A war of words has erupted between Australia and China over Chinese refusal to grant an HIV-positive Australian author a permit to enter the country.

Robert Dessaix was invited to be a speaker at the Australian Literary Festival in Beijing and Shanghai.

Dessaix was a replacement for author Frank Moorhouse, who decided to pull out in protest at China's imprisonment of local writer and activist Liu Xiaobo.

The 65-year-old Dessaix, who makes his home in Hobart, Tasmania, told reporters he felt "snubbed and insulted, of course, and also humiliated."

'If he's HIV positive, according to the current regulations in China, he's not allowed to enter the country.'—Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang

The author, who was slated to be at the festival starting Friday, believes the HIV issue could be a way of Chinese authorities thumbing their nose at Australia in response to the Moorhouse boycott.

"If out of all this the Chinese are encouraged to look again at their blanket ban on people with HIV entering the country — except in this case there is this ban apparently — then it's been worthwhile," Dessaix told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Australian officials have raised the issue with their Chinese counterparts, who have refused to reverse their decision to deny Dessaix a visa based on his HIV status.

"If he's HIV-positive, according to the current regulations in China, he's not allowed to enter the country," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told the ABC.

"There are clear regulations on this. So we hope that Australians in general and the author himself can understand this."

Discrimination: Chinese professor

In fact, the HIV restriction was temporarily suspended during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

China's action has stirred some dissent within the country.

Professor Li Dun, who teaches at the Tsinghua University Centre for Study of Contemporary China, told a Chinese newspaper that "historically speaking, confining people has proven to be ineffective, if not meaningless in preventing the spread of this disease."

He called the visa denial an act of discrimination.

During the 1990s, Li was a government consultant on the prevention of AIDS.

With files from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation