(Richard Curt Kraus) The Party and The Arty in China

The Party
and the Arty in China
State and Society in East Asia Series

Elizabeth J. Perry, Series Editor
Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern

By Prasenjit Duara
The Party and the Arty in China: The New Politics of Culture
By Richard Curt Kraus
Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International
Drug Trade
By Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen
Of Camel Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels Against Modernity in Late Im
perial China
By Roxann Prazniak
Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival,

1927–1937
By Patricia Stranahan
The Party
and the Arty in China
The New Politics of Culture
Richard Curt Kraus
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

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Kraus, Richard Curt.
The party and the arty in China : the new politics of culture /
Richard Kraus.
p. cm. — (State and society in East Asia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7425-2719-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7425-2720-4 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Art and state—China. I. Title. II. Series.
N8846.C6K73 2004
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2003021873
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents
Preface vii
1 Cultural Reform as an Afterthought 1
2 The Waning Authority of the Chinese State as
Patron of the Arts 37
3 Normalizing Nudity 73
4 The Chinese Censorship Game: New Rules
for the Prevention of Art 107
5 Artists as Professionals 143
6 The Price of Beauty 183
7 The Hands That Feed Them 213
Index 239
About the Author 249
v
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Preface
T his book examines the impact of the market on the once comprehen
sive system of state patronage of the arts in the People’s Republic of
China. The focus of the study is not aesthetic, but political. I use arts ma
terials to explore the changing nature of politics as seen through such phe
nomena as ideology, propaganda, censorship, and the relationship of
artists to the state. Three themes predominate. First, the commercializa
tion of China’s cultural life has been intellectually liberating, but also
poses serious challenges that artists are sometimes slow to master. Sec
ond, the shift from state patronage to a mixed system of private and pub
lic sponsorship is a fundamental political change; those who argue that
China has had only economic reform, but no accompanying political re
form, have too limited a conception of politics. Third, Western recognition
of the reformation of China’s cultural life has been obscured by ignorance,
ideological barriers, and foreign-policy rivalry.
China’s arts have long existed in greater intimacy with the state than is
typical in the West. Imperial grandeur and Maoist revolution both pre
sumed that art would serve the state; while few artists attained positions
of power, emperors, ministers, and Communist officials took care to pres
ent themselves as serious poets, calligraphers, and connoisseurs of paint
ing. Art was twinned with power in a political culture in which claims to
authority could be validated by association with beauty or undermined
by poor aesthetic achievement. Morality was understood to be revealed
through beauty, and Chinese politicos accordingly enfolded themselves in
the habiliments of culture. In imperial times, politics and society were
loosely enough ordered that this tradition allowed a great deal of slack for
vii
viii Preface
much cultural life to thrive at some remove from the state. The Chinese
revolution’s modernizing project reorganized society more tightly, so that
the traditional linkage of art and morality became an intense politiciza
tion of the arts. After 1949 it became increasingly difficult for artists to
stand back from the Party’s cultural policies. The Cultural Revolution
(1966–1976) was the climax of this trend.
China’s public life changed radically after Deng Xiaoping rose to power
in 1978. Since that time, through a series of dramatic reforms, China’s
economy has become more open and prosperous and better integrated
with the rest of the world through trade and investment. Political reforms
have also been extensive, but have been both slower and more difficult to
implement. Public frustration with the pace of political reform was one of
several factors in the 1989 popular movement against the government
that was suppressed violently on June 4. Despite popular discouragement
and elite controversy about the pace of reform, changes in cultural life
continued at a pace generally slower than the economy, but faster than
change in political institutions.
Over the course of a quarter century, a new politics of culture has taken
shape, with greater openness, vastly diminished state supervision, and in
creased professionalism by artists. China has moved toward a new cul
tural order in fits and starts, interspersed with occasional retreats. The
most obvious retreat followed the Beijing Massacre, which was reversed
equally abruptly by a nationwide rush toward the market after Deng Xi-
aoping’s 1992 inspection of South China.
The conventional Western frame of reference for contemporary China
juxtaposes economic and political reform. The cliché is that successful
economic reforms have not been accompanied by necessary political re
form, that a dynamic marketized economy is at odds with an ossified
Communist state. A common reading, favored both by human rights ac
tivists and nostalgic cold warriors, holds that lack of political liberaliza
tion will eventually block economic progress. An alternative version of
this approach, quietly popular with multinational corporations, holds
that by restraining political reform, China has provided stability with
growth, in contrast to the inept reforms of Russia.
This framework is inadequate. Economic reforms have brought political
reform in their wake, stealthily, surely, not through openly reconstituting
the institutions of state, but by altering the meaning of rule. Market re
forms have eroded Party controls over culture; this is a major political re
form because it has meant the quiet surrender of Communist Party hege
mony over intellectual life. Those in search of an event to mark this
surrender might point to the shocking appearance in 1983 of nude dancing
in Yan’an, cradle of the Communist revolution, but more generally, the rise
of commercial art-as-entertainment has overwhelmed the political practice
Preface ix
of art-as-ideology. The often unsettling impact of rapid economic growth

has not been cushioned by shared ideological commitment, but rather ex
amined coolly with an increasing cynicism toward public affairs.
Social scientists should be suspicious of a purported world of only
market and state, of carrots and sticks. In different ways, conservative,
Weberian, and neo-Marxist scholars have recognized that there is also a
realm of symbolic meaning, of value, of culture, that is often excluded
from supposedly hard-minded analysis. Stalin’s famous cynical query—
“How many divisions has the pope?”—does not show that beliefs are ir
relevant, merely that they can be trumped by tanks. Well-run states do not
need to turn to tanks, but make use of shared belief systems to smooth
their rule.
Those who see the Chinese state simply as a tyranny foolishly seeking
to hold back the forces of democratic progress point above all to the 1989
Beijing Massacre, when the People’s Liberation Army fired on unarmed
civilians. But this is less evidence of a strong state, than of a frightened
one. The economic reforms undermined the system’s mechanisms for
hegemony; China’s now chronic crisis of belief often seems to leave au
thorities with little to rely upon but economic growth and inconsistent vi
olence, reinforced from time to time by nationalist appeals.
In this book I argue that China has experienced sweeping, if inadver
tent, political reform as the Communist Party’s economic policies have
led to greater concern for profit than preaching in the arts. Of course, the
Communist Party remains an authoritarian political force, but an exclu
sive focus on this fact obscures other, equally important developments in
the politics of culture over the past quarter century. One is the commer
cialization of the arts; another is the withdrawal of the state from cultural
supervision; a third is the halting and incomplete trend toward profes
sionalization among workers in the arts, as they seek to gain greater con
trol over their livelihoods in a period of political uncertainty and rapid
economic change. The state, which was the sole patron of the arts during
Mao’s later years, has now been joined by individual consumers who pur
chase cultural goods and by a new class of arts angels who provide fund
ing for cash-starved arts organizations. However, the state’s role in giving
rise to a new cultural politics is not simply a passive act of withdrawal; as
the state has actively pressed for economic reform, it has inevitably sub
verted its own monopoly over culture. In the process, China has become
much less of a political exotic and resembles more closely other countries.
U.S. hostility toward China discourages recognition of these changes, as it
is politically advantageous to imagine a China frozen in a relentlessly
Maoist past.
The seven chapters that follow explore the extension of economic re
forms to the arts in three broad sections. First, an introductory chapter
x Preface
shows how the ongoing reorganization of culture was never clearly de
signed, but was secondary to other economic and political purposes.
Chapter 2 makes this analysis more specific, examining changing rela
tionships among major state arts bureaucracies, showing the declining
salience of art in modern Chinese politics, even without the impact of the
cultural marketplace.
Second, three chapters take up the question of political restrictions over
art. In chapter 3, I review the history of discord over nude art to illumi
nate the intersection of aesthetic and political controversy. Chapter 4 re
views changing trends in censorship, showing the obstacles the Chinese
state encounters in controlling the arts, instead of the more customary ex
clusive focus on the frustrations of artists seeking free expression. As an
alternative to our customary model of oppressive state versus freedom-
seeking individual artist, in chapter 5 I propose that trends toward the
professionalization of artistic work provide a useful perspective for un
derstanding the long-term trajectory of China’s cultural politics.
Third, the final pair of chapters focuses on money and art. Chapter 6
explores the reactions of artists to the expanding commodity economy in
culture, showing them to be free of nostalgia for Maoism, but happy
enough to use remnants of the state plan to cushion them against the un
familiar tempests of the market. A concluding chapter looks at the emer
gence of alternative sources of arts support and argues that the reforms
have changed the basis of the Chinese state’s claims to political legitimacy.
Few studies include all of the arts of modern China. There is an under
standable division of labor in which musicologists study music, art histo
rians analyze paintings, and literary critics follow developments in the
worlds of fiction and poetry. I have no particular expertise in any of these,
and therefore, I have relied with gratitude upon the writings of my spe
cialist colleagues. I caution the reader that this is a study of politics and
does not pretend to be a survey of contemporary China’s complex artistic
evolution. I am aware of how impertinent it may seem for me to treat so
many distinctive genres together in one study and that factual errors no
doubt remain in the pages below. I am equally aware of some of the costs
of attempting to capture the broad pattern of change in China’s cultural
politics: genres are equal in neither political treatment nor economic un
derpinnings. Policies fashioned for regulating the stage may not be easily
applied to photography, and market opportunities available to musicians
may be closed to poets. Nor does this book dwell on the arts of ethnic mi
norities, a program of great political importance to the regime that intro
duces different pressures than those faced by Han cultural institutions.
For this study I have drawn upon a long-term reading of the Chinese
press and on interviews and conversations with well over a hundred Chi
nese artists, intellectuals, and cultural administrators in the People’s Re
Preface xi
public of China, Hong Kong, and the United States. To this is added the
lore accumulated in uncounted social encounters. Whenever I am in
China, I have learned simply by watching television and movies and ob
serving the changing availability of cultural goods in bookstores, music
shops, department stores, and theaters; conversations with Chinese intel
lectuals and artists have helped me make sense of what I have seen and
read. Their views are quite diverse, and my interpretations are probably
sometimes at odds with each of them. Some of these individuals will be
acknowledged individually; others will remain unnamed in order to
shield them from possible embarrassment. I thank them all with great re
spect. This study remains, of course, very much an outsider’s view: it is
limited by my not being a participant in the system I analyze, yet perhaps
contains some observations that might not immediately occur to Chinese
intellectuals within this distinctive arts world. I forewarn readers that my
tone is sometimes irreverent and has been known to strike more dignified
scholars as glib. I hope that my underlying esteem for the courage, tenac
ity, and ingenuity of China’s artists shines through my occasionally un
ceremonious manner.
Four Chinese institutions provided invaluable assistance. I lived in Fu
jian Province in 1989; Fuzhou’s Fujian Teachers University and Xiamen
University were admirable hosts during an eventful and stress-filled year.
In Jiangsu Province, the Center for Chinese and American Cultural Stud
ies of the Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University was a fine
base from which to observe changes in China from 1995 to 1997, aided by
the perceptive comments of my students and colleagues. The Universities
Service Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong was a generous
host on several occasions. In the United States, my University of Oregon
colleagues in political science and Asian studies have been as supportive
as anyone could expect. Many individuals have generously commented
on sections of the manuscript, including Geremie Barmé, Ralph Croizier,
Ellen Laing, Wendy Larson, Jerome Silbergeld, Richard P. Suttmeier, and
especially Mary S. Erbaugh, who has cleared up more messes than I can
recall.
Cultural Reform
as an Afterthought
B ambi Meets Godzilla, an animated film, was popular in the United States
in the 1970s. The terse little movie is just long enough to develop its
simple plot effectively. A cute little deer grazes among the flowers to the
accompaniment of the pastoral interlude from Rossini’s overture to
William Tell. Suddenly, a horrible monster’s foot descends from the top of
the screen, flattening Bambi with abrupt indifference. From happy open
ing to shocking conclusion, Godzilla’s stomping of Bambi takes only two
minutes, usually setting off delighted murmurs of unexpectedly rewarded
cynicism from the audience. Bambi Meets Godzilla offers a metaphor for the
way the West regards the politics of culture in China. Sweet and innocent
artists merely seek joyful self-expression through the creation of beauty,
when they encounter the heavy, clumsy, and dangerous foot of the mon
ster, labeled in this version “Chinese Communist Party.” Yet, all but the
youngest and most naive of the artists know the narrative all too well, so
most of them cower in the corner, hoping that Godzilla will not notice
them if they are very quiet and very well-behaved.
Versions of this narrative have long provided the standard frame
through which the West has viewed the relationship between China’s
state and its intellectuals. As narrative, the Bambi-Godzilla story offers an
agreeably clear assessment of good and evil—how could anyone not sym
pathize with a censored painter or a jailed poet? Are not the illiberalism
of the Chinese Communist Party and its determination to maintain itself
in power perfectly obvious? But as a representation of reality, the Godzilla
narrative can also lead us astray. For instance, China’s artists are some
times not very Bambi-like, and while Godzilla has been known to stomp
1
2 Chapter 1
really hard, it turns out that he can also tread rather lightly, and some
times there are others dressed up in the monster suit besides the Com
munist Party.
The central argument of this chapter is that reform has come to China’s
cultural politics not because it was any politician’s goal, but because it
was the unintended by-product of other policies designed to secure Deng
Xiaoping’s power. By way of introduction, I will first consider the inti
macy between China’s art and politics, then contrast China at Mao’s and
Deng Xiaoping’s deaths, before analyzing the circuitous route to arts re
form.
CHINA’S POLITICIZED ARTS
One purpose of this book is to sketch a more complex image of the rela
tionship between state and artist in China at the end of the century. To say
that arts are politicized is not in itself very illuminating. The ways the po
litical element has remained constant and how it has changed, however,
are interesting.
Some idealist myths about culture may obscure our understanding. For
instance, the charismatic view of the artist as a heroic figure, locked in
constant struggle against repressed and repressive authority, is a product
of nineteenth-century Western romantic ideology.1 But Chinese artists are
not so completely innocent; nor is the Chinese state so consistently malev
olent. We need a more nuanced view of artists and of the Chinese state
and should understand that our principal paradigm may have more to do
with the West’s political needs than comprehending China. Marilyn
Rueschemeyer makes a similar point about our difficulty in understand
ing art’s complex role in the former East Germany, our subtlety impeded
by
a simple stereotype, that Stalinist policies overwhelmed and deformed an art

that otherwise—if granted its own integrity—would take on the forms and
social functions of the arts in the West. While this simplistic view arises out
of moral outrage, one can share the outrage and still reject the stereotype. Im
plicit in this stereotype is a conception of art that sees its historical develop
ment as ultimately determined from within, provided that art is given the so
cial and political autonomy that it ought to have. This is naive reductionism,
whether it is applied in the West or in the East.2
Similarly, we in the West take it as an item of faith that art needs free
dom if it is to flourish. “No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the
Inquisition,” argued George Orwell, who went on to say, “the imagina
tion, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.”3 Is this won
Cultural Reform as an Afterthought 3
derfully ringing phrase actually true? The inquisition may not have
elicited much great fiction, but the inquisitors could easily comfort them
selves with sumptuous painting and music that their church so richly
sponsored. And what about all those Renaissance artists who had to en
dure petty tyrants as their patrons? Or how does one explain the majesty
of the pyramids, the splendors of Byzantine mosaics, or several thousand
years of Chinese art produced before the birth of Amnesty International
and with the chill of despotism so routinely in the air?
We are unavoidably fascinated by the horror of individual stories of
oppression as told by Chinese intellectuals who have run afoul of the
regime. The details are often appalling, and as fellow intellectuals, we can
perhaps easily imagine alternative lives in which we might be victims,
rather than observers. Yet, however important individual tragedies (and
successes) might be, a constant focus on Bambi and Godzilla distracts our
gaze from changing institutional arrangements in Chinese society that are
more important to understanding systemic relationships.
China’s distinctively illiberal intimacy of art and state is by no means a
product of the Communist revolution, but has antecedents far back in the
imperial past.4 In more recent times, China’s state cultural establishment
is impressive in its scale. The Chinese state employed over 1.4 million
personnel in arts-related institutions in 1994.5 This establishment includes
835 television stations, 95,000 film projection units, 2,690 professional per-
forming-arts troupes, and 2,890 county-level cultural centers. Writers pro
duce 100,000 books each year, and readers can select from 7,543 maga-
zines.6 China’s army has its own staff of poets and opera singers, Beijing’s
largest steel company hires the most talented dancers, and the railway
employs conductors for its orchestras as well as its trains.
After Deng Xiaoping rose to power in 1978 with a program of dramatic
economic reforms in agriculture, commerce, and industry, there was a
similar movement in the cultural world from state planning to reliance
upon the market in operating arts ensembles, paying artists and perform
ers, and determining what art should be produced. Debates continue
about the extent and speed of continued reform in state patronage of the
arts. There are different conceptions of why the state should patronize
arts, but few in China want the state to abandon its financial support com
pletely or even to surrender all claims to moral leadership shown through
art.
We miss the importance of culture in China’s politics primarily because
we do not take culture very seriously in our own. This is a mistake for un
derstanding U.S. politics, but it is a fatal error in approaching China. We
look at the commingling of art and politics in China and declare it to be a
defect of the system, a temporary manifestation of Communism that will
surely go away one day. By refusing to recognize that China’s politics
4 Chapter 1
have an important dimension that is essentially aesthetic, we cannot quite

understand what is going on.
We also fail to take culture seriously because of the limits of political
science studies of China. Intellectually, political scientists are inclined to
regard the arts as trivial and “superstructural,” a perhaps pleasant diver
sion from the real business of power. Professionally, many political scien
tists trained in China studies are primarily interested in government ser
vice, which has its own dictates—above all prizing the ability to talk like
a pundit and relegating culture to one of the secondary obligations of elite
status. Michael Schoenhals bravely commented on the poor Chinese-
language abilities that are too common in political science as a further im
pediment to our understanding of the cultural dimension of China’s po
litical life.7 Scholars who are unable to read novels are unlikely to be very
patient with analyses that draw upon the literary world. Indeed, many
political scientists seem also not to notice the English-language publica
tions of their humanist colleagues, from whom they might learn of the
fundamental change in China’s cultural politics.
Those who recognize that there is more going on than Godzilla stomp
ing on the artists sometimes juxtapose older political pressures against
newer commercial ones: “Chinese culture, which for decades was the tar
get of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary attacks, is now falling victim to the ar
rows of unbridled commercialization.”8 This view is a vast improvement,
but it makes the Chinese arts world out to be static and unresponsive. In
the real world, artists rarely accept their fate so passively—they do spe
cialize in the creation and manipulation of images, after all. I will show
artists as a complex group, including the full range of humanity, from he
roes to knaves. Like others in China today, artists are understandably con
fused by the rapid pace of social change and are adjusting their personal
lives and careers to new circumstances as best they can, sometimes with
excited pleasure, sometimes with profound disappointment, and often
with a mixture of both. As an alternative to the narrative of the struggle
for freedom, I argue that China’s artists are struggling not only for free
dom, but also for professional status. Professionalism includes autonomy
to make decisions about one’s work; the image of the artists as would-be
professional is less romantic and heroic than the artist as rebel, but per
haps more realistic.
In this book, the words “art” and “arts” refer not just to fine arts, but
also include literature, music, dance, drama, and the whole range of aes
thetically creative endeavors. Chinese speakers will note that I use “arts”
to translate wenyi, usually rendered into English as “literature and art”;
this is an accurate, but unnatural-sounding mouthful.9 I discuss both pop
ular and elite arts, as well as amateur and professional, commercial and
noncommercial, official and unofficial. I will also refer frequently to “cul
ture,” that frustratingly imprecise term that we cannot do without. Cul

