of Norwegian salmon for so long that the fish rotted before they could clear customs.

But all that seemed forgotten on Thursday, when word came that another Nobel, the 2012 literature prize, had been awarded to another Chinese citizen, the internationally renowned author Mo Yan, and China erupted into something close to a national celebration. The state-run CCTV interrupted its prime-time broadcast to announce the news; the nationalistic Global Times tabloid posted a “special coverage” page on its Web site; and in a glowing account, the state-run People’s Daily prominently wrote that the prize was “a comfort, a certification and also an affirmation — but even more so, it is a new starting point.”

The award will probably act as a huge boost to China’s national psyche, which has long suffered from a sense that its cultural accomplishments, at least in the eyes of the West, are overshadowed by its economic prowess.