ture often refers to the arts, frequently elite high art, such as oil painting
or opera. But one also speaks of “popular culture,” referring either to
modern commercial entertainments or older folk arts, or of “mass cul
ture,” referring to such industrial and commercial arts products as
movies, television, and commercialized fiction. China has its equivalents
to all of these cultures; it is the evolving interaction of these contrasting
subcategories that makes the realm of arts interesting for a social scientist.
There is still another use of the word “culture” to refer to a people’s un
derstanding of the world, including their arts, but also embracing their re
ligions, their family systems, their laws, and so forth. This is the culture of
anthropology and cultural studies, and the reform of China’s arts dis
closes aspects of Chinese culture in the broadest sense. The arts are tied to
this larger conception of culture most obviously through such political
questions of legitimacy and hegemony. This remains a poorly delimited,
yet especially critical, realm in an authoritarian regime, where there are
often few ways of assessing the depth of collective loyalties.
Herein lies the importance of patronage, the institutional forms by
which artists are employed to produce their work. Patronage offers a way
to examine power relations between artists and the state with greater sub
tlety than simply focusing on the control of artists. Patronage is not a very
complicated idea, but does point to some real ambiguities about who has
the power in the bond between employer and artist.10 When Samuel John
son came to the entry for “patron” in his dictionary, he drew upon his bit
ter memories of miserly support from Lord Chesterfield to define the
word as “a wretch who supports with indolence, and is paid with flattery.”11
Artists seem often to resent the authority of their patrons, which they may
subvert by the power of their art. Benvenuto Cellini, the sixteenth-century
goldsmith and sculptor, is famous for his statue of Perseus holding the head
of Medusa, but is also noted for his autobiography, where he describes with
pride the grand patrons who hired his talent: Francois I of France, Pope
Clement VII, and the Duke of Florence. Cellini boasted of his patrons, yet
also feared them. He stooped to kiss Pope Clement’s foot, yet Clement still
had him thrown into prison. To some extent, Cellini embodies romantic
myths of the artist that I wish to discourage (Goethe translated his book
into German, and Berlioz turned it into an opera). Yet, his story illustrates
that artistic skill can empower its possessors, bestowing an authority to
defy, or at least talk back to, powerful patrons.12
The arts are a world of feeling and sensation, concerned with the cre
ation of myths and their destruction. This world is simultaneously per
sonal and public, fashioning an arena where individuals share in percep
tions and images made familiar from the textures of their lives. Although
the arts are ostensibly far removed from administration, state leaders
6 Chapter 1
have often sought to utilize them precisely for their capacity to link the
perceptual solitude of personal life to the shared experiences of rituals
and routines. Unsurprisingly, many artists have resented this politiciza
tion. Novelist Zhang Xianliang has a character observe that “the new cul
ture of China had sucked all emotions into the orbit of politics. He had no
idea how this phenomenon had been accomplished, how human relations
had been ground into mere flavorings for political use.”13 Yet, art is never
completely absorbed by the utilitarianism of politics, and many artists
have found in their work a form of individual refuge. Even propaganda
art poses technical problems only an artist can solve. In other social set
tings, artists have hidden in their work from the unwelcome demands of
commerce.
However dense the interpenetration of culture and politics, one must
not imagine the manipulative hand of the state at every artistic turn. Chi
nese movies, for instance, can turn out badly because of political interfer
ence, but they can also fail because of indifferent direction, tasteless
artists, or technically inferior equipment.
In half a century, China’s artists have experienced two patronage revo
lutions. In the first, the new revolutionary state provided steady profes
sional work. In the second, the state, having given up revolution under
the slogan of reform, shares patronage with the more diffuse commercial
market.
TWO DEATHS, TWO CHINAS: 1976 AND 1997
One way to characterize the magnitude of change over the past gener
ation is to contrast China’s situation at two moments, the death of Mao
Zedong in September 1976 and the death of Deng Xiaoping in February
1997. The two revolutionary patriarchs shared much, including epic
struggle against both the Guomindang and imperialism in its several
guises. Both were strong willed, visionary, and intolerant men, al
though Deng’s style was less imperious than Mao’s. Each leader died
after a long illness that left him removed from direct power toward the
end of his rule. While they were often allies during Mao’s lifetime, the
policies of the aging Mao and the elderly Deng resulted in sharply dif
ferent Chinas.
Population
In 1976 China had nearly one billion people. Despite rigorous population
control, by 1996 there were around 30 percent more Chinese. This popu
lation was healthier, older, and better educated. Life expectancy ap
proached Western standards. This population was also vastly more mo
bile. Mao’s China enforced a system of residence permits that kept most
citizens in their native villages, with the notable exception of urban young
people, who moved through both voluntary and forced campaigns of
temporary resettlement to the countryside. Deng’s China released the re
strictions on population movement in order to mobilize rural labor for
new investment projects in the coastal provinces. Well over one hundred
million people migrated from interior provinces to coastal cities in search
of higher wages.
Economy
After the 1958–1960 disaster of the Great Leap Forward, Mao presided
over a long period of economic growth. China enjoyed great success at
eliminating the worst poverty, as seen in improvements in infant mortal
ity, although much investment was wastefully applied, and by Mao’s
death his state-directed policies seem to have reached a point of dimin
ishing returns. This growth developed economic infrastructure, but not
personal income. Chinese citizens were kept on low wages to build up
China’s industrialization through an isolationist policy of “self-
reliance.”14 Deng Xiaoping reversed course in several fundamental direc
tions: encouraging private and community-level enterprise, actively seek
ing foreign investment, and developing an export-based economy. Per
sonal incomes rose threefold, as did expectations that such growth would
continue.15 Inflation, no problem under Mao, was a continuous worry
during the reform period. Regional disparities increased, as the export-
oriented growth strategy privileged prosperous coastal China over the in
terior provinces.
Personal Consumption
The sought-after consumer goods of the mid-1970s were modest:
watches, bicycles, sewing machines, and radios, along with larger apart
ments. By the mid-1990s the list had changed drastically to include color
televisions and refrigerators, then rapidly moving to embrace air condi
tioners and cellular telephones. People still wanted larger apartments,
one area where the reforms lagged behind consumer demand. Yet, new
housing stock increased dramatically; by 1995, over half of urban resi
dences were less than sixteen years old.16 Television, introduced to China
in the early 1960s, was never developed as a national institution under
Mao. China under Deng was much quicker to adapt technical innova
tions, so that video recorders and disc players are now popular. And
karaoke is ubiquitous.17
8 Chapter 1
Commercial Activity
Mao’s China persecuted small businesses as remnant “tails of capitalism,”
reinforcing the mood of austerity, but leaving citizens with few ways of
spending their money—there were few restaurants and other urban serv
ices. Public celebration of weddings, funerals, and other life rituals was
typically subdued by the Party’s revolutionary puritanism. Deng left a
China in which florist shops were one of the fastest growing businesses;
no one assumes anymore that enjoying fresh flowers turns one into a
member of the bourgeoisie. Clothing is vastly more colorful, as well,
partly the result of letting up political pressure, but also reflecting gener
ational change and the fact that China now manufactures a large propor
tion of the world’s clothing for export, with an inevitable spillover in
styles and colors.
Political Persecution
Mao’s China hounded real and imagined dissidents severely, an issue of
special importance to intellectuals and artists. Ordinary citizens, however,
often remember the Mao years as poor but simple, with greater egalitari
anism, a climate of honesty, and honorable, if sometimes zealous, officials.
Under Deng, the focus of repression narrowed from whole groups to in
dividual political nonconformists. State harassment became more selec
tive, less ferocious, and far less intimidating to most intellectuals. China
remained an authoritarian regime, but the realm of personal freedom ex
panded rapidly.
Quality of Life
Many felt that improvements in personal life were attained at the cost of
the coarsening of interpersonal relations in a cash-crazy society. Many
seemed unsettled by the pace of change, which introduced new personal
anxieties over employment security. This was felt most strongly among
the middle-aged, while young women faced a diminution of Party efforts
against sexism. Growth in personal incomes was accompanied by routine
corruption by ordinary officials and truly world-class greed by high offi
cials, notoriously among Deng’s own family members. While China
seemed a very safe nation in comparison with most others, its citizens
compared public safety to a harsher, but more orderly, past and believed
that they lived in an era of uncontrolled criminal activity. Assessing
change in China is difficult and depends upon what aspect of the nation
one examines: there are higher individual incomes and more political
freedom, but also more child labor and environmental degradation.
China’s Place in the World

Under both Mao and Deng, China went its own way in international af
fairs. Mao’s China voiced a revolutionary rhetoric while pursuing autar
kic policies; Deng’s China leapt into the global economy, replacing revo
lutionary slogans with nationalist fervor. In each case, China was a proud,
if prickly, nation. Deng accumulated a large international debt, making
China more resemble other third world nations, although China remained
distinctive for the size of its economy. While non-Han areas such as Tibet
and Xinjiang were more restive under Deng, Hong Kong was returned
successfully to China soon after his death, and relations with Taiwan,
while often stormy, are incomparably better than in 1976.
Political Stability
The Communist Party has ruled China without serious challenge for half
a century, but political stability has been elusive. From his post as chair
man of the Party, Mao organized consciously disruptive mass campaigns
in order to reorganize Chinese society, and political tensions frequently
divided the country’s political elite in bitter conflict. Deng abandoned
mass campaigns, and he never assumed formal leadership of the Com
munist Party, but he forced three heads of the Party from office as he
sought to control the stresses of rapid change. Deng’s final choice was
Jiang Zemin, a Shanghai Party chief who assumed nominal leadership
during the 1989 crisis, held on to his post through Deng’s dotage, and es
tablished his own claim to power from the death of his patron to his re
tirement in 2002.18 Jiang handed power over to Hu Jintao in 2002–2003 in
a transition that was by no means democratic, but was orderly, peaceful,
and above all, stable.
FROM ARTISTIC HOMOGENEITY TO DIVERSITY
The end of the Cultural Revolution was a monochrome moment in

China’s modern cultural history. Artists and administrators were anx
ious about stepping from a purely revolutionary path; this, plus the
purge of older cultural leaders and the forced inactivity of others, lim
ited the arts to an absurdly small repertory of movies, songs, novels,
and paintings for a nation of China’s size and sophistication.19 Yet, in
some measure the Cultural Revolution only carried to a grotesque ex
treme certain tendencies toward homogenization that had been present
since the Communist victory (or even since the Party’s Yan’an Arts Fo
rum of 1942).
10 Chapter 1
From the early 1950s the Party set a high priority on controlling the cul
tural market, however weak it may have been. It regarded commercial
ized culture as a source of decadent values, soft on imperialism and often
ignoring class virtue. Private opera companies, for instance, were criti
cized for seeking customers by turning to smutty or pornographic art.20
These companies were brought under state control much like any other
enterprise, as state-private joint management preceded the socialization
of the enterprises by 1956.21
The revolutionary elimination of landlords and capitalists further nar
rowed China’s aesthetic range. Producers of elite arts, already battered by
a century of war and economic change, were suddenly deprived of their
customers as wealthy urban Chinese either lost their fortunes or fled
abroad. The same applied to producers of luxury handicrafts, including
jewelry, porcelain, and lacquer ware. The state tried to raise the low sta
tus of craft workers, but was hard-pressed to figure out what to do with
them. Some were employed for state purposes, such as decorating the
new Great Hall of the People in 1958, but this was not sufficient to prevent
the decay of crafts born in the service of the wealthy.
Political leaders often came to regard the arts from the state’s view
point, as objects of administration, rather than things of beauty. For in
stance, traditional ink painting was to be valued because it represented
the essence of Chinese culture to outsiders, rather than because of any
aesthetic imperative and certainly not because China still had a leisured
class of gentlemen painters and collectors who cherished this ancient art.
Indeed, the state’s interest helped sustain traditional painting against an
onslaught of oil painting, which many saw as more modern and which
was reinforced by a wave of Eastern European experts.22
The new administrative conception of art raised the status of formerly
lowly performers in opera companies, even as it lowered the once proud
elite arts of poetry and painting. The arts stood with superficial equality
within a new bureaucratic order. In reality literature remained in com
mand as the leading art, as it had during all past Chinese regimes, but for
merly despised cultural occupations, even acrobats, could now bask in its
reflected glory. In place of the messy notion of a popular audience for ur
ban culture, whether for motion pictures or old-fashioned storytelling, the
Party substituted the blander ideal of a mass audience, undifferentiated in
its tastes, but always demanding ever-greater heights of revolutionary
fervor.
Here the Party implemented Mao Zedong’s ideas about culture. How
ever deeply felt the chairman’s personal tastes in calligraphy, opera, and
fiction, his concern for public culture was instrumental. The arts typically
bear social content, and as the bearer of ideology, they could not be left
without guidance. The state’s goal was to regulate the arts in order to se
cure a well-ordered citizenry. Put in these terms, this ideal was not new
for China; what was new were the vastly expanded powers that political
leaders could apply to the task of shaping artistic expression.
Unfortunately, from the very beginning the new state found it easier to
use its powers to prevent unwanted art than to encourage new visions. As
early as 1951, Party fine arts official (and noted cartoonist) Hua Junwu
complained of a “tendency towards indiscriminate production” by some
“arts workers.”23 Hua feared that artists addressed the tastes of the petty
bourgeoisie, rather than the working class. Reflecting a similarly dog
matic idea that shopkeepers favored one kind of art and proletarians an
other, Zhou Yang (the Party’s arts “czar” before the Cultural Revolution)
complained that the problem lay “in the decision whether to lower the
level of the working class to meet the interests, ideology, and loves of
the urban petty bourgeoisie, or to raise the interests, ideology, and loves
of the urban petty bourgeoisie to the level of the working class.” “It is ab
solutely correct for our state-operated cinema enterprises to refuse to
stoop down to the level of the urban petty bourgeoisie.”24
The Party viewed cities as centers of consumption; its goal was to trans
form them into centers of production. The fate of culture became em
blematic of a broader problem with shortages of restaurants, shoe repair,
and other urban services. Cultural production was easy to regulate, and
cultural consumption suffered.
Fear of producing incorrect art afflicted the new cultural system. A
trend toward professionalization only exacerbated the situation. The new
government quickly offered permanent employment to vast numbers of
artists. The relatively secure economic status of artists enabled many to
wait out political campaigns by doing little, rather than responding to
pressure to produce. One esteemed writer, Shen Congwen, simply
stopped practicing his art altogether in a silent escape from politics. Yet,
others were quick enough to pick up the pen in service of the new state.
The fierce antirightist campaign of 1957 purged large numbers of intel
lectuals from leadership roles, intensifying anxieties about politically con
troversial art. Artists were relieved that the ensuing Great Leap Forward
did not target intellectuals. But the Great Leap in art celebrated mass cul
ture through the quota-driven production of poetry and songs, hardly a
reassuring trend for professionals. The enduring contributions of the Leap
to Chinese culture came not in art works, but in support services such as
the creation of a national film archive and the manufacture of China’s first
piano wire.25
The new state created a set of institutions that hired more artists in
more organizations, but produced less art with less variety. Yet, the situa
tion was complex. Foreclosing the development of urban commercial cul
ture was well received by some intellectuals, many of whom disdained it
12 Chapter 1
as vulgar. The Stalinist ideal of becoming “engineers of the human soul”

resonated with Confucian values shared by non-Party artists and their ad
ministrators: attaining this ideal promised to eliminate the vulgarity of
unfettered cultural markets. I do not mean to blame intellectuals for the
homogenization of urban culture, but it does seem fair to observe than in
the 1950s, as now, many urban sophisticates were decidedly unenthusias
tic about the vulgarity they saw in commercial culture.
Under the post-Mao regime, the greatest force for change has been the
introduction of a market for culture, operating alongside the older state
system for producing and distributing art. China’s long-established semi-
secret system of “internal” art—by which controversial or high-demand
novels, movies, and painting exhibitions are viewed only by select
groups—was also loosened considerably. The market was felt first in pop
ular culture: video games, tape players and audiocassettes, and video
tapes, as well as popular music.
The immediate consequence of the new cultural market dramatically
increased the range of arts available. Cultural reforms were tied closely to
rapid growth in urban consumer income. In some cities family expenses
for culture increased by up to four times. New technology raised the im
portance of television, while demographic change gave rise to the single-
child family, whose pride and joy became the object of cultural indul
gences through purchases of educational toys and musical instruments.26
Arts markets face skepticism in Chinese culture. The belief in a bond
between art and morality is strong, as is the traditional ideology that
arts are for amateur gentlemen whose work would be tainted if they
took money for their efforts.27 The new cultural market challenges such
traditions through daily confrontations. For instance, many calligra
phers were unhappy to see their art turned into a commodity. Tradi
tionally, calligraphy was an expression of a writer’s inner personality,
as well as an emblem of elite status. By the 1980s some calligraphers
were earning several hundred yuan per character, equivalent to the an
nual income of a peasant in a poor region. Some artists responded to
the new market by trying to startle audiences with sensationalism. Po
ets and serious novelists especially resented their inability to compete
with translations of Sidney Sheldon and home-grown novels of sex and
violence.
From the long view, the most dramatic impact of the economic reforms
was an increase in the number and range of art works available. As Cul
tural Revolutionary paranoia toward China’s great arts traditions disap
peared, novels, paintings, films, and music, which had not been available
for a decade, suddenly reappeared. The ultraleftist idea that painting
goldfish was inherently self-indulgent and reactionary may have been
silly, but it certainly discouraged people from painting goldfish.
Equally important were the increasing international contacts that grew

out of the diplomatic initiatives of the late Mao period and were extended
by Deng Xiaoping. Long cut-off from the currents of modern international
culture, Chinese artists and arts lovers experimented busily as they tried
to fulfill their curiosity about what they had missed. Freud, Picasso, sex,
liberalism, Schoenberg, Milton Friedman, and racy Hungarian television
shows all competed for attention as China tasted decades of foreign cul
tural development at one sitting. Some officials denounced many of these
trends as tainted or dangerous, which only enhanced their appeal. Hel
mut Martin described literature of the period 1976 to 1996 as in “a state of
constant flux. There is sometimes even volatility, a rapid succession of
short-lived literary fashions and writers leaving the literary stage as sud
denly as they have appeared.”28 Similar assessments could be made of all
genres in the reform period.
Not only was the content of culture stimulated by these new contacts,
but artists gained exposure to new techniques as well. Foreign study for
Chinese artists and access to foreign performers in China influenced
styles of performance or painting. Before 1978, reproductions of music or
visual art from outside China were difficult to obtain; conservatories and
arts academies subsequently improved their collections. New contacts be
yond the mainland also improved the quality of musical instruments and
paints and introduced inexpensive technology for cassette recording.
China also became a major exporter of compact disks, many of which
ended up for sale as low-cost pirated versions within China.
Many of the new cultural stimuli are ultimately Western. But they are
often felt through the immediate impact of nonmainland Chinese culture.
Mainland intellectuals have understandably been fascinated by the suc
cessful Western careers of such artists as I. M. Pei, Yo-yo Ma, or Chou
Wen-chung. In addition, Chinese artists in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singa
pore, and elsewhere have had several decades of experience at integrating
Western and Chinese culture. Hong Kong and Taiwan played an impor
tant role in channeling nonmainland Chinese culture to the People’s Re
public, a process that accelerated in the run-up to the 1997 return of Hong
Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Massive tourism and investment from Tai
wan into nearby Fujian Province created a second southeastern beach
head for filtering outside culture into the People’s Republic. As early as
the 1980s, Fujian television often rebroadcast shows from Taiwan. Non-
Chinese observers sometimes search so obsessively for the forbidden
fruits of Western culture that they are insensitive to this important en
counter between varieties of Chinese culture.
After 1949, Cold War diplomacy and the international political econ
omy had pulled Chinese culture in different directions, creating and in
tensifying artistic and linguistic differences. Hong Kong’s boom economy
14 Chapter 1
spawned a commercial culture that sometimes seemed from a different

planet than the austere celebration of revolution encouraged in the main
land arts. The official culture of the Republic of China in Taiwan devel
oped clear political dimensions, which celebrated a version of traditional
elite values, but rejected the populist developments of the mainland. The
growing cultural chasm was underscored when the mainland adopted
simplified Chinese characters, but Taiwan and Hong Kong refused to do
so as well. Now that diplomacy and economics encourage reintegration,
linguistic and cultural differences are declining. Hong Kong culture has
become a model for young mainlanders, and in Cantonese-speaking
Hong Kong private tutoring in Mandarin rivals English lessons in popu
larity. While the mainland courts Taiwanese investment and political
goodwill, characters are actually being desimplified, both in the complex
forms of the overseas edition of People’s Daily and in the signs posted in
coastal provinces such as Fujian for the convenience of Taiwanese visitors.
As the mainland has given up the revolutionary edge to its art, it has
pressed the exchange of ideas, performers, and art works to increase the
sense that all Chinese share a greater culture.
This review must not ignore popular culture, which changed even more
rapidly. Popular entertainment became ever more sensational, beginning
with cheap thrills of a rather innocent sort. A 1986 television show in
Fuzhou featured the lives and loves of three women who rode motorcycles
around the inside of a giant wooden tub.29 The city of Xiamen even had
such a tub temporarily placed in a waterfront park. Later, in August of
1989, I attended a motorcycle show in a giant wooden tub in Guangzhou.
The crowds cheered as a colorfully dressed rider raced around, standing
on his cycle in apparent defiance of gravity. I saw the show with my father,
who recalled seeing similar shows in small-town Missouri in the 1920s.
After a generation of economic reform, China became a place where one
could find an enormous number of cultural goods at a variety of prices and
in a bewildering array of styles. China’s population is better educated, more
sophisticated, and, in contrast to 1976, far less willing to let political authori
ties judge what its tastes should be. China is now more prosperous, more
open, and freer. But because it is less isolated, it is held to a higher standard
than ever before. The arts may be less fettered by political manipulation than
at any time since the 1930s in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Beiping, but their social
content and implications assure that they will continue to be controversial.
THE ROUNDABOUT ROAD TO CULTURAL REFORM
No one seems to have planned cultural reform, which followed from the
political logic of other changes in China’s economy.30 A quarter of a cen
tury after the beginning of Deng’s reform program, however, the cumula
tive impact of the changes in China’s arts was massive. Below is a sketch
of the stages along the road to cultural reform.
Mao’s Death
When Mao died in September 1976, his closest political allies were well
anchored in the cultural system. Enver Hoxha, the leader of Albania,
China’s only European friend, commented in August 1976:
It seems that the opposing currents have captured the leading posts and one
side has control of the microphones and the press, while the other side has
the economy and the rifle. The former seems nervous, the latter calm, of
course, because it has the rifle.31
Mao’s health had been in decline for years, with the political elite anxious
about the succession. Within a month of the chairman’s death, those who
had the rifles (an alliance of the People’s Liberation Army, the Ministry of
Public Security, and the security force for top leaders at Beijing’s Zhong
nanhai) organized a coup against those who controlled the microphones
and the press. Hua Guofeng, former minister of public security, was the
temporary winner over the Cultural Revolutionary propagandists, who
with Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing, were vilified as the Gang of Four. Accord
ing to Zhang Pinghua, who was promoted to national propaganda chief
by Hua, the new Party chairman, the recapture of the Ministry of Culture
took higher priority than did taking control over Tianjin, China’s third
leading city.32
Hua and his colleagues had no program for cultural reform beyond
seizing control of the mass media from their adversaries, whom they
promptly purged. Arrests followed, as did the suicide of the minister of
culture and, eventually, the kangaroo court conviction of the Gang of Four
in 1980. Artists who had been associated with the Cultural Revolutionary
left often found their careers put on hold, but they received little sympa
thy from the majority of intellectuals and artists whose lives had been dis
rupted during the preceding ten years.
The Return of Deng Xiaoping

Hua Guofeng’s hold on power proved to be fleeting. An ambitious Deng
Xiaoping, bruised and resentful from being purged twice during the Cul
tural Revolution, undercut him at every opportunity. Three parts of
Deng’s strategy are of special interest for cultural policy.
First, Deng repudiated the Cultural Revolution by restoring the cultural
officials and the arts establishment of the early 1960s. Deng’s chief deputy
16 Chapter 1
in this project was Hu Yaobang, first as head of the Party’s Organization

Department, then as head of the Propaganda Department. Hu had been
head of the Youth League in the 1950s, developing an elaborate web of
personal relationships among the rising generations of the elite. If there
was any program of reform beyond changing the leading personalities, it
was to restore the imagined golden age of wise Party leadership of the
1950s, before the deformations of the Mao cult and the Cultural Revolu
tion. The 1950s were held to be a time when state and Party leaders were
thoughtful patrons of culture, rarely aiming harsh personal attacks at in
dividual artists, who had happily worked in harmony to show China a
vision of its future as a proud and modern society. The 1979 Arts
Congress—a meeting of representatives from the professional associa
tions of writers, musicians, and the like—was the short-lived culmination
of this mood of joyful restoration.
Second, Deng severely restricted the Party’s propaganda apparatus. As
Hua Guofeng attempted to stabilize his power, his propagandists organ
ized a campaign to substitute Hua as a charismatic figure for the missing
Mao. Such a cult of personality was unlikely to succeed for the obvious
reason that Hua was no Mao—he had neither led a revolutionary army
nor established a new regime. Hua changed his haircut to resemble
Mao’s, promoted his handwriting as Mao did, and generally looked fool
ish. As a consequence, Deng determined to dislodge the propaganda offi
cials supporting his rival. As Deng increased his own powers, he targeted
the propaganda apparatus for serious retooling. With Deng’s crony, Hu
Yaobang, as head of the Propaganda Department, the Party abandoned its
past technique of mass-mobilizing political campaigns.33 While this was
intended to weaken the political base of Deng’s opponents, it had a sec
ondary impact on the arts. Artists had tired of having to produce for mass
campaigns and were in general quite pleased with the new look of Party
propaganda. The Party still beat the drums for its policies, but gradually
came to look more and more like a giant advertising agency for socialism.
Closely related was a new retirement scheme, whereby all officials had
to retire at age sixty, except for those with ministerial rank, who were al
lowed to work until age sixty-five. The justification was to increase the
level of education among officials by pensioning off unschooled, but
tough, old former peasants. The immediate consequence, however, was to
hurry the departure of all officials who had begun their careers with the
revolution. By the mid-1980s, most of the surviving members of the revo
lutionary generation were gone from the bureaucracy.34 With them disap
peared exactly the constituency that was most likely to resist the spread
of cultural markets.
Third, the economic reforms for which Deng is best known reshaped
China’s cultural environment, although the impact was felt only gradu
ally. Deng struck out against the “iron rice bowl” of guaranteed state jobs
in industry. A similar logic was extended to state cultural organizations,
which for the first time faced the goal of becoming self-financing. Simul
taneously, a previously closed bureaucratic arts world began the long-
term process of commercialization. As the marketplace presented an al
ternative way of financing and organizing the arts, the authority of
Communist culture and propaganda officials steadily eroded, severely di
minishing the Party’s ability to shape culture.
Deng marked his victory over Hua Guofeng in December 1978 at the
Third Plenum of the Communist Party’s Eleventh Central Committee.
Hua had lingered for a surprisingly long time, undergoing ever-greater
humiliations before he was allowed to resign as Party chairman, to be re
placed by Hu Yaobang as general secretary of the now chairmanless
party.35 Deng signaled that he would exercise his power not through any
formal rank as head of a key institution, but personally, as the leader of a
winning faction. In practice, he played a role much as Mao had done, if
with different goals: by balancing Party factions, Deng was a grand ref
eree who would favor one side and then another in a series of shifting al
liances. Deng’s coalition, however, excluded the Party’s now disgraced
left.
Deng quickly abandoned several Maoist tenets, beginning with the
theory that class struggle persists in socialist society and the corollary idea
that most intellectuals must struggle against their bourgeois educations.
Indeed, the Party resolved several decades of ambiguity about the status
of intellectuals by declaring them to be members of the working class, at
one stroke denying the possibility of class contradictions between mental
and manual laborers. The old Maoist slogan of art for the workers, peas
ants, and soldiers, dating from the Party’s revolutionary days in Yan’an,
gave way to the less militant and more inclusive line of a 1982 slogan:
“Arts should serve the people and socialism.” The new status of intellec
tuals was symbolized by a new fifty-yuan banknote, featuring a middle-
aged intellectual man, along with a male worker and a female peasant.
Missing was the soldier, reflecting the army’s reduced political weight.
While entrepreneurs had not yet been portrayed on currency, they were
no longer excoriated as bourgeois, but included within the ranks of the
people.
Democracy Wall
Some young Chinese democrats, mostly veterans of the Red Guard strug
gles, mistook Deng’s victory over Hua Guofeng as the signal for a broader
liberalization of intellectual life. The focal point of this movement was the
Democracy Wall of 1979, a spot in the capital where, in the tradition of the
18 Chapter 1
Cultural Revolution, protestors posted big character posters. Deng rather

cynically used the movement at first, as the posters attacked the so-called
little Gang of Four of Political Bureau members who backed Hua
Guofeng. But Deng turned on the protestors when they demanded more
open politics, demonstrating that a gentler rule did not extend to non-
Party democrats and economic markets did not signal cultural liberaliza
tion. As the older cultural establishment celebrated its restoration at the
1979 Arts Congress, Deng’s courts prosecuted Wei Jingsheng, who was
jailed for fourteen years for speaking his mind. Other dissidents met a
similar fate in Beijing and the provinces.
Back and Forth through the 1980s

Party claims that commercialization of the economy would not lead to
cultural liberalization were overly optimistic. Cultural life in the 1980s
moved toward greater openness, but not without some short-term rever-
sals.36 During the Cultural Revolution the Party simply stopped all for
eign cultural influences, except for the occasional North Korean dance
troupe. During the reform era, the Party welcomed foreign investment
and trade, but tried to distinguish harmful from positive foreign influ
ences. Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 formula for handling this problem was to is
sue the four cardinal principles: anything was tolerated, just so it did not
weaken socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the
Communist Party, or Marxist-Leninist ideology.
The most powerful veteran revolutionaries, although often long retired,
continued to press their influence informally, often acting through per
sonal ties to former subordinates. Deng Xiaoping could not easily silence
such members of his own political cohort as Peng Zhen, mayor of Beijing
before the Cultural Revolution, or Wang Zhen, a former military leader
with responsibility for state farms. These and other ostensibly retired of
ficials were shunted off to a newly established (and later closed) Central
Advisory Committee, where Deng hoped to employ honor to persuade
them to abandon their habits of rule. They often supported efforts to clean
up harmful culture, perhaps finding encouragement in Deng’s words:
“when you open the door some flies will get in.”37
Campaigns in 1983 against “spiritual pollution” and in 1986 against
“bourgeois liberalization” made a lot of noise, caused many people per
sonal inconvenience, and damaged some careers. Yet, they were not very
successful, as few could agree on how to limit bad influences while cher
ishing good ones or even on how to distinguish the two categories. The
Party was divided throughout much of the decade over which was more
critical: rectifying the continuing influence of the Cultural Revolution or
combating the new perils of spiritual pollution.38 Alternating periods of
openness and restriction have long characterized politics in the People’s

Republic.39 For most artists, the preference for openness was simple.
Moreover, the uneven decline of the Communist Party’s propaganda sys
tem made it difficult to reimpose controls, so that these campaigns had di
minishing effectiveness and credibility.
Deng Xiaoping continued to rule from behind the scenes. When Hu
Yaobang failed to clamp down on student demonstrators in several East
China cities in 1986, he was dismissed as Party leader, to be replaced by
Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang, a noted reformer even before the Cultural
Revolution. The vocal critics of cultural pollution were not simply old
Maoists, although some press accounts represented them as seeking a re
turn to the Cultural Revolution. Deng Liqun, for instance, vilified in the
Hong Kong press as an unrepentant Maoist, was once secretary to Mao’s
rival, Liu Shaoqi. Some critics of liberalization had been restored to the
top of the cultural establishment with Deng Xiaoping’s return to power,
but were dismayed to see changes flowing out of their control. Real left
ists received continued punishment, which was popular with all other
groupings within the Party.40
Reforming Cultural Institutions

As state controls over the economy loosened, political officials began to
lose control over the arts. Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang included this
theme in his 1983 report to the National People’s Congress:
Most intellectual and artistic products circulate in the form of commodities,

but in no case must we allow the decadent ideology of “putting money above
everything else” to spread unchecked in our society. All honest, patriotic and
revolutionary writers and artists must not treat their works and perform
ances as a means of grabbing fame and fortune. The tendency towards bour
geois liberalism in ideological and cultural work and disregard for social
consequences are incompatible with the policy of serving the people and so
cialism, and we must continue to criticize such trends. All ideological, cul
tural, and art workers must cultivate a deep sense of responsibility to the
people and live up to their expectation.41
Yet, while artists were urged not to “grab fame and fortune,” they
learned that the organizations in which they had worked since the early
1950s were undergoing major renovation.
A typical example is a 1987 report on state drama troupes.42 Chinese
opera was (and is) in a prolonged crisis. This reflected the loss of urban
audiences, although opera administrator Fang Jie also blamed the per
sistence of old administrative habits. Opera troupes had gone three
decades with little movement of personnel, eventually employing whole
20 Chapter 1
families: “like a snowball, the more it rolls, the bigger it gets.” Troupes
that only had tens of members in the 1950s now had five or six hundred
members, even though at least one-third was redundant. The solution
was to “reduce the swelling” by cutting state subsidies and introducing a
new concern for profit. Such discussions routinely attacked the “big pot”
(relatively egalitarian pay systems that did not differentiate artists by tal
ent or effort) and the “iron rice bowl” (permanent employment, now held
to be inferior to short-term contracts).
Dreams of Professional Autonomy

Political leaders may have believed that reform, when applied to culture,
meant balancing the books. Artists, however, imagined that reform would
raise their professional status, recognize their autonomy from political su
pervision, and extend their freedom of expression. After 1978 intellectuals
made a bid for increased power and status, first to reclaim what they had
lost during the Cultural Revolution and, subsequently, to assert a leader
ship that intellectuals have not enjoyed in China since the Qing Dynasty.
Artists were less often at the forefront of this trend than such activist
intellectuals as astronomer Fang Lizhi, reporter Liu Binyan, and
editor/essayist Wang Ruowang—each of whom was dismissed from the
Communist Party for his efforts. But artists could not help getting caught
up in the heady sense that the times were changing. Films such as Yellow
Earth criticized the central Maoist myth of the politically engaged artists
of revolutionary Yan’an.43 Younger and middle-aged artists especially
moved away from assigned political themes to explore personal, often in
terior, visions that had been neglected for decades. In so doing, they re
sponded to the lightened hand of the state, and they often justified their
experiments in terms of the “laws of art,” which were held to be au
tonomous from politics and economy. But while the growing commodifi
cation of culture increased autonomy from politics, autonomy from eco
nomic crisis was more difficult to achieve.
The Beijing Massacre

By the spring of 1989 China’s arts and media were as open as they had been
at any time in the People’s Republic. Social strains fueled by economic re
forms broke out in a national student-led protest, sparked by a sometimes-
instrumental commemoration of the death of Hu Yaobang, who was
viewed by students and older intellectuals as a positive force whom Deng
Xiaoping had unfairly forced to resign as head of the Communist Party. The
ensuing struggle was not over culture, but power, and only ended with the
riot and massacre in Beijing. When the movement began, Party head Zhao
Ziyang was among its targets, mocked by students for his love of golf. But
before it ended, he was forced to resign for being too tolerant of student
demonstrators, echoing the 1987 dismissal of Hu Yaobang.44
Many believe that a thousand and more people died in Beijing and else
where on June 4; certainly, even more people were jailed, driven into ex
ile, or punished for their participation in the failed movement. After Zhao,
among higher-ranking political casualties was Minister of Culture Wang
Meng, a noted novelist who resigned after declining to praise the army
following the bloodshed in Beijing. Yet, for all the violence, the Party
again proved unable to reassert full control over cultural life. Widespread,
if quiet, resistance to the late 1989 purge managed to limit its scope, re
flecting the deep divisions within China’s political establishment. The
massacre and subsequent political campaign demonstrated the implicit
collapse of the Party’s effective hegemony. For artists, the purge demon
strated that they were far from free of political control, yet the inability of
the Party to reassert its authority showed that artists as a group were far
stronger than a decade earlier.45
Taking a Plunge
After an initial wave of fear and revulsion, the 1989 massacre evoked a
mood of political caution across China. To counter the pessimism, Deng
Xiaoping, in his last major political act, made a much-publicized inspec
tion of South China in 1992. There he visited communities and institutions
on the forefront of the open economy; the accompanying propaganda was
used to push aside caution concerning intensifying reform of the economy.
From this point the reforms snowballed, with hundreds of thousands of in
dividuals choosing to give up their state positions to “take a plunge” into
the commercial economy. With the smell of money in the air, economic suc
cess became an even greater basis for the Party’s claims to legitimacy. The
state thus tried to continue its earlier policies of economic, though not cul
tural, liberalization. Again, these proved difficult to separate.
The officially sanctioned intensification of the commodity economy en
couraged many artists and cultural organizations to look even harder for
sources of profit. It also helped overcome the resistance of some artists to
giving up the security of state employment, which was losing its appeal
in any event.
Deng’s Death
When Deng died in February 1997, he had not been politically active for
at least two years. Jiang Zemin, his third choice as Party leader, had time
to secure his position as successor, although many initially doubted his
22 Chapter 1
staying power. Jiang was not associated with any innovations in cultural
policy, which remained rather staid. Nor is Hu Jintao, the apparently cau
tious new Party head, associated with an explicit program of cultural lib
eralization.
The changes that Deng Xiaoping unleashed in China swept over the
arts world, but not because Deng had any special interest in the arts. In
deed, in contrast to such members of the founding generation of Com
munist revolutionaries as Mao Zedong or Foreign Minister Chen Yi, Deng
left few indications of aesthetic ambitions. Deng once remarked to his
physician, “If you don’t see Sichuan opera, you don’t understand civi
lization.” But this seems to have been the chauvinistic comment of a na
tive son, rather than a commitment to art. Near the end of his life, Deng
purchased a $16,000 set of stereo speakers from an Oregon firm for use in
his home, but this was likely for the amusement of his relatives, rather
than to meet any aesthetic demands of the patriarch.
THE UNEVEN PACE OF ARTS REFORMS
The arts reforms were peripheral to Deng’s political and economic pro
gram; indeed, the regime sent mixed signals about the need to bring change
to the arts world. Some portents seem clear enough in retrospect. Shanghai
Television marked off the turf for market-oriented culture when it broad
cast China’s first television commercial on January 18, 1979.46 By 1986, some
Fuzhou factories were hiring low-wage temporary workers to meet their re
quirement to supply “voluntary” labor for community service, heralding
the end of one of the more idealistic strands of Party ideology.
Yet, Party leaders were also reluctant to abandon the notion that culture
is a source of political power. The Party’s steady accompaniment to eco
nomic reform has been years of talk about “socialist spiritual civilization.”
With this phrase the Party signals to artists and intellectuals that their
work has value in a changing society and suggests that cultural “work”
can help restrain the market’s most damaging impact on society. In his re
port to the Twelfth Party Congress in September 1982, Hu Yaobang de
clared, “Socialist spiritual civilization not only gives a tremendous impe
tus to the building of material civilization, but also guarantees that it will
develop according to a correct orientation.”47 The conviction that culture,
properly organized under state leadership, can shape the world was wor
thy of Mao‘s heirs.
Thus, it is not surprising that the restructuring of the arts world has
been sluggish and erratic. It is similar to the huge and politically contro
versial task of introducing economic reform to state-owned industry,
where the prospect of putting workers out of jobs daunts both those who
oppose unemployment and those who fear social instability. A 1988 na
tional conference on cultural work disclosed that China had 3,068 spe
cialized performing-arts troupes. Two thousand of these were state-run
(the rest were collectively owned), employing 169,000 people on fixed
state salaries, in addition to being responsible for pensions, subsidized
housing, medical benefits, and pensions and funeral benefits for the fam
ily members of deceased employees.48 Only ninety-three of the state
troupes were self-supporting.49
Much as the Chinese state worries about unemployed workers, it fears
unemployed intellectuals even more, so arts subsidies have in fact not
been cut, but allowed to rise more slowly than inflation, so that they form
a declining percentage of arts budgets. At the same time, the rapid growth
of commercial culture means that state-sponsored arts have a declining
public significance.
The China National Symphony Orchestra

One of the most closely watched instances of restructuring was Beijing’s
Central Philharmonic Orchestra, the premier national symphonic ensem
ble. Like many state arts ensembles, the Central Philharmonic had become
bloated with five hundred members, plus their dependents, and was ill
equipped to adjust to market conditions. Salaries were not obviously re
lated to musical ability, for instance, and few in the ensemble had any idea
about business. Nonetheless, it became the first arts unit under the Ministry
of Culture to earn money on its own by recording movie soundtracks.50
The orchestra tried to implement the Party’s policy of “using commerce
to nurture art” by setting up a company and a restaurant. But Deputy Di
rectory Xie Ming complained in 1986, “Not only have we not made any
money, but we have built up a big pile of problems by doing things slop
pily. This is no solution.” Foreign examples are quite clear, claimed Xie:
serious music requires subsidies. While popular music can make money
and be taxed by the government, orchestras, ballet companies, and choirs
cannot make money anywhere in the world. “Look at experience and at
least recognize that the method of using commerce to nurture art will not
work; the problems of the arts must be resolved by following the laws of
art.”51 Musicians were in fact well-informed about Western trends; in 1983
the leading journal for professional musicians reported on the cancella
tion of the Baltimore Symphony season the previous year, analyzing the
problem quite accurately as one of failure either to turn a profit or find
sufficient private or public subsidy.52
The orchestra’s situation deteriorated further by the end of the decade.
After a post–Cultural Revolution boom in Western classical music, atten
dance declined sharply; sometimes there were fewer in the audience than
24 Chapter 1
in the orchestra. Of the orchestra’s 1989 1.2-million-yuan (approximately

U.S. $150,000) government allocation, salaries consumed 70 percent, leav
ing little for administrative expenses and nothing for new instruments. A
recording company failed to earn money, both from lack of business ex
perience and from competition with more expensive, but higher prestige
and often better quality performances by European orchestras. The or
chestra canceled both rehearsals and performances for the first three
months of 1989. Some companies offered private donations to the orches
tra, but only if the musicians would rename their ensemble after the bene-
factor.53
The slogan “use commerce to nurture art” (yishang yangwen) was soft
ened to “use art to supplement art” (yiwen puwen), meaning that arts or
ganizations should try to earn money through their arts production,
rather than engaging in distracting and unrelated commercial ventures. In
practice this meant performing Strauss waltzes instead of peddling ill-
prepared food. By 1993 the orchestra had increased its performances of
popular music as it sought new members for its audience, but this pro
voked controversy among the capital’s classical music aficionados. It also
failed to raise enough money, with only two hundred members actually
performing music to support the rest. A second discussion of renaming
the orchestra, this time after a private company in Hainan, was rejected,
allegedly by Jiang Zemin.54
In 1996 the orchestra disbanded, to be reconstituted as the China Na
tional Symphony Orchestra. Members were required to reaudition for
their jobs against other Beijing musicians. Only 94 of 210 old orchestra
members who auditioned were rehired, this time on contracts with
salaries graded to match their skills. Earnings for a top violinist were five
thousand yuan (U.S. $600), twice the rate for a back-desk fiddler. One
hundred apartments were set aside for the musicians, who were also pro
vided instruments by the state. But the state contributed only 30 percent
of a twenty-million-yuan budget. The new orchestra emulates Western
models in seeking private financial support, especially from the Shanghai
Stock Exchange, but also from foreign companies such as Nortel and Boe
ing. Like most Chinese organizations, the new orchestra does not consider
Western-style labor unions as part of the deal.55 The orchestra’s reorgani
zation eventually led to the 2002 death of one its founders, choral con
ductor Li Ling. The last surviving performer in the 1938 premier of Xian
Xinghai’s Yellow River Cantata, the 90-year-old Li long nursed resentment
that the reorganization had excluded the eighty members of the Central
Philharmonic Choir. When a member of the China Choral Society asked
him to write an inscription for a program, he was reminded that the
singers were still without state subsidy. In a rage, he shouted “Why can’t
the chorus enjoy the same treatment from the state like the orchestra?” He
also screamed at his wife when she tried to calm him. The next day he col
lapsed, and died in hospital.56
The completion of this long-heralded reorganization of a major arts
body presses others to follow, such as the China Song and Dance Troupe,
a top ensemble of the Ministry of Culture, with 240 members. Like a state
industry, it is deep in debt (U.S. $2 million or 16.6 million yuan), so that
performers and workers can only draw 60 percent of basic wages. Its cos
tumes, stage props, and musical instruments are all aging, and it has no
financial reserves to handle emergencies such as lost lawsuits or the theft
of its vehicles. Perhaps a planned deal to provide entertainment for a Bei
jing department store will help, but more radical measures will likely be
necessary.57
In addition to the magnitude of the task and the Party’s ambiguity, there
are some other reasons why reform has not come quickly to the arts world.
Breaking the Habit of the Planned Arts Economy

“Reform” became the legitimizing buzzword of the 1980s, much like
“revolution” had been in the 1960s. In the 1960s, many policies that had
little to do with revolution were wrapped in its red banner; again in the
1980s, reform was sometimes claimed as the rubric for very old-fashioned
approaches to culture. For instance, between 1984 and 1988 an army-
based acrobat troupe in Guangzhou increased performances to 250 each
year, more than twice the number demanded by superiors. This bit of
quota busting could have been a tale from the Great Leap Forward, yet it
was hailed as a triumph of reform.58
State and Party officials were sometimes not very responsive. The old
Central Philharmonic submitted three draft proposals on reforming the
orchestra over three years, but neither the Ministry of Culture nor the
Party Propaganda Department had responded to any of them. Represen
tatives of other state musical ensembles sounded pretty bitter when they
held a forum on structural reform. The Chinese Opera Academy com
plained that the state had failed to spread information about arts-related
business experiences that had not worked. The Chinese Broadcast Arts
ensemble was upset at the lack of planning over long-term budgets, with
last-minute bargaining over supplementary allocations at the end of each
year, which did nothing to resolve the fundamental issue of how to cal
culate the labor of musicians.59
Even after artists and managers had begun to understand the impera
tive of market reforms, their audiences were sometimes slower to learn.
Early in the reform period, touring opera companies and acrobats would
arrive in a village and encounter unreasonable demands for complimen
tary tickets to their performances. Often they found their food, lodging,
26 Chapter 1
and transportation cut off when they did not surrender to the extortion of
free tickets by villagers unaccustomed to the market, but habituated to the
bureaucratic distribution of tickets.60
Adjusting to the market meant that performing troupes had to reward
their star performers, even though they might be young and lack the sen
iority rewarded in the old system. When two young acrobats in Shenyang
were unconventionally promoted ten grades in rank at one time, the dis
regard for the seniority system sparked a national controversy. Both in
their mid-twenties, one became star of the show by juggling plates; the
other “made new breakthroughs flying through the air.”61
Political Interference
There were two kinds of interference. One was simple opposition to the re
forms from a principled critique. Chen Yun, Deng’s most prestigious rival,
put a temporary halt to the application of a contract system for performing
artists in 1983.62 Old-line propaganda officials tended not to speak of their
grievances in open, but continued to raise questions about the pernicious
aspects of market influence. Conservative cultural administrators, long un
der attack, had been organizing against the reformers. More than a hundred
held a conference at Zhouzhou, in Henan, in April 1987, where such figures
as He Jingzhi, Lin Mohan, Liu Baiyu, Yao Xueyin, and Chen Tong met to ex
press their unhappiness at the Party’s abandonment of its former arts poli
cies. Wang Renzhi, head of the Party Propaganda Department, supported
them. When Zhao Ziyang’s secretary, Bao Tong, sent someone to inspect the
tapes and materials of conference, their anger at the reformers increased.
A second interference was not especially concerned with broad principles,
but with protecting the status of favorite or well-connected performers and
ensembles under the purview of a bureaucracy or city. The Ministry of Cul
ture denounced those who used administrative means to protect the rank
ing of artists, rather than using competition to determine merit.63 A great
deal of negotiation and compromise determined which arts bodies received
state subsidies and what portion of their expenses would be underwritten.
There was some sense that the leading ensembles, which best embodied
Chinese culture, deserved state support. There was also some sense in the
late 1980s that state support might even have to increase in areas too poor to
support a thriving cultural marketplace, such as old revolutionary base ar
eas, minority regions, border areas, and the most impoverished interior
provinces, but little has been accomplished to increase such subsidies.64
Inept Reforms and Inappropriate Models

Many schemes were well intended, but poorly designed. Thus, arts en
sembles forced to run restaurants are not necessarily going to run them
well. Or, as a salesman describes an abortive reform initiative in one loca

tion of the massive state-owned New China bookstore chain:
We tried the responsibility system for a month, then gave it up for various
reasons. For one thing, prizes were given to those who over fulfilled their
sales quota. But the prizes were such a small fraction of the gross profit, it
wasn’t worth their while. Instead they took good books, best-selling books
home to sell in their spare time—and pocketed all the profit.65
Similarly, arts education took little account of market needs and the job
prospects of their students until the 1990s, insisting instead on producing
“pure” artists and musicians: sign of a higher status operation, no doubt,
but no help in graduating artists who could fit easily into China’s rapidly
changing cultural world.
The national press praised the prosperous coastal areas as new models
for Chinese culture. The Ministry of Culture’s house newspaper printed
countless detailed reports on various Cantonese arts ventures. But often
these approaches were not very helpful to the arts managers facing real
problems in interior provinces that lacked rapid growth in personal in
come and a tradition of cultural openness to the outside world. “The old
three-part tune of ‘eat, earn a living, and sleep’ has given way to a new
concerto of work, rest, entertainment, and the quest for knowledge” rhap
sodized one article, but how does one apply this to hard-scrabble regions
where people have no money to spend on leisure activities?66 In some re
spects such articles were a mirror image of the Maoist propaganda of the
1970s that promoted Shaanxi’s Dazhai Production Brigade as the agricul
tural model for all China, regardless of differences in weather, irrigation,
or soil condition.
Some official arts institutions often still seem indifferent to market
forces. The Jiangsu Provincial Fine Arts Association runs the Nanjing Art
Museum, but only opens it during hours it finds convenient. On a fine
Saturday afternoon in late March 1997, the museum was closed, despite
cheerful crowds of Nanjing citizens at play in front of its doors. In con
trast, a neighboring commercial bookstore drew customers with its sign
board: “Happy news! New Dictionary of The Golden Lotus” (China’s
Ming Dynasty pornographic classic), while another store offered plastic
versions of Western female nude statues.
THE EMERGENCE OF A DISCRETE AESTHETIC REALM
The most obvious cultural achievement of the reform period has been enor
mously increased diversity in arts products, especially for urban Chinese.
Not only were new works offered, but formerly banned art was revived,
and a new wave of foreign culture was introduced. Chinese audiences tried
28 Chapter 1
to cram a whole century of bourgeois Western art into a single decade, with
U.S. television serials, abstract expressionism, and psychoanalysis tumbling
into each other in a sometimes confusing, but tremendously energetic, way.
As the Party yielded its warrant to impose its own cultural standards upon
the nation, a lively ferment about aesthetics ensued, as Chinese artists and
intellectuals struggled to find new standards for beauty.67
Although still incomplete, these reforms have partially privatized cul
ture, breaking the old Maoist system of comprehensive state subsidies for
the arts. By weakening the formerly inflexible bonds between artists and
the state, the reforms also eroded the Communist Party’s domination of
propaganda and ideology. Despite the violence of the 1989 Beijing Mas
sacre, political reform in China has been more profound than is com
monly recognized: artists (and other intellectuals) have established a new,
more autonomous relationship with the state. The price of this growing
independence is financial insecurity, commercial vulgarization, and the
specter of unemployment. But the benefit is a growing recognition of aes
thetics as a separate realm from politics. This does not mean art for art’s
sake will soon supplant Communist Party leadership; it does mean that
artists can entertain a wider range of views on the relationship of their
work to society.
This shift has been accompanied by a striking public discussion of aes
thetics. Before the Cultural Revolution, aesthetics was formally recog
nized in the organization of intellectual life; its enthusiastic return in the
1980s and 1990s is clearly an effort to stake out a mental terrain where the
authority of artists might prevail over the views of politicians.68 The ap
peal to the objective laws of beauty was initially a quest for a safe harbor
against the storms of politics, but as the reforms intensified, the laws of
beauty were increasingly posed against the laws of the economy.
That cultural reform was an afterthought indicates that the arts have
become less important to China’s politicians. Unlike many of his fellow
revolutionaries, Deng Xiaoping had no great cultural ambitions or pre
tensions. Here he was unusual among his revolutionary comrades; Mao
Zedong’s ardor for calligraphy was echoed by comparable enthusiasms of
other senior leaders for poetry, ballad singing, Beijing opera, and paint
ing. Deng’s great pastime was not writing poetry or collecting art, but
playing bridge—intellectual, to be sure, but not aesthetic. Even Deng’s
managers were hesitant to present him in the traditional posture of ruler-
as-aesthete, dispensing moral wisdom through artistic commentary.
Deng’s collected writings on the arts were not published until a decade af
ter his rise to political supremacy.
In cultural terms, Deng’s rule was a transition to the more technically
educated leaders of the successor generation.69 Men such as Jiang Zemin,
Li Peng, and Li Tieying all received technical training as engineers in East
ern Europe and revealed only a superficial interest in traditional culture.70

Vice Premier Li Lanqing, overseeing Chinese agriculture, was passionate
about Western classical music, but he seemed a curiosity in a leadership
that seemed to have few deep aesthetic convictions. President and Party
Chief Jiang Zemin was a published writer beyond his political speeches;
yet, he received royalties not for poetry, but for his translation of a guide
to the electric capacity of machine-tool factories.71 Jiang was also televised
singing Elvis Presley songs with President Fidel Ramos of the Philippines.
This was an unprecedented act for a Chinese leader in its use of modern
public relations to convey an image of down-home folksiness far from the
austere expression of moral imperatives through high-art forms that ap
pears so often in China’s political tradition.
Reforming culture has been a central issue in Chinese politics for more
than a hundred years. Episodes as different as the Tongzhi Restoration,
the May Fourth and New Life movements, the Communists’ revolution
ary mobilization at Yan’an, the institution of the Soviet model in the 1950s,
and the Cultural Revolution all concerned themselves with how to make
China’s culture somehow better fit the needs of modern society. Each, in
its own way, affected the thinking and lives of artists as the group that
could be led, pressed, intimidated, manipulated, or even inspired to
translate new visions of China’s past and future into works of art.
In contrast to these diverse movements, the Deng Xiaoping reforms are
striking for not concerning themselves with the reform of culture at all, al
though they inevitably brought such reform in their wake. Cultural re
form did not come to China as a conscious policy, but the consequences
are as profound as if they had been carefully planned. Deng and his ad
visors wanted to alter China’s cultural policy, but not its culture.72 In or
der to weaken the power base of his opponents, Deng purged the cultural
apparatus, then hobbled it by ending mass-mobilizing political cam
paigns. In order to appeal to intellectuals humiliated by ten years of Cul
tural Revolution, Deng restored many of their most trusted figures to po
sitions of cultural leadership. In order to bring a spurt of rapid growth to
the Chinese economy, Deng initiated reform with market mechanisms
that eventually spilled over from factory to dance troupe, threatening the
subsidies that had sustained state culture since 1949. In order to build
bridges to the West and to Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast
Asia, Deng encouraged cultural exchanges and the importation of cul
tural products that introduced new arts trends to China’s arts producers
and audiences. In order to deepen the market reforms, Deng initiated a
wave of commodification that brought to China a cultural marketplace in
which art works were not produced with an eye to serving the state, but
to earning a profit as commodities. In spite of repeated efforts to hold the
baleful effects of cultural diversity at arms length, Deng’s other policies
30 Chapter 1
ultimately forced the Chinese to ask probing questions about the meaning
of their national experience and allowed Chinese artists to suggest an
swers with ever-greater autonomy.
I am not arguing that the Chinese state was passive and weak. To the
contrary, it pursued economic reform with determination and political vi
tality. From the beginning, there were state plans to lighten up political
controls, but the politicians of the early reform period did not anticipate
their full cultural and ideological implications.73 Nor did many foreign
students of these trends.74 Yet, the Party was anxious about the nonmate
rial dimensions of the changes it had unleashed. One response has been a
steady discussion of the need to strengthen “socialist spiritual civiliza
tion” as a “human counterpart” to rapid economic transformation.75
One of the popular interpretations of Chinese politics during the re
forms is the thesis of political immobility: China’s problem is a lack of po
litical change to accompany widespread economic transformation. Im
plicit in this thesis is the idea that political and economic reform must
proceed apace, each reinforcing the other. This view does not hold up well
when we consider the cultural realm: the decade of the 1980s brought
enormous political changes, especially easing restrictions on speech and
religion, and a greater toleration of nonstate organizations, but it also
brought the progressive weakening of state cultural organs. These
changes are cultural, but they are deeply political as well, and it is only by
a willful denial of the aesthetic dimension of politics that the political-
immobility cliché persists.
After the 1989 massacre, the winning faction in China’s government ar
gued that deposed leader Zhao Ziyang had let things get out of hand by
encouraging too much openness, that rising political expectations led to
the 1989 movement. In an inversion of the Western political-immobility
argument, Chinese hard liners insisted that crisis came from too much po
litical change. Among the many ironies of modern Chinese politics is that
Mao’s grand plans to transform Chinese culture during the Cultural Rev
olution failed, while the market’s unintended impact on the arts has be
come so pervasive.
The tension between artist and the state in China continues to be an im
portant dynamic in cultural life, although its terms have been redefined in
the course to two decades of economic reform. Most Chinese are aware of
the extensive change in this perennial relationship.76 Changes in the or
ganization of the arts system were so great that we must discard the com
mon observation that China’s economic reforms have come easily, but
that little has been achieved in political reform. Two decades of cultural
reform eroded the Party’s former easy domination of the ideological sys
tem, thereby freeing the way for additional reform in both economics and
politics. But many Westerners are so enthralled by the new anti-China
politics of post–Cold War triumphalism that they miss how much the pol
itics of culture has changed. The romantic ideal of the Chinese artist may
speak more to the West’s own needs for heroes locked in struggle against
tyranny than to the actual problems faced by most of China’s artists today.
These problems are real and often severe, but it is not helpful to regard the
artists simply and universally as victims of a brutal state.
NOTES
1. See Catherine Soussloff, The Absolute Artist: The Historiography of a Concept

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Janet Wolff, The Social Produc
tion of Art (London: Macmillan, 1981).
2. Marilyn Rueschemeyer, “State Patronage in the German Democratic Re
public: Artistic and Political Change in a State Socialist Society,” in Judith Huggins
Balfe, ed., Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Art Patronage (Urbana: Uni
versity of Illinois Press, 1993), 209.
3. George Orwell, “Prevention of Literature,” in John McCormick and Mairi
MacInnes, eds., Versions of Censorship (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company,
1962), 296, 299.
4. I have written about this heritage in Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and
the Chinese Art of Calligraphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
5. This estimate is based on numbers provided in Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1995
[“China statistical yearbook 1995”] (Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 1995),
642–644, to which I have added estimates based on earlier years for the film and
broadcast industry. The figure includes both artists and support personnel (ad
ministrators, bookkeepers, etc.), but excludes artists employed outside obviously
arts-related units. That is, it includes performers for the Ministry of Culture’s
song-and-dance troupes, but not those of the Ministry of Railways, the Capital
Iron and Steel Company, or, most significantly, the People’s Liberation Army.
6. Zhongguo nianjian 1996 [“China yearbook 1996”] (Beijing: Zhongguo Nian
jian She, 1996).
7. See Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics (Berke
ley: University of California Center for Chinese Studies, 1992), 6.
8. Philippe Massonnet, “Culture of Gold Replacing the Gold of Culture in
China,” Agence France Presse English Wire, 10/31/94, in China News Digest—
Global, November 3–4, 1994.
9. Wenyi is a contraction for wenxue (“literature”) and yishu (“fine arts”).
10. See the essays in Balfe, ed., Paying the Piper.
11. Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity,
and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 97.
12. See The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, George Bull, trans. (Har
mondsworth: Penguin, 1956).
13. Zhang Xianliang, Getting Used to Dying (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 66.
14. For a critique of the China field’s understatement of the contribution of
Maoist industrialization toward subsequent economic growth, see Chris Bramall,
32 Chapter 1
In Praise of Maoist Economic Planning. Living Standards and Economic Development in

Sichuan since 1931 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). See also Peter Nolan,
China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall: Economics and Planning in the Transition from Stalinism
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), and Maurice Meisner, The Deng Xiaoping Era:
An Inquiry into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978–1994 (New York: Hill and Wang,
1996), 188–205.
15. See Deborah Davis, “The Consumer Revolution in Urban China,” in Debo
rah Davis, ed., The Consumer Revolution in Urban China (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999).
16. Deborah S. Davis, “When a House Becomes His Home,” in Perry Link,
Richard P. Madsen, and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds., Popular China: Unofficial Culture
in a Globalizing Society (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 244.
17. Personal incomes continued to rise rapidly after Deng Xiaoping’s death, at
least in cities, where per capita disposable income grew from 5,160 yuan (U.S.
$620) in 1997 to 8,000 yuan (U.S. $964) in 2002. “Major Improvements in Living
Standard in Past 5 Years,” People’s Daily Online, at http://english.peopledaily.
com.cn (February 28, 2003).
18. Willy Wo-lap Lam, The Era of Jiang Zemin (Singapore: Simon & Schuster,
1999).
19. For the politics of this arts famine, see my “Arts Policies of the Cultural Rev
olution: The Rise and Fall of Culture Minister Yu Huiyong,” in William Joseph,
Christine Wong, and David Zweig, eds., New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1991), 219–241.
20. For example, “Ba yishu dangzuo shangpin shi kechi de xingwei” [“It is
shameful to treat art as a commodity”], Jiangxi ribao (December 11, 1954).
21. But some companies remained private for several years after 1966. See
Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times (London: Thames and Hud
son, 1975), 163–170.
22. Julia F. Andrews, “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the
Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Journal of Asian Studies 49(3) (August 1990), 555–585.
23. “Remolding and Study Movement Unfolded among Literary and Arts Cir
cles,” NCNA (December 1, 1951), Current Background 156 (February 5, 1952), 38.
24. Zhou Yang, “Reform the Ideology of Literature and Art, Improve the Work
of Leadership,” Current Background 156 (February 5, 1952), 28.
25. Paul Pickowicz told me about the history of the film archive in Eugene (Feb
ruary 26, 1987).
26. For example, see the survey reported in “Jinzhoushi jumin wenhua xiaofei
fasheng sida bianhua” [“Jinzhou residents have four big changes in cultural con
sumption”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 3, 1988).
27. James Cahill shows that this was not the reality of much artistic practice.
Yet, the Confucian elite pretended that gentlemen did not receive payment for art.
See James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional
China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
28. Helmut Martin, “‘Cultural China’: Irritation and Expectations at the End of
an Era,” in Maurice Brosseau, Kuan Hsin-chi, and Y. Y. Kueh, eds., China Review
1997 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1997), 278.
29. Fuzhou Television (February 8, 1986).
30. For an overview, see Maurice Meisner, The Deng Xiaoping Era; Richard
Baum, Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton: Prince
ton University Press, 1994); Lowell Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution: The
Post-Liberation Epoch, 1949–1981 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987);
Gordon White, Riding the Tiger: The Politics of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China
(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1993). The literature on the reform period
is enormous and often of transient value. Diverse, yet thoughtful, interpretations
include the following books: John P. Burns, Political Participation in Rural China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Cheng Li, Rediscovering China:
Dynamics and Dilemmas of Reform (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997);
Merle Goldman, Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China: Political Reform in the
Deng Xiaoping Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); Harry Harding,
China’s Second Revolution: Reform after Mao (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings In
stitution, 1987); Ruth Hayhoe, China’s Universities and the Open Door (Armonk,
N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989); William Hinton, The Great Reversal: The Privatization of
China, 1978–1989 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990); Emily Honig and Gail
Hershatter, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s (Palo Alto: Stanford Uni
versity Press, 1988); Barrett L. McCormick, Political Reform in Post-Mao China: De
mocracy and Bureaucracy in a Leninist State (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990); Peter Moody Jr., Chinese Politics after Mao (New York: Praeger, 1983);
Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Peter Nolan, China’s Rise, Rus-
sia’s Fall; Elizabeth J. Perry and Christine Wong, eds., The Political Economy of Re
form in Post-Mao China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Suzanne
Pepper, China’s Education Reform in the 1980s: Policies, Issues, and Historical Per
spectives (Berkeley: University of California Institute of East Asian Studies, 1990);
Vivienne Shue, The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic (Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press, 1988).
31. Quoted in John Halliday, ed., The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver
Hoxha (London: Chatto & Windus, 1986), 367, n. 6.
32. Tianjin was one of three cities (with Beijing and Shanghai) given status
equivalent to a province in 1949; Chongqing was added in 1997. “Chang P’ing-
hua’s Speech to Cadres on the Cultural Front” (July 23, 1978), Issues & Studies,
14(12) (December 1978), 92–93.
33. Hu Yaobang’s sycophancy of Deng was profound. In the 1950s, Hu joined
one of Deng’s fabled bridge games in Sichuan, where the penalty for losing was
to crawl around the table. When Deng was losing to Sichuan boss Li Jingquan, Hu
declared, “Comrade Xiaoping has a noble character and high prestige. It is not ap
propriate for him to crawl. It will tarnish his image if others hear of it. . . . I will be
his substitute. I am shorter. It is easier for me to crawl.” In fact, Hu was a half cen
timeter taller than Deng, which did not keep him from crawling in bridge, as in
politics. See Pang Pang, The Death of Hu Yaobang, Si Ren, trans. (Honolulu: Uni
versity of Hawaii Center for Chinese Studies, 1989), 38.
34. Ezra Vogel, One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1989), 116. See Melanie Manion, Retirement of Revolu
tionaries in China: Public Policies, Social Norms, Private Interests (Princeton: Prince
ton University Press, 1993).
34 Chapter 1
35. In contrast to the severity of Mao’s purges, Deng permitted Hua Guofeng to
retain some dignity. He remained a member of the Party’s Central Committee un
til October 1997.
36. Merle Goldman, “The Zigs and Zags in the Treatment of Intellectuals,”
China Quarterly 104 (December 1985), 709–715.
37. Ezra Vogel, One Step Ahead in China, 129. See especially Lawrence R. Sul
livan, “Assault on the Reforms: Conservative Criticism of Political and Eco
nomic Liberalization in China, 1985–86,” China Quarterly 114 (June 1988),
198–222.
38. See Bruce J. Dickson, “Conflict and Non-Compliance in Chinese Politics:
Party Rectification, 1983–87,” Pacific Affairs 63(2) (summer 1990), 170–190.
39. See Lowell Dittmer’s periodization of fang (“openness”) and shou (“restric
tion”) in “Patterns of Elite Strife and Succession in Chinese Politics,” China Quar
terly 123 (September 1990), 422, n. 30.
40. In 1983 Qi Benyu, who had been under arrest since falling from his modest
Cultural Revolution power fifteen years earlier, was sentenced to eighteen years
for “persecuting state leaders and inciting ‘beating, smashing and looting.’” Four
others, including former deputy minister of culture Liu Qingtang received com
parable sentences. “5 ‘Gang of Four’ Supporters Get 15- to 18-Year Jail Terms,”
New York Times (November 3, 1983).
41. Zhao Ziyang, “Report on the Work of the Government (June 7, 1983),” in
The First Session of the Sixth National People’s Congress (Beijing: Foreign Languages
Press, 1983), 50–51
42. Fang Jie, “Jutuan gaige, shizai bixing” [“We truly must carry out reform of
drama companies”], in 1987 Zhongguo wenyi nianjian (Beijing: Wenhua Yishu
Chubanshe, 1988), 465–466.
43. Directed by Chen Kaige in 1985.
44. Deng here followed the example of Mao Zedong, a leader who also dis
missed successors such as Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao, whom he found wanting.
45. Geremie R. Barmé, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), 281–315; see also John Clark, “Official Reactions
to Modern Art in China since the Beijing Massacre,” Pacific Affairs 65(3) (fall 1992),
334–352.
46. Shanghai Television Advertisement in South China Morning Post (March 3,
1997).
47. Quoted in Stuart R. Schram, “‘Economics in Command?’ Ideology and Pol
icy since the Third Plenum, 1978–1984,” China Quarterly 99 (September 1984), 433.
48. Ling Yang, “Reform Booms Non-Government Art Troupes,”Beijing Review
31(27) (July 4–10, 1988), 27–28.
49. An excellent review of the course of reform in one of the arts is Elizabeth
Wichmann, “Tradition and Innovation in Contemporary Beijing Opera Perfor
mance,” The Drama Review 34 (spring 1990), 146–180.
50. Bi Xizhou, “‘Xiang qian kan’ gei dalu yinyuejie dailai weiji” [“‘Looking to
ward cash’ brings a crisis in the mainland musical world”] Guanchajia 38 (Decem
ber 1980), 46, 69.
51. “Yinyue biaoyan tuanti tizhi gaige zuotanhui” [“Forum on structural re
form of musical performing groups”], Renmin yinyue (May 1986), 7–11.
52. Cai Furu, “Meiguo jiaoxiang yuetuan pubian mianlin jingji kunnan”
[“American symphony orchestras routinely face economic difficulties”], Renmin
yinyue 218 (1983), 63–64.
53. Wang Qianhai, “Philharmonic Flounders with Dwindling Audience,”
China Daily (May 23, 1989); Wang Qianhai, “Symphony Society Facing Difficul
ties,” China Daily (July 21, 1989). Changing the name for money became an issue
again in 1993. See Zha Xiduo, “Zhongyang yuetuan di kunjing: ‘zhao budao bei’
jiu shi bei” [“The predicament of the Central Philharmonic: ‘Can’t find north’ is
north”], Jiushi niandai 281 (June 1993), 16–17. On the rage for symphonic music
in the early 1980s, see my Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and
the Struggle over Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),
175–186.
54. Zha Xiduo, “Zhongyang yuetuan di kunjing,” 16–17.
55. See Ge Xin, “Zhongguo jiaoxiang yue zhouchu xin yinfu” [“Chinese sym
phonic music plays new notes”], Yazhou zhoukan (September 16–22, 1996),
64–65; Angelica Cheung, “All Together Now,” Asia Magazine (June 20–22, 1997),
36–37.
56. Li Ling’s inscription: “Professional choral bodies have met with unprece
dented hardship. I hope the Choral Society will pull itself together for a revival
and lead the nation’s choral art to a new development and a new height.” See
Oliver Chou, “Bitter End for China’s Western Music Pioneer,” Straits Times
(November 21, 2003).
57. Zhou Youwen, “Wenhua duanxun” [“Culture notes”], Zhengming 147
(November 1997), 76–77.
58. “Zhiyi gaochao guoji saichang luhuo guanjun, shenru jiceng quanxin
quanyi weibing yanchu” [“Superb skill, repeatedly winning international compe
titions; penetrate to the basic level, wholeheartedly performing for the troops”],
Guangming ribao (September 23, 1987).
59. “Yinyue biaoyan tuanti tizhi gaige zuotanhui” [“Forum on structural
reform of musical performing groups”], Renmin yinyue (May 1986), 7–11.
60. Zhong Wen, “Cong ‘kan baixi’ shuoqi” [“On ‘seeing free opera’”], Nanfang
ribao (May 1, 1979).
61. “Yiji yanyuan gongzi liansheng shiji” [“Wages of grade one performers
increase ten grades”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 9, 1989) (reprinted from Zhongguo
qingnian bao).
62. Judith Shapiro and Liang Heng, Cold Winds, Warm Winds: Intellectual Life in
China Today (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), 84–86.
63. Gao Zhanxiang, “Wenhua liangdao gongzuo yao shiying gaige kaifang de
xin xingshi” [“The work of cultural leadership must respond to the new circum
stances of reform and openness”], in 1987 Zhongguo wenyi nianjian (Beijing: Wen
hua Yishu Chubanshe, 1988), 462–464.
64. See “1989 Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu jinyibu fanrong wenyi de ruogan
yijian” [“Some opinions of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee on
advancing toward a flourishing literature and art”] (February 17, 1989), in Fujian
ribao (March 12, 1989).
65. Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye, “Chinese Profiles,” Chinese Literature (winter
1985), 26.
36 Chapter 1
66. The quotation is from Gu Zuoyi and Tian Feng, “Shangpin jingji tiaojianxia
xiangzhen shehui wenhua jianshe de tansuo—Guangdongsheng Dongguangshi
Humenzhen diaocha” [“An exploration of village social and cultural construction
under the conditions of the commodity economy—an investigation of Humen
Township, Dongguan County, Guangdong”], Renmin ribao (February 13, 1989). See
also “Yongbao gaige kaifang de nanguo dachao” [“Embrace South China’s great
wave of reform and openness”], Wenyi bao (January 16, 1988).
67. Three excellent, if very different, overviews of the new culture are Geremie
R. Barmé, In the Red; Claire Huot, China’s New Cultural Scene: A Handbook of
Changes (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); and Jianying Zha, China Pop
(New York: The New Press, 1994).
68. For an analysis of China’s aesthetics field, see Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure
of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China (Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press, 1997). Key documents are found in Deng Fuxing, ed., Yishu
meixue wenxuan 1919–1989 [“Anthology of writings on fine arts and aesthetics”]
(Chongqing: Chongqing Chubanshe, 1996).
69. See Cheng Li, China’s Leaders: The New Generation (Lanham, Md.: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2001).
70. See Richard P. Suttmeier and Richard Kraus, “Reconstituting Culture: Chi
nese Arts and Sciences and the Transition from Leninism,” in Edwin Winckler, ed.,
Leninist Transitions (Boulder: Lynn Rienner, 1998).
71. Jiang donated the royalty payment to the Shanghai children’s welfare fund.
See “Cankao xiaoxi” [“Reference news”], Zhengming 150 (April 1990), 15.
72. Perry Link, “The Limits of Cultural Reform in Deng Xiaoping’s China,”
Modern China 13(2) (April 1987), 118–119.
73. Daniel C. Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and “Thought
Work” in Reformed China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999), 13–14. Barmé
contrasts the activism of China’s state to the Soviet dinosaur in In the Red, 325.
74. Some of my own earlier misperceptions may be found in “China’s Cultural
‘Liberalization’ and Conflict over the Social Organization of the Arts,” Modern
China 9(2) (April 1983), 212–227.
75. For one application of spiritual civilization, see Carolyn Cartier, “Transna
tional Urbanism in the Reform-Era Chinese City: Landscapes from Shenzhen,”
Urban Studies 39(9) (2002), 1513–1532.
76. The Chinese literary world has been writing about these changes for some
time, including some fine works by Chinese writers abroad. For example, see Jing
Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996); and Xudong Zhang, Chinese Modernism in the
Era of Reforms: Cultural Fever, Avant-Garde Fiction, and the New Chinese Cinema
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997).
2
The Waning Authority
of the Chinese State
as Patron of the Arts
T he Communist Party reorganized the arts, not in a single act, but in a se
ries of only partially coordinated economic and administrative mea
sures implemented between 1949 and 1957. The resulting cultural system
held three important consequences for the long-term relations between
artists and the state. First, the state became the major patron, making artis
tic work both more professional and more bureaucratic than ever before in
Chinese history. The modal artist became an employee in an urban-centered
state network of cultural institutions. Second, the Party built a huge, if un
steady, foundation for political control of the arts, as new cultural bureau
cracies competed for authority to supervise the work of artists. Third, the
Party destroyed the popular commercial culture of the cities. As the Party
extended political control over the arts, once obvious distinctions among
elite, popular, and folk culture became blurred as officials treated all art
forms as administratively equivalent.
The extension of political control was the central issue for scholarship
on the politics of Chinese culture undertaken before the reform period.
While there are many details we do not know, the broad means by which
the Party strengthened its controls over artists and audiences are now
clear.1 After an initial restriction of its ideological adversaries, the Party in
troduced to the arts world a new combination of rewards and punish
ments. A series of political campaigns began in 1951 with criticism of the
movie The Life of Wu Xun, continued through a national discussion of the
classic eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, and escalated
into the 1955 campaign against writer Hu Feng, accused of resisting the
new cultural regime. Initial Maoist optimism that intellectuals could
37
38 Chapter 2
strengthen the Party by offering their constructive criticisms gave way to

a ferocious antirightist campaign that shocked most of China’s artists into
political and aesthetic caution.2 Party control became clear by the end of
the first decade of rule, sponsoring a rather dull and limited range of art
works.
Less attention has been given to the institutions that the Party estab
lished to administer the arts.3 These institutions, borrowed directly from
Soviet experience and reproduced throughout China, ultimately fell short
of securing Party hegemony. Their failure was double. First, the institu
tions themselves collapsed under political attack during the Cultural Rev
olution. Second, when these institutions were restored in the late 1970s,
they were unable to prevent a remarkable decline of Communist author
ity as market reforms eroded their administrative powers.
Implicit in my approach is a treatment of China’s Party-state not as a
single, totalizing entity, but as a body of constituent parts. Scholars have
shown how the state enhanced its powers over the course of the 1950s.
But we are now in a position to look critically at developments attributed
to the state as a whole. The Communists built a state that presented a re
markably unitary appearance. But closer inspection complicates the im
age of purposeful solidity. This story is usually told in terms of individual
repression or as the cowing of a great mass of intellectuals. The creation
of institutions for culture has received less attention.
This chapter will describe the chief political bodies that patronized the
arts and their interactions under the regimes of Mao Zedong and Deng
Xiaoping. Under Mao, the state had enormous power over artists and au
dience, yet the cultural bureaucracies were prevented from building upon
this power to create strong institutions. Under Deng, cultural organiza
tions had fewer resources and less power, but two of them are perhaps
somewhat more firmly institutionalized. As the reform program has ex
tended to arts institutions, one of its major consequences has been to di
minish the ability of powerful political patrons to control China’s culture.
CHINA’S FIRST PATRONAGE REVOLUTION:

ARTISTS BECOME STATE EMPLOYEES
From the perspective of the reform era, when the smashing of the iron rice
bowl of permanent employment extends to state-employed artists and
performers, the 1950s stand out sharply as a time when the state dramat
ically enlarged employment opportunities for artists. Twentieth-century
China has had two revolutions in artistic patronage; we cannot compre
hend the one that is now underway without understanding its predeces
sor.
The Waning Authority of the Chinese State 39
The first half of the twentieth century was a hard time to be a profes
sional artist. The arts were ill organized, and the social status of most
artists was extremely low. Singers were commonly regarded as prostitutes,
and practitioners of elite arts such as painting or literature were often
scorned for working for money. The traditional elite valued an inspired
amateurism in the arts: art should not be created for the base motive of
profit. Nor should it be sold. Instead, it should be exchanged as gifts
among cultivated gentlemen. The power of the amateur ideal was so great
that genuine professional artists often had to pretend that they also fol
lowed the genteel ways of the leisured elite.4 At mid-century, many Chi
nese artists would have been happy to abandon this outmoded mandarin
model, but found that the economy did not provide opportunities to do so.
Opera singer Xin Fengxia recounted the bad old days in her memoir.5
Employment was irregular and ill paid, and even excellent singers had to
endure the humiliation of begging for donations from the wealthy.
Singers were often illiterate, and young ones had to bribe the famous ones
for indifferent training.6 Practitioners of nonliterary arts sought to gain
some control over their economic destinies by banding together in guilds,
premodern forerunners of labor unions.7
The arts world tried to adapt to China’s changing and unsettled econ
omy. For instance, storytellers at Shanghai’s celebrated Great World
Amusement Center began to commodify their art:
[I]n the past storytelling had been a more leisurely entertainment, in which a
performer would continue his narrative over a period of several days in the
interests of keeping his audience with him. In the pressured life of the mod
ern city, however, it became the custom to break down the much-loved ram
bling tales from the traditional epics and romantic novels into single
episodes that could be narrated separately or in sequence to make an inte
grated story.8
Ted Huters describes how the ruinous economy of postwar China so

preoccupied writers that professional demands remained barely articu-
lated.9 Chinese writers were (and continue to be) paid royalties according
to the number of characters they wrote, rather than how many copies are
sold, as in the West. Despite rapid inflation, these payments actually de
clined, so that by 1946 typesetters earned more for setting characters than
the authors earned for writing them. Shen Congwen claimed in 1946 that
Ba Jin was the only writer able to live off his work. Lao She did earn
enough to avoid moonlighting, but only because of payments for the
American translation of his popular novel Camel xiangzi. Shen may have
exaggerated, but only slightly: a more recent estimate lists only five writ
ers who supported themselves by their literary activities: Liang Qichao,
Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Lin Yutang, and Shen Congwen himself.10
40 Chapter 2
China’s pre-1949 cultural market was too weak for most artists to sup
port themselves through their art.11 Most elite artists turned to teaching,
editorial work, or other employment. The Communist revolution did not
so much destroy the arts market as stabilize and expand opportunities for
steady employment. While some artists left the Chinese mainland rather
than accept the Party and its new state as their employers, the vast ma
jority either regarded the new regime as an improvement or were in no
position to leave.
Marxism, as China’s new official ideology, did not easily justify privi
leging cultural workers. Raymond Williams cites Marx on the place of the
artist:
There is a difficult passage in the Grundrisse in which he argues that while

the man who makes a piano is a productive worker, there is a real question
whether the man who distributes the piano is also a productive worker; but
he probably is, since he contributes to the realization of surplus value. Yet,
when it comes to the man who plays the piano, whether to himself or to oth
ers, there is no question: he is not a productive worker at all. So piano-maker
is base, but pianist is superstructure.12
“Superstructural” artists might well wonder how important they were

to be in the new regime as compared with workers defined by more
clearly “material” criteria. Nonetheless, the Party elevated artists rather
quickly. Many artists had joined the revolution at the Party’s revolution
ary base in Yan’an, where they turned their talents to propaganda or
worked as instructors in the Lu Xun Arts Academy.13 After the revolution,
these artists became China’s cultural leaders, mingling Marxist theories
with inherited memories of literati practice. Soviet examples also rein
forced China’s trend to echo Confucian tradition’s giving priority to in
tellectual work.
Government employment of artists increased dramatically through the
1950s as the state created new cultural organizations. Some sense of the
scale of growth in the culture industry is suggested by the following fig
ures: between 1949 and 1962 performing-arts groups increased from 1,000
to 3,320, county and municipal cultural centers from 896 to 2,514, public
libraries from 55 to 541, museums from 21 to 230, and film projection units
from 646 to 18,583.14 By 1956, there were two hundred thousand profes
sional folk singers and dancers, a type of performer favored more by the
Party than by elite artists.15 Many prominent artists were favored with
posts in the new cultural bureaucracy, accompanied by housing, cars, en
tertainment, and opportunities for travel. By 1960, for instance, there were
eighty literary magazines, all of which required editorial staff. Of the
3,719 members of the Writers Association, some could earn a good living
as employees of its provincial and municipal branches.16
Yet, despite the creation of administrative jobs for artists, most artists
found employment as writers, musicians, painters, or dancers in schools,
performing ensembles, and other ordinary work units. This was an im
portant departure from the Soviet model that China’s Communists were
busy applying; in Eastern Europe artists’ associations provided jobs to all
of their members.17 And while China’s counterpart associations had ben
efits to distribute, they never provided a steady source of largess that
could be used to control artists in the Soviet manner. Perhaps as a result,
the Chinese associations seem never to have been held in such wide
spread contempt as those of the Soviet Union.18 The expansion of em
ployment made the extension of Communist Party influence relatively
painless for most, at least until the 1957 trauma of the antirightist cam
paign. As new units were created or old ones reorganized and expanded,
artists with Communist sympathies could be put into positions of influ
ence. Even the literati of the old society were absorbed. By 1953, each
province had established a Hall of Culture and History, where aging in
tellectuals were provided small salaries, access to a library, and space and
materials for painting.19 Artists became a privileged group before the Cul
tural Revolution. They were comforted, salaried, and educated, and in
many cases committed to a cosmopolitan May Fourth ideology at odds
with the nativist populism propounded by Party leaders.20 They enjoyed
travel and work in desirable urban locations, such as the assignment of a
West Lake site for the Hangzhou’s China Academy of Fine Arts. When
times were hard in the nationwide famine of the early 1960s, top artists
joined athletes in the privilege of extra rations.
Yet, artists in any nation respond less willingly to social discipline than
other professionals. The Party’s tasks for artists became less attractive pre
cisely as conditions of employment improved. The revolution had de
manded artists skilled at exposure, satire, and inspiring people to join the
revolution. Consolidating the new regime required artists to celebrate
endless victories, a different skill altogether. Tensions between artists and
their new employers were perhaps inevitable, although their scale was
not.
The Hundred Flowers and antirightist campaigns were cultural coun
terparts to the 1956 socialization of industry, agriculture, and commerce,
a series of campaigns by which private ownership in the economy was
brought under political control. The Party viewed its new state domina
tion of the economy as a tool for bringing a new order to China. State em
ployment of artists and intellectuals implied the possibility of state disci
pline: of five million intellectuals in 1957, five hundred thousand were
classified as rightists.21
As individuals, artists remained highly vulnerable to shifts in policy,
yet the corporate weight of artists increased until the Cultural Revolution.
42 Chapter 2
The disjuncture between individual disaster and collective good fortune

was sometimes unnerving, although it never reached the lunatic situation
of the Soviet Union in 1937, where the Writers Union distributed such
privileges as good apartments and imported clothing at the height of
Stalin’s terror.22
MULTIPLE ARTS BUREAUCRACIES
How were artists organized by the new state? The model established in
the 1950s under strong Soviet influence persists today in broad outline.
No one institution controls cultural policy. Several institutions share re
sponsibility for the arts in what Chinese call the cultural system. This set
of bureaucracies is comparable to other loose groupings, such as the for
eign affairs system or the finance and trade system. In the foreign affairs
system, policy is determined by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Min
istry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, the Defense Ministry,
and the Party’s United Front and International Liaison Departments. It
also involves the supposedly popular organizations for friendship with
foreign countries. Other bodies with specific foreign interests, such as
the Ministry of Education, are also involved. A comparable system en
compasses the major cultural institutions, with four major bureaucra
cies, a larger number of agencies with peripheral interests in the arts,
and the informal, but often momentous, participation of senior Party
leaders.23
The Ministry of Culture

The most obvious, although not always the most important arts bu
reaucracy is the Ministry of Culture, which operates a vast network of
arts organizations, including opera companies, symphony orchestras,
conservatories and arts academies, and many publications. The min-
istry’s hierarchy descends to include a department of culture in each
province. Each of China’s more than two thousand counties also has a
cultural bureau. At the local level, these operate neighborhood cultural
centers. In prosperous urban areas these centers are often multistory
recreation centers with libraries and meeting rooms, which offer les
sons in painting, support amateur musicians, hire storytellers, and pro
vide a place to play bridge, pool, and video games. The network of cul
tural centers is spread more thinly in the countryside. The Ministry of
Culture does not serve many villages, and others often have a “cultural
station,” consisting of a simple reading room with outdated books and
magazines.
The Communist Party Propaganda Department

The Central Committee’s Propaganda Department is charged with over
seeing ideology, culture, and education.24 Within the Propaganda Depart
ment is the Arts Bureau, whose staff works closely with the Ministry of
Culture. The propaganda bureaucracy is replicated in each of China’s
provinces, cities, and counties. Appointment as Party secretary for propa
ganda is an important post at any level. Until 1984, appointment of lead
ing officials throughout the cultural system required vetting by the Pro
paganda Department, although this approval was typically a formality.25
Initially, many propaganda workers were revolutionary veterans with lit
tle training or interest in the arts, which they often came to view prima
rily as a realm of possible political incident. This potential strain with
other arts units intensified over time, earning propaganda personnel rep
utations as political hacks. This has often been true, though there are no
table exceptions.
The People’s Liberation Army

The army is another major employer of artists, both for entertaining and
encouraging its troops, and is an important sponsor of performances for
civilians. The key institution here is the General Political Department of
the People’s Liberation Army. The head of this department is usually one
of the nation’s chief politicians (including such well-known political per
sonalities as Li Desheng, Zhang Chunqiao, Wei Guoqing, Yu Qiuli, and
Yang Baibing). A cultural department within this office oversees the
army’s bands, opera companies, dance troupes, novelists, and poets. The
army has operated a major arts school in Beijing since 1960. Each of
China’s seven military regions operates major cultural institutions, many
of which develop their own specialties. If it seems odd that the army
should have a prominent arts role, bear in mind that the United States
routinely spends more money for the military bands of the Department of
Defense than for the entire budget of the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Federation of Artists

The Federation of Artists is an umbrella organization for a network of pro
fessional organizations representing writers, painters and sculptors,
dancers, filmmakers, calligraphers, musicians, acrobats, and ballad
singers and comedians (quyi). Each professional organization has a na
tional hierarchy, parallel to the Propaganda Department and the Ministry
of Culture. Neither at the central nor at the local level is the federation as
important as its constituent organizations. In Fujian there were twelve
units in the provincial Arts Federation in the 1980s, but the federation had
44 Chapter 2
neither budget nor staff of its own. Its meetings were said to resemble
those of the United Nations, with painters, writers, and musicians each
pushing their own special interests. Among these organizations, the Writ
ers Association has been more influential than the others, reflecting the
historical prestige of writing in Chinese culture.26 Many artists are em
ployed as administrators for these organizations, or as editors for their
publications. The various arts associations publish influential profes
sional journals (such as People’s Literature, Poetry, Fine Arts, and People’s
Music). They also honor prominent artists with posts, award prizes to new
work of merit, and signal policy changes through their publications and
congresses. These organizations are an important link between Party pol
icy and the majority of artists who are not Party members.
Other Institutions
Still other organizations are important arts patrons. The Ministry of For
eign Affairs is deeply involved in cultural diplomacy through the ex
change of art exhibitions and musical performances as signs of amity with
other nations. The ministry has its own musical ensemble, the “Oriental
Song and Dance Troupe,” which specializes in performing music of na
tions with whom China seeks warm relations. The Foreign Ministry may
work closely with the Writers Association or the Fine Arts Association in
cultural exchanges, as well as with the state Commission for Cultural Re
lations with Foreign Countries. Party departments such as the United
Front Work Department, charged with relations with Taiwan and over
seas Chinese, are also active in arranging visits to China by painters and
poets of Chinese ethnicity from other lands. The Party’s minority affairs
units also become patrons of the arts when they sponsor song-and-dance
ensembles for Xinjiang or Inner Mongolia. Similarly, the railroads have a
well-known song-and-dance troupe, as do important mines and Beijing’s
Capital Steel works. More predictably, both central and provincial educa
tion departments employ artists as teachers in high schools and universi
ties.
The public security agencies also maintain an interest in the arts. Like
any other large Chinese organization, they have their own amateur drama
troupes, singers, and painters. The 1944 Yan’an Spring Festival included a
yangge performance by a Public Security Office troupe.27 In Fuzhou I saw
the annual fine arts exhibit of the Fujian’s police and fire departments.
Some of the subjects were a bit more martial than usual, but otherwise a
visitor would never have imagined that these often highly skilled exam
ples of calligraphy, painting, and photography were the work of off-duty
cops. But these same officers supervise many professional artists. For two
decades, they were charged with keeping check on the “rightist ele
ments,” who included many artists in their number. After the Beijing Mas
sacre, they were charged with uprooting bourgeois elements who had ag
itated the students, again including many artists. They must approve the
exit permits for all Chinese seeking to travel abroad, including artists, al
though permission to travel was granted with much greater ease by the
end of the 1990s.
The General Federation of Trade Unions operates a network of workers
cultural palaces throughout China’s cities. Separate from the cultural cen
ters of the Ministry of Culture, these are typically large-scale entertain
ment emporia, with dancing in the evenings for young people, opera in
the afternoon for retired workers, and movie theaters open to all. On May
1, the union organizes evening concerts. This is a steady, but not a partic
ularly vital, part of the cultural system. Similarly, the Youth League over
sees the cultivation of talented young artists. In his long tenure as head of
the Youth League, Hu Yaobang developed close ties to many Chinese
artists, such as pianist Fou Ts’ong.28 The Youth League also regularly em
ploys artists as propaganda workers.
Culture is thus administered by a series of parallel bureaucracies, four
of which are especially prominent. The four major bureaucracies operate
at the central, provincial, and local levels, and artists will certainly be
aware of each. For instance, in the Fujian city of Xiamen, there are painters
who work for the military units stationed there; the more prominent of
them are members of the Xiamen Association of Fine Arts, and they par
ticipate in activities arranged by the Xiamen Cultural Bureau. As military
artists, they are especially attuned to shifting emphases coming from the
Propaganda Department.
Artists are also keenly attuned to the hierarchies that these organiza
tions represent. According to Guo Feng, head of the Fujian Writers Asso
ciation, there is a clear ranking of literary publications according to na
tional, provincial, or local level. While such rankings are often obnoxious
to writers and editors, it reflects a long-standing national desire for clar
ity in the political system. Not only do wages and other benefits follow
these ranks, but criticism from higher-rank publications is seen as defini-
tive.29
Some institutions belong to the state (the Ministry of Culture, the
Army’s General Political Department), while the Propaganda Depart
ment is a branch of the Communist Party. Others are people’s organi
zations (the Arts Federation, the Unions), that is, they are theoretically
mass associations, representing the people directly, rather than the state
or Party. These distinctions are important in terms of status and power,
but are often obscured in practice. Communist Party leadership unifies
the cultural system. For instance, when He Jingzhi was appointed act
ing minister of culture in 1989, he was concurrently head of the Arts
46 Chapter 2
Department of the Party Propaganda Department and deputy director

of the Propaganda Department. All of the state and popular organiza
tions have Communists among their members and in some leading po
sitions. However, many officials, especially of the professional associa
tions, are not Party members.
These bureaucracies compete with one another for influence. Each
has its own meetings and can identify favorite models to press for its
own vision of the arts in China. For instance, the Ministry of Culture
held a famous meeting in Guangzhou in 1962 to make arts administra
tion less heavy-handed. Chen Yi, the arts-loving minister of foreign af
fairs, called for experimenting with some market-style reforms in the
arts.
We do not handle the practical management of drama and film as well as the
bourgeoisie! We must reduce our capital. We give you the blood of the state
and the blood and sweat of the people. If you will learn to calculate costs like
the bourgeoisie, earn a little money for us, and lighten our load, we will kow
tow three times before you and say to you, “long life.”30
In stark contrast, the army’s arts organization held a rival meeting in

1966, where Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, pushed for more politicized arts on
the eve of the Cultural Revolution. In 1979 the Federation of Arts held its
third national conference in a mood of ebullience as artists purged and
humiliated during the Cultural Revolution were restored to positions of
honor and influence. However, the minister of culture, Huang Zhen, did
not attend this meeting, signaling a disapproval that also marked the end
of his influence.
Geography also makes important divisions. The competing claims of
Beijing and Shanghai for national cultural leadership are notorious. In the
1960s both cities were headed by opera-loving mayors, who sponsored ri
val conferences on how opera should be reformed. The influence of these
two cities over culture in the rest of China is difficult to exaggerate. Trends
begin in these cities, receive validation, and then become acceptable in
provincial centers, much the way New York and Los Angeles function in
the United States’s cultural system, or Paris in France’s. In addition, other
areas are important centers in specific arts—Hangzhou in Zhejiang and
Chengdu in Sichuan are centers for traditional Chinese painting, for in
stance. Other cities, such as Xi’an or Guangzhou, exercise cultural influ
ence that often extends beyond their regions, Xi’an because of its history
as an ancient capital and Guangzhou because of its history of contact with
Hong Kong and the West. Guangzhou has benefited from recent eco
nomic policies, while Shenyang, once a base for leftist arts programs dur
ing the Maoist era, has receded in importance as the power of Manchuria
has declined.
Patrons from the Political Elite

The purported unity of shared Communist leadership sometimes ob
scures, but never eliminates, rivalry among arts organization. Adminis
trative ambiguity invites organizational conflict. In culture, as in other
policy areas, interagency disputes tend to push issues ever higher in the
political system before they can be resolved. One of the members of the
Standing Committee of the Party’s Political Bureau assumes general re
sponsibility for questions of ideology and culture, although in controver
sial cases nearly any member of the top political elite can intervene.31
In some cases, members of the political elite favor pet projects. Eco
nomics official Chen Yun used his political position to help protect an im
portant regional art form, the ballad singing of the lower Yangzi known
as pingtan.32 While Chen was politically out of favor in the late 1950s, he
enthusiastically pursued his hobby by traveling around with equipment
from the Central Broadcasting System to record local ballad artists, requi
sitioning a pipa tutor and arranging for the establishment of a ballad-
singing school in Suzhou.33 After Chen rose to new eminence after Mao’s
death, he published his extensive writings on ballad singing, which in
cluded forty articles written between 1958 and 1983. In addition to com
menting on specific pieces, Chen exhorted the Chinese to study the his
tory of Yangzi ballads, publish more old texts, and train a new generation
of artists.34 Chen may have found this music a balm for his political
wounds; he also helped protect his art against critics who dismissed it as
feudal and also preserved an endangered artistic tradition.
The influnce of a powerful patron can persist even after his death. In the
aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, as the arts establishment pressed to
make European painting and sculpture respectable once again, Fine Arts
magazine published three postcards of French art mailed from Europe by
Zhou Enlai in 1921.35 What is impressive is that someone (in this case the
Tianjin Municipal History Museum) had kept these relics and was able to
pull them out for display when it was useful to show the late premier’s
appreciation for bourgeois culture.
These basic elements of the cultural system in Chinese politics have
formed the parameters for state patronage of the arts since the early 1950s,
but the dynamics of their interrelationship have varied considerably over
time. I will contrast the way they operated during Mao’s rule with a new
pattern that emerged in the reform period.
THE CULTURAL BUREAUCRACIES UNDER MAO
The strength and focus of Beijing’s early control over culture is striking
from the perspective of the reform era, when the state seems to be ever
48 Chapter 2
weaker and more internally divided. Yet, when reading the 1950s anew,
one can discern the fine fractures in the cultural system that became ma
jor crevices on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Relations among the
four chief cultural bureaucracies were volatile during Mao’s rule. Most fa
vored was the Party Propaganda Department.
The Propaganda Department

In the 1950s, China’s leaders recognized how vital propaganda had been
to their revolution. Many regarded the arts primarily as media for propa
ganda; even the core of senior leaders who took high culture seriously
saw propaganda as an important secondary role for the cultural system.
The conviction that propaganda was an important function of culture not
only reflected the Party’s revolutionary victory, it also echoed a traditional
elite concern that culture should provide moral tutelage for the common
people. Confucian predecessors of the Chinese Communist Party had
shared a belief in the political centrality of art. The combination of poetry
and administration has ancient roots in China. Song Dynasty poet Su
Dongpo believed that “What a ruler has to rely upon is only the hearts of
men.”36 Such a view encourages a moralism in administration that in the
past led Imperial magistrates to become “father-mother officials,” treating
the citizens under their rule as children.
For ordinary Chinese people as well as the political elite, the word
“propaganda” (xuanchuan) has a much more matter-of-fact connotation
than its sinister implications in English. Perhaps its emotional punch is
close to that of the English word “advertising”—people may dismiss it as
unserious or annoying, but do not cower before it. In contrast, the word
“propaganda” typically elicits shivers of discomfort in the West. Ameri
can writer Ward Just captures this sense: “‘What’s propaganda?’ the boy
asked. ‘A Rhapsody,’ Axel said. ‘A bully’s love song.’”37
The practical consequence of this elite attitude was a nearly ceaseless
drive to organize the arts and apply them in the business of rule.38 The
propaganda apparatus attained priority because of its experience at or
ganizing political campaigns, which provided administrative unity to
the cultural system. At Yan’an in the 1940s the Party learned how to har
ness the power of the arts to arouse ordinary citizens to participate in the
revolutionary cause. The orderly bureaucrats of the Ministry of Culture
were simply not so experienced or enthusiastic at organizing vast politi
cal campaigns as their Propaganda Department colleagues. Campaigns
were ad hoc, organized outside the regular bureaucratic channels, and
offered Mao an important tool in keeping officials on guard against the
routine he feared would bring the revolution to a premature conclu-
sion.39
As a political resource in a poor nation, propaganda has the great merit

of being inexpensive. Propagandistic arts could inspire action, justify sac
rifice, and offer instructions for behavior with little cost at a time when
China could not accomplish these things with capital. Nor were China’s
leaders eager to use force, although they certainly were not embarrassed
to resort to coercion. China’s economic strategy was to substitute abun
dant labor for scarce capital; propaganda’s role was to squeeze more ef
fort from this labor. Lynn White has described how the campaign style
helped achieve goals, at least in the short run, with relatively few re
sources. The Party, as it tried to transform important cities such as Shang
hai with surprisingly few members, turned to campaigns to extend their
influence over nonmembers. In addition, campaigns kept subordinates
and adversaries off balance, although the system ultimately encouraged
compliance through fear of repression.40
The determination of Party leaders to put propaganda specialists in
charge of culture was also a result of suspicion and hostility toward bour
geois intellectuals who otherwise would have exercised arts leadership.
At Yan’an, Mao Zedong instituted a systematic thought reform of the
bourgeois artists who had fled from Shanghai and Beijing, lecturing them
on how to use their art for propaganda. At first, propaganda campaigns
were seen as a way of guiding the patriotic contributions offered by these
intellectuals. But after the antirightist campaign of 1957, propaganda spe
cialists viewed the bourgeois cultural specialists with hostility and treated
them punitively.

Despite the scale of its activities and the prestige of the Soviet model that
it emulated, China’s ministry failed to exercise cultural leadership during
the 1950s. The great novelist Mao Dun served as a figurehead minister,
dominated by Zhou Yang, head of the ministry’s Arts Bureau and deputy
head of the Party Propaganda Department. As a sign of the ministry’s
weakness in 1965, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Lu Dingyi, head
of the Party’s Propaganda Department, took over as minister of culture
from Mao Dun.
Mao believed that the revolution was being eroded by loss of firm val
ues and that greater doses of revolutionary culture could help to raise up
a successor generation among young Chinese. The most distinctive fea
ture of Maoism in the 1960s was its insistence that revolution was not sim
ply a material process, but also a matter of ideological commitment. Ad
vocating a voluntarism fiercer than Lenin’s, yet partly resonating with
Confucian traditions of art and statecraft, the Maoists insisted that pen
and sword were both critical weapons for the revolution.
50 Chapter 2
Mao believed that the Ministry of Culture was too focused on elite and
foreign art to further the revolution. In 1963 Mao mockingly said, “If noth
ing else is done, the Ministry of Culture should be changed into the Min
istry of Emperors, Kings, Generals, Ministers, Scholars and Beauties, or
the Ministry of Foreign Things and the Dead.”41 The ministry was in fact
closed during the Cultural Revolution, reopening as a cultural group in
1971. Not until 1975 was it distinguished again with the title of ministry.
Mao’s impatience with the Propaganda Department was also well known,
if not so bitterly expressed.
The Professional Associations

Parallel to the Ministry of Culture, these non-Party organizations mostly
transmitted Propaganda Department instructions and guidelines to their
members.42 They were weak before the Cultural Revolution, during
which they closed their doors because of their bourgeois taint. The one pe
riod of exception was the Hundred Flowers movement of 1956–1957,
when many association members spoke up to criticize Party policy. But
this boldness was quickly suppressed by the 1957 antirightist campaign,
which intimidated most artists and intellectuals. The nominal head of the
umbrella body for professional arts organizations was non-Communist
playwright and poet Guo Moruo, with the ubiquitous Zhou Yang as vice
chairman. Zhou Yang, a multipurpose political heavy, was more than an
ignorant Party hack—his translation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is still
available in Chinese bookstores.
The voices of artists and other intellectuals during the Hundred Flow
ers showed that the Propaganda Department was not immune to criti
cism. By the 1960s, the leadership had divided on the question of culture
and propaganda. Some, such as Foreign Minister Chen Yi, encouraged
more artistic autonomy, even endorsing mild experiments with cultural
markets. Others, led by Mao, extended a general suspicion of bureaucrats
to the entire cultural establishment that had grown up since 1949. Mao be
lieved that few cultural leaders were willing to follow him in a turn to the
left. When the Soviet Union in 1960 sharply limited China’s cultural ex
changes, arts isolation strengthened the hand of populist reformers.

The army was the state patron that rose most dramatically in power dur
ing Mao’s rule, especially after the ascension of Lin Biao as minister of de
fense in 1960. Military suspicion of liberalizing tendencies among intel
lectuals had surfaced in 1957, when the initial public opposition to the
Hundred Flowers came from army cultural officials.43 Nine years later,
when the Ministry of Culture was torn by conflict leading up to the Cul
tural Revolution, Xiao Wangdong, of the army’s General Political Depart
ment, was installed as minister to restore order and invigorate the left.
Xiao Wangdong brought a band of military associates to assist in bringing
revolution to the Ministry of Culture, but his efforts were too late; he lost
his post with the collapse of the ministry in 1966.44
The army began at the same time to intervene more directly in cultural af
fairs. In early 1966, Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, organized an arts forum with the
army in direct emulation of the famous 1944 Yan’an Arts Forum.45 As the
Cultural Revolution raged, artists sought affiliation with the army. Some, es
pecially younger artists, wanted to display their radicalism. Others coveted
the security of the army’s protective embrace, as the Cultural Revolution
was fought less intensely there than in such “bourgeois” arts institutions as
the Ministry of Culture, the Central Fine Arts Academy, the Writers Associ
ation, or the Shanghai Conservatory. Still others desired the greater material
benefits that became available at this time to military artists, who enjoyed
better food and housing than their civilian counterparts.46 Even groups that
did not formally join the army, such as the Central Philharmonic, shared in
the army’s reflected glory by performing in uniform.47
The Political Elite

The political elite headed by Mao comprised arts enthusiasts, which in
tensified the politicization of culture. Organizational confusion would
have invited intervention by top leaders to resolve arts controversies,
even if the elite had been disinterested in the arts. I have described else
where the passion of this elite for calligraphy and its consequences.48
Here, let me illustrate this fervor for art with the case of China’s tradi
tional opera theater.
When the Shanxi Opera Troupe toured east China in 1959, its failure to im
press the sophisticated audience of Shanghai angered and shamed two im
portant old Shanxi natives and opera fans, Beijing mayor Peng Zhen and
State Economic Commission head Bo Yibo, who threatened to dismiss the
Shanxi Party committee and its first secretary. As a result, the opera under
took major expenses to improve itself, even though China was entering the
economic depression that followed the Great Leap Forward. These included
a 5,000 yuan payment to another ensemble for the right to transfer one
young performer to the provincial opera company, and the purchase of 66
taels49 of gold and 120 of silver for use in thread for sumptuous costumes.50
Peng and Bo echoed the enthusiasm of Mao Zedong, an opera fan who of
ten played recordings for relaxation, singing along with his favorite pas
sages. Mao’s enthusiasm for Beijing opera is revealed in an episode related
by his bodyguard, who accompanied the Chairman to a 1958 performance
52 Chapter 2
of The Legend of the White Snake in Shanghai.51 Mao and other leaders sat in
stuffed chairs in the front row. According the bodyguard, Mao’s belt cut into
his big belly, “so as he sat down, I loosened his belt as usual.” Once com
fortable, Mao sat quite still, following the drama intensely; only his facial ex
pression changed as he entered into the characters of the ill-fated couple, Xu
Xian and Bai Langzi. “He applauded moments when the singing was good.
When he applauded, the whole house quickly applauded with him.”
When Fahai, the old monk from the Famen Temple, came on stage, Mao Ze-
dong’s face suddenly darkened, as if there had suddenly appeared before his
eyes a scene of intense panic. His mouth opened slightly, his lower lip trem
bling. His teeth made a gnawing sound, as if he wanted to take a couple of
bites out of the old monk.
At the end, Xu Xian and Bai Langzi began their tortuous and bitter depar
ture from life. I would often make a small noise to remind Mao Zedong that
these were only opera performers, but this time the reminder had no impact.
The present had ceased to exist; Mao Zedong had completely entered the
world of ancient and moving myth. His nostrils started to twitch, and tears
welled up in his eyes, becoming enormous drops that rolled down his face
and fell on his chest.
Nuts. That day there were a lot of people in the audience. I looked about
anxiously, but did not dare make any big movement for fear of attracting at
tention. It was still all right, the audience seemed to be absorbed by the
opera, and no one had noticed the “drama” taking place below the stage.
But Mao Zedong’s stirring intensified, his tears no longer fell drop by drop
but had become two streams pouring down his face. His nose was stopped
up and making a neighing noise. This was only a little bit out of the view of
the neighboring leaders from the Municipal Committee; this gave me worry
enough, as my responsibility was to protect the Chairman’s “leadership im
age.” I coughed lightly, making matters even worse. The noise did not rouse
Mao Zedong, but it attracted the stares of others. I dared not make another
sound.
Mao Zedong, not realizing where he was, finally began to cry, sobbing
convulsively; he then wept uncontrollably and blew his nose. At this point
there was nothing I could do but pretend that all was normal. I only hoped
that the opera would soon end. In fact it was nearly over, the monk Fahai was
condemning Bai Lanzi to the Leifeng Pagoda. . . .
Just at that moment a startling event took place!
In a sudden burst of anger, Mao Zedong rose to his feet. Supporting him
self with his hands on the arms of his upholstered chair, he stood up: “Will it
do not to make revolution? Will it do not to rebel?”
Heavens, I was taken by surprise! I had loosened his belt when he sat
down—when he stood up, his pants fell down to his feet. As if struck, I
bolted forward and grabbed his pants to push them up. My mind went
blank; in a complete panic I used my trembling hands to tighten his belt,
quickly, if clumsily. I had not protected the leader’s image. For this I felt bad
for a very long time.
Mao Zedong did not have the least thought of blaming me, but seemed un
aware that he had dropped his trousers. He strode with big steps to the stage,
as if he were still in the opera. At last the sound of the applause brought him
back to consciousness. He stared for a moment as if in a daze, then ap
plauded along with the rest of the audience. I breathed a sigh of relief: the
Chairman had returned to reality.
The combination of aesthetic passion and a drive for political control

produced an illiberal and often repressive atmosphere. Usually the mo
tives for interventions in the arts were clear enough; witness the cam
paign against writer Hu Feng (a disciple of Hu Shi, perhaps the most
prominent intellectual associated with the Guomindang in Taiwan) or the
criticism of the movie The Life of Wu Xun (which celebrated private phi
lanthropy as a solution to social problems). But sometimes the motives
were obscure, which was even more dispiriting to artists and their public.
Jiang Qing once demanded that the Party leader of Hebei Province sing a
selection from one of the Cultural Revolution’s model operas. Unable to
do so, when he returned to the capital, Shijiazhuang, he led other mem
bers of the Hebei Standing Committee in singing practice.52
One of the more puzzling episodes in the arts was the 1975 Water Mar
gin campaign. Mao Zedong is supposed to have said that this classic novel
of peasant outlaws reveals a negative example of “capitulationists.”
Mao’s words were quoted in editorials, and the nation’s intellectuals, reel
ing from years of Cultural Revolution, began to make tortured analyses of
the novel, looking for clues as to which peasant rebel character repre
sented which politician. Nearly two decades later, we learned that the ail
ing Mao suffered from cataracts and had a Beijing University instructor
named Lu Di read to him. On August 14, 1975, when Lu Di took advan
tage of his unusual assignment to ask Mao about Water Margin, the chair-
man’s impromptu response was that “this book’s strength is in describing
surrender. It makes a negative teaching example, to show everyone the ca
pitulationists.” This was apparently only the passing remark of an ailing
old man, noted and used by Cultural Revolution radicals. Later that
month Mao had a successful cataract operation.53 How much tortured
analysis could have been avoided if the operation had taken place a
month earlier and Mao had been able to read the book himself?
Elite interest in the arts helped unify policy on occasion, but did little to
build coherent institutions with distinct missions. Sometimes one of the
cultural bureaucracies was told to perform functions associated with its
rivals to the confusion of all. For instance, in 1956 Liu Shaoqi instructed
an army propaganda troupe to stage shows for the public. “You may also
sell tickets and run your troupe as an enterprise.”54 This unexpected ad
vice to turn to the market surely befuddled the military, much as the Min
istry of Culture felt disadvantaged by the use of propaganda campaigns
to unify cultural policies.
54 Chapter 2
The state’s hand in the arts was strongest during the Cultural Revolu
tion, but this was not a successful period of state patronage as relatively
little art was in fact produced.55 Mao and his allies firmly believed that
culture could arouse the masses, raising their political consciousness to
mobilize millions of Chinese to demand further transformations of soci
ety. The victorious Cultural Revolutionaries sincerely wanted a thriving,
enthusiastic, and revolutionary culture to supplant all that had gone be
fore. But while radical cultural leaders dreamed of an era of arts plenty,
they presided instead over a cultural famine.56
There is ample evidence that radical leaders recognized their failure to
sponsor more art and tried to increase productivity. But they failed,
largely for political, rather than aesthetic, reasons. Although the Cultural
Revolution’s rhetoric stressed the mass participation of amateur arts, in
practice, regulation of amateurs was tight, as leaders sought to avoid the
political errors that might arise from genuine spontaneity. They were ulti
mately fearful of what mass participation in the creation of a new culture
might unleash. In 1971 Zhang Chunqiao urged a modest decentralization
in the supervision of the arts, instructing that new songs need not be ap
proved by central authorities. But five years later, the Ministry of Culture
still had an office for evaluating new songs, including six hundred new
tunes attacking Deng Xiaoping and “right deviationism.”57 The refusal to
utilize a more decentralized cultural program assured eventual shortages
of output.
Many artists responded to Cultural Revolutionary harassment by de
clining to work. Novelists did not write, painters did not paint, composers
did not compose. When they tried, they were often hit again, as they were
in the “black art” scandal of 1974, in which painters were asked to help
decorate hotels for housing the first waves of new tourists to China, only
to be criticized for the lack of revolutionary content in their art.58 The
movement was also so relentlessly harsh on works from abroad and from
China’s past that these forms of art could not easily be revived. Especially
toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, as Mao weakened, the revived
Ministry of Culture and the army’s General Political Department feuded
about arts leadership. Each fearful of giving advantage to its rival, they
both operated with an increasingly narrow conception of art. Little ap
peared beyond the songs and dances of the Mao cult and the small num
ber of officially sanctioned “model” stage works and films.
THE CULTURAL BUREAUCRACIES IN THE REFORM ERA
Although Deng Xiaoping dealt with the arts as an afterthought, his con
solidation of his power after 1978 nonetheless shook up China’s cultural
establishment. Deng assembled an anti–Cultural Revolution coalition,

mobilizing into his constituency intellectuals, high officials, technical ex
perts, and people with foreign ties—all of whom had been ill treated dur
ing the last decade of Mao’s rule.59 An early wave of rehabilitations re
stored to prominence cultural figures and works of art that had suffered
during the Cultural Revolution and purged those that had flourished un
der radical rule. Rapid personnel and policy shifts placed a great deal of
stress on cultural agencies, like most Chinese organizations. People who
had been enemies during the Cultural Revolution now found themselves
working side by side, wondering how and whether to put their bitter past
behind them. As under Mao, rival bureaucracies competed over resources
and policy, but now without the unifying force of a charismatic leader.60
Restructuring the Arts

New plans to restructure the organization of cultural life diminished the
enchantment of former battles rather quickly as fresh conflicts and anxi
eties appeared. The reforms in culture were broadly analogous to reforms
in agriculture, commerce, or industry, loosening political controls and in
troducing market relationships.61 At the simplest level, this meant intro
ducing a basic understanding of profit and loss. For instance, performing
ensembles often distributed free tickets to shows to groups of workers or
the youth league, “papering the house” for the sake of propaganda and
entertainment; state subsidies had assured that ticket sales were not an
important budget component. Now they began to sell tickets directly to
consumers. Or they might follow model units in thinking of ways of in
troducing economies into their no longer richly subsidized operations.
For example, the movie theater in Jiangsu Province’s Haimen County
Workers Cultural Palace had one thousand seats, but was rarely full in the
daytime, leaving hundreds of unused tickets. Haimen’s simple but effec
tive solution was to print two kinds of tickets (four-hundred-seat shows
and one-thousand-seat shows), with annual savings of one thousand
yuan in printing costs.62
At least four themes ran through discussions of cultural reform in the
1980s. First was the attack upon the iron rice bowl, or permanent em
ployment. Once regarded as one of the great accomplishments of the rev
olution, in the Deng era permanent employment was no longer discussed
as a mark of working-class victory, but as an impediment to managerial
flexibility. Here the arts were simply treated as other sectors of Chinese
society, with the special twist that the iron rice bowl was blamed for poor
artistic standards.
A second and related target was the “big pot,” which referred to egali
tarian pay schemes. Again, in the arts this was held to be a disincentive to
56 Chapter 2
creative effort, although this view was based on little evidence or under
standing of artistic motivation.
A third reform theme was a call to professionalize management of the
of arts organizations. This meant introducing contract systems for em
ployment, not only for arts workers, but also for the heads of dance com
panies and orchestras. The new administrators would be empowered to
make personnel and artistic decisions with far greater flexibility than their
predecessors; a model was the Xi’an Spoken Drama Academy, which
hired a young director by open competition, offering a four-year contract
with the local cultural bureau.63
The fourth theme was the diminution of state subsidies. The reforms
certainly did not end sponsorship of arts organizations, but declared
economic self-sufficiency to be a goal of cultural policy. Prior to the re
forms, state subsidies of the arts were routine. A Guilin official disclosed
in 1979 that his municipal cultural bureau spent ten thousand yuan
more than it earned each year, and this was a unit whose four profes
sional performing companies could count on guaranteed ticket sales to
tourists visiting this celebrated beauty spot.64 Eventually, the state ad
vocated a two-track system—a few key organizations would continue
under state ownership with state underwriting, although they would be
expected to show a greater profit. All other organizations were destined
for the nonstate track: they would have to reorganize themselves and
become self-supporting.
Overall, because of these changes, culture became less important to the
state with the consequent benefits and losses for artists. This was not a
stable system, although it may seem so when compared with the Maoist
years. And tensions continue among institutions of the cultural system. In
the Deng Xiaoping version, the Ministry of Culture and the professional
associations generally took the lead over the less vigorous and tradition
ally leftist propaganda department and army. However, in the West we
more often hear of the reactions from the weakened Propaganda Depart
ment than of the initiative of the Ministry of Culture.

The ministry’s star rose throughout the reform period, not because the
state gave it great new resources, but because the authority of its chief bu
reaucratic rivals diminished. Moreover, the generally conservative mood
of the times favored an organization that specialized in routine adminis
tration.
The beginning, however, was not especially easy. The purge of radical
influence from the Ministry of Culture was especially fierce. Although
more than a thousand people associated with the ministry had suffered
official sanctions (ranging from labeling to imprisonment) during the Cul

tural Revolution, many others resisted the loss of their own influence af
ter the fall of the Gang of Four. The former radical minister, Yu Huiyong,
had been arrested in 1976 and committed suicide. Yet, leftist influence was
still so great that a March 1977 rally at the ministry would not permit the
slogan “Down with Yu Huiyong.”65 A new Party group was not estab
lished until December 1977, with the appointment of a new minister,
Huang Zhen, a former army commander and diplomat who was also an
amateur painter. Huang brought some order to his new assignment, but
only after naming a former vice minister of public security, Liu Fuzhi, as
a vice minister of culture in 1978. After this appointment, “some turned
over material evidence which they had refused to surrender for more than
a year.”66 Huang also reallocated personnel, equipment, theaters, and
even housing to undo changes made by the radicals, especially to break
up their favored arts units.67 Huang was eased out at the end of 1980, re
placed by Zhou Weichi, one of the team that composed the Yan’an opera
The White-Haired Girl and a veteran arts official who had been purged un
til 1978.
Once the ministry was operating normally again, one of its great con
cerns was how to implement the proposals for economic reform in its vast
arts network. The appointment of novelist Wang Meng as minister in 1986
marked an intensification of the reform. Wang was a much-respected lit
erary figure, a realist writer who turned to experimental techniques in his
fiction; more significantly, Wang was labeled a rightist in 1957 for pub
lishing a novella that satirized bureaucratism. Before his rehabilitation in
1979, he spent thirteen years in internal exile in Xinjiang. Mao Dun, min
ister until the eve of the Cultural Revolution, had also been a celebrated
novelist. But Mao Dun was a figurehead, a man who had also given up
creative life for a genteel old age of bureaucratic ritual. Wang Meng con
tinues to write and remains a vital presence in China’s literary scene.
Wang recognized that many of his constituents were not persuaded that
the restructuring of cultural organizations was good for them. So he em
phasized the broader link between economic growth and improving cul
tural life. “‘It is as simple as this,’ Wang said. ‘if China’s economy fails, the
people will suffer from hunger as they did before, and developing culture
will be out of the question.’”68 Wang argued that artists should not be
seeking riches, but that they should forsake the security of automatic sup
port from the state and seek out audiences through the market.69
Some understanding of the approach of the ministry under Wang
Meng’s administration can be gleaned from a book by Li Jun, Perplexities
and Resolutions—An Exploration of Culture and Arts Management published
with a preface by Vice Minister Gao Zhanxiang.70 According to Li, the dis
appointing results of thirty years of Communist arts policies all came
58 Chapter 2
from poor management. The arts are not, as the leftists maintained, forms
of consciousness, but a part of “tertiary production”—that is, the service
sector—and, thus, can respond to good management, just like any other
form of production. Li admits that the production of cultural commodi
ties brings new challenges, such as losses for such serious endeavors as
literary magazines, academic books, and performances by national mi
nority ensembles. And lots of bad art will be produced by profiteers. But,
he insists, the cultural marketplace is going to expand; the only serious al
ternative to watching passively is to minimize the problems through
modern, scientific management.
Other appointments in the ministry emphasized new respect for artists,
or at least for arts bureaucrats. Vice Minister Ying Ruocheng translated
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and acted the part of Willy Loman in
1983.71 Ying also acted the part of a prison official in Bernardo Bertolucci’s
1987 film The Last Emperor and in 1994 played a Tibetan monk in Holly-
wood’s Little Buddha.
Wang and Ying both left office after the Beijing Massacre. Wang was
the only member of the State Council who refused to demonstrate his
loyalty to Deng Xiaoping by visiting army units after the bloodshed.
Wang Meng’s record as a rehabilitated rightist had long irritated more-
conservative officials. He perhaps also enjoyed publicizing the introduc
tion of reforms into former Maoist models, including Mao’s hometown
of Shaoxing, Hunan.72 The pace of restructuring slowed, only to intensify
after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 “southern inspection.”
The Party Propaganda Department

When Deng Xiaoping came to power, the Propaganda Department was
still demoralized from the Cultural Revolution. It had been the scene of
harsh purges early in that movement, then subject to additional turmoil at
its conclusion through a hunt for confederates of the Gang of Four. The re
habilitation of artists and cultural bureaucrats who had been disgraced in
earlier movements constituted a blow to the Propaganda Department.
China saw a broad decline in mobilizing art in general, due both to the
Party’s decision to lighten its voice and to the new availability of alterna
tive, nondidactic entertainments in the rapidly growing cultural market
place. Propaganda workers were demoralized by the new public criticism
of their efforts as silly, boring, and aesthetically dull.73
An administrative reform of 1984 drastically reduced the capacity of the
Propaganda Department to control effectively appointments below the
central level.74 The effective loss of its authority to vet appointments
throughout the cultural realm seems to have been a critical blow. With the
decline of the Party’s propaganda apparatus, some professional ideolo
gists hustled careers for themselves in the growing new businesses of

public relations and advertising. Three faculty members of the Guang
dong Provincial Party School wrote one popular public-relations hand-
book.75
Other propaganda officials sulked, not easily accepting their dimin
ished power. They pressed hard against the cultural impact of the reforms
through campaigns in 1981 (against Bai Hua), 1983 (the Spiritual Pollution
campaign), and 1987 (the campaign against bourgeois liberalization).
These very unspontaneous movements were ineffectual and quickly
abandoned. They simply did not compare to an old-fashioned Maoist
campaign; although they did intimidate, far fewer lives were disrupted.76
According to one account, “the hardliners found it was no longer possible
to launch an ideological movement . . . the people would no longer par
ticipate in a government propaganda effort.”77 According to Liu Binyan,
the 1983 Spiritual Pollution campaign was an effort by Chen Yun and his
allies Wang Zhen (then in charge of the Party School) and Deng Liqun
(then head of the Propaganda Department) to seize control over all prop
aganda by striking indirectly at Zhou Yang of the Arts Federation and Hu
Jiwei and Wang Ruoshui of People’s Daily, the two major reformist bases.78
But it is only with the backing of armed force after the June 4, 1989, mas
sacre that the Propaganda Department regained influence, however su
perficially and temporarily.
The rivalry between the Propaganda Department and the Ministry of
Culture was fought out through personnel appointments and interper
sonal animosities. A noted reformer, Zhu Houze, was imposed upon the
Propaganda Department from 1985 to 1987, when he replaced Deng
Liqun, an official truly unpopular with artists. Zhu had been expelled
from the Communist Party between 1964 and 1978, which was a creden
tial for the reformers, but surely not for many in the department that he
headed.79 Zhu was forced out in early 1987. When Deng Liqun addressed
a Ministry of Culture meeting in late January 1987, most officials departed
before his speech, and three ministry leaders on the podium pretended
not to notice Deng when he approached to shake their hands.80
One likely victory of the Propaganda Department was the creation of a
new Ministry of Broadcasting, Film, and Television in 1986 by cutting
away a former bureau of the Ministry of Culture. It is likely that these
modern media were given separate status in order to maximize Party con
trol by reducing the influence of persons such as Wang Meng over critical
telecommunications policy. This ministry is a major employer of actors,
writers, directors, and given the mass character of its entertainment, it is
an object of close scrutiny by the Propaganda Department. But even here,
in weakening the authority of the Ministry of Culture, the alternative was
to give more power to another regular, bureaucratic power center.81
60 Chapter 2
The Propaganda Department worked through the Party organization.

Thus, when Zhao Ziyang began a program to dismantle Party cells in
state agencies except those dealing with education, propaganda, legal and
security affairs, minority nationalities, and the economy, he weakened the
capacity of propaganda workers by cutting off their traditional networks.
In the wake of the Beijing Massacre, the Party’s Organization Department
decided to terminate this reform, but a quarter of Party cells had already
been dismantled by the spring of 1989.
The weakening of the propaganda apparatus led to the privatization of
public-service information. For instance, venereal disease, formerly infre
quent, spread rapidly through the rapid social changes of the reform pe
riod. Yet, much of the campaign against venereal disease was turned over
to entrepreneurs. In Fuzhou, hawkers sold tickets on the street to exhibi
tions against sexually transmitted diseases. I visited one in the back room
of a musical instrument store, where I watched a videotape, narrated by a
nasty little voice: “Hi, I’m the syphilis germ.” Mr. Syphilis Germ took his
viewers through a cavalcade of diseased organs, some just about to fall
off, with a clear, if inaccurate message: syphilis comes from sex with for
eign women with big breasts and too much pubic hair. This “public edu
cation,” of course, functioned as a peep show, with an audience of young
men more interested in the dirty pictures than the fearsome message.82
This lurid example illustrates a broader point. The market economy
siphons off those aspects of former propaganda work that can be turned
to profit. The consequences for public health are harmful.

Like the Party Propaganda Department, the army’s cultural influence
steadily eroded throughout the 1980s, only to be temporarily revived in
the wake of the 1989 massacre with increased visibility though a tarnished
reputation. The People’s Liberation Army, still a major employer of actors,
musicians, filmmakers, and novelists, now often follows the lead of other
groups, unlike its glory days as artistic tastemaker during the Cultural
Revolution. Early in the reform program, the army’s General Political De
partment explicitly repudiated Jiang Qing’s 1966 Arts Forum.83 Some
from the army were active in the abortive ideological campaigns of 1983
and 1987, but with no more effect than their comrades in the Propaganda
Department.84
The army’s reduced leadership in cultural affairs mirrored its lower
profile in society. Perhaps a million soldiers (a quarter of the total) were
retired or transferred to other units in quest of a more professional mili
tary. The new lean look for the army coincided with Deng’s desire to end
its role as a political base for Maoist ideas.85 China had been divided into
eleven big military regions, named for the major cities that serve as their
centers. When the number of military regions was reduced to seven in
1985, the cultural impact on the cities that lost out was immediate. The
Fuzhou military region was absorbed into the Nanjing region, partly to
demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Taiwan, which lies a hundred
miles across the water from Fuzhou. Fuzhou lost musical groups, opera
companies, drama troupes, and dance ensembles that had played a
prominent role in local cultural life for thirty-five years. Yet, despite cuts
in the army, military bands grew rapidly, apparently beyond control as
they leapt from five hundred early in the reforms to over a thousand by
1989.86
Military art suggests patriotism and endless celebration of the revolu
tion, but the army’s arts establishment has not always been predictable,
especially in the 1980s. Its vast size has assured perhaps more diversity
than outsiders might anticipate. Novelist Bai Hua was an employee of the
Wuhan Military Region when he wrote his controversial screenplay Bitter
Love. The suppression of this film for its criticism of Maoism sparked a
great controversy in 1981. Bai Hua left the army to become a local cadre
in Shanghai in 1985, the year the army was downsizing most decisively.87
Poet Ye Wenfu was also employed by the army he enraged with his 1980
satirical poem “General, You Mustn’t Do That.” Ye left the army in 1985
after experiencing worsening working conditions.88 But not all artists col
lide with military patrons. When Sichuan painter Li Huasheng challenged
conservative critics in the civilian arts establishment in 1984, top brass in
the Chengdu Military Regions who enjoyed his paintings protected him
by providing housing and other support.89 Mo Yan, widely considered to
be among China’s most outstanding novelists, has spent his entire career
as a professional writer for the People’s Liberation Army.
Another writer, Han Yingshan, after studying the example of Lamb’s
Shakespeare, published a bowdlerized Golden Lotus, China’s classic erotic
novel, in a military magazine.90 In a comparable move to get with the
times, one could also point to the near naked army dancers who partici
pated in the 1987 national arts festival or to the sudden appearance of rock
music on the soundtracks of army films in mid-1980s. And a military opera
troupe mounted the first Beijing performance of Tosca early in 1989.91
When the military was riding high in Chinese politics, it inevitably in
fluenced nonmilitary arts. Now that the army has a lower political profile,
its vast cultural apparatus is more likely to focus on entertaining the
troops, rather than propagandizing to society. In the mid-1990s, Jiang
Zemin instructed the army to provide each platoon with “a karaoke facil
ity where soldiers could enjoy themselves and sing patriotic songs.”92
This seems a much more modest ambition than Jiang Qing’s uses of the
army as an aesthetic force during the Cultural Revolution.
62 Chapter 2
The Arts Federation

Formerly the weakest of the major cultural institutions, the dynamics of
reform strengthened the Arts Federation and its constituent organiza
tions, even though their lack of financial resources prevented them from
acting as important patrons. In contrast to their former role as institutions
for control, the associations increasingly pressed to represent the corpo
rate and professional interests of full-time artists in China, albeit with
mixed success. I will discuss these groups more thoroughly in chapter 5
on professionalism. With the decline of the army and Propaganda De
partment, the professional associations had less competition for leader
ship. They increasingly organized exhibitions and concerts without su
pervision by the propagandists and found an ally in the newly influential
Ministry of Culture.
The Arts Federation convened a forum in 1988 to push for greater struc
tural reform. Vice Minister of Culture Ying Ruocheng joined an appeal to
the leaders of the professional associations to help by providing expertise on
how to fashion alternatives to capitalist modes of organizing the arts amid
rising anxieties that profit might become the dominant criterion for artistic
success. Participants agreed that there must be a sharp distinction between
structural reform of the arts and structural reform of the economy—the goal
of the former was to spur production of spiritual products, not increase
profits.93
Although these bureaucratic rivalries are real enough, they are not cut
in stone, as each of the agencies has had members who have shared views
and backgrounds with its ostensible rivals. Beyond the army’s unexpect
edly liberal artists, one found in early 1989 that the Propaganda Depart
ment had a strong supporter of Zhao Ziyang as deputy head (Long
Yuzhi), even though hardliners tended to prevail.94 More typically, Liu
Zhongde, appointed minister of culture in 1993, came from the Propa
ganda Department.
Other Institutions
Arts policy continues to attract the interest of other organizations. In the
reform-minded 1980s, this included the Ministry of Light Industry, which
oversaw China’s handicrafts, a source of foreign exchange that grew enor
mously. Such staid bodies as the State Planning Commission and the Min
istry of Finance began to send representatives to cultural work confer
ences, presumably another indication of the new role of the arts in the
economy.95
The Youth League took the lead in restoring respectability to social
dancing in the early 1980s and continues to hire a number of professional
artists in its political work. The name “propaganda worker” does little to
suggest aesthetic excellence. But the professional dancer I know who was
hired for a Youth League post at a Fujian University was certainly a
dancer, not a political hack. Here, as in most other aspects of the system,
a broad range between the political and the aesthetic emerges; when the
times are politically tight, the professional associations have a hard time
representing nonpolitical concerns. When the times are loose, even the
Youth League’s propaganda workers may turn out to be artists first.
The role of public security agencies continues, governing access to
travel abroad for many artists and overseeing the most serious conflicts
with the state for an unfortunate few. Many artists fear public security be
cause their art can be pulled out of context into a hostile environment,
where the police neither understand it nor feel any need to do so.
The Political Elite

Important politicians continue to intervene in artistic issues, but their par
ticipation has changed in character, becoming more pragmatic and cyni
cal. In contrast to the often damaging cultural enthusiasms of Mao and his
colleagues in the first generation of Communist Party leadership, little
suggests that Deng Xiaoping and his successors care much about the
arts.96 There is no record of Deng’s ever doing anything to promote, re
form, or meddle with any art form out of aesthetic feeling. Except for Hu
Yaobang, who had a notorious passion for calligraphy, most of the other
central leaders to rise (and sometimes fall) under Deng seem equally un
moved by beauty. Jiang Zemin played the piano and other instruments, in
addition to singing Elvis Presley songs in Manila and Beijing opera tunes
on his 1997 visit to the United States.97 But, like Li Peng and many others
of his generation, he had a technical background and did not attempt to
play the role of Communist literatus. Wuer Kaixi, a leader of the 1989 stu
dent protest in Tiananmen Square, commented, “The shame of it is that
most people in politics don’t have any artistic sense at all.” Wuer is no arts
expert, but his disappointment is common among educated Chinese:
To be a really successful politician, one must have, in my view, some artistic

side. The only Chinese leader who qualifies in this sense is Mao. Even though
he was an autocrat, he did have an artistic sense. So while we may dislike
him, we must also respect him. . . . What strikes me as very strange, even
twisted, is that with a billion people, China now can only throw up a leader
like (Premier) Li Peng.98
This is not to say that Deng and his fellow reformers were indifferent to
cultural policy, which they manipulated as a political weapon. They often
intervened on behalf of works that would win the support of intellectuals
by indicating a broad loosening of cultural restrictions. Hu Yaobang, then
64 Chapter 2
head of the Propaganda Department, stilled a controversy over the play

“What If I Were Real?” by approving a private performance in October
1979 for the Arts Congress, signaling to all propaganda officials that this
satire on official corruption was legitimate.99
Deng Xiaoping decreed in 1980 that Taiwan popular music was not
harmful. There is no indication that Deng liked pop music, but many
young Chinese do, and Deng sought to increase contacts with Taiwan.
Many officials of the Party’s Propaganda Department regarded this sac
charine and romantic music as corrosive to revolutionary values, a feeling
shared by army cultural leaders. The rumor was put out that Deng had
heard a radio broadcast from Taiwan while visiting Anhui’s famous
beauty spot, Yellow Mountain, and remarked to his wife that the warbling
of the late Taiwan songstress Deng Lijun could not hurt anyone.
CHINA’S SECOND PATRONAGE REVOLUTION:
CULTURAL MARKETS SUPPLEMENT STATE EMPLOYMENT
The history of changing interrelations among the major state arts bureau
cracies and the political elite indicates the declining salience of art in mod
ern Chinese politics, even without the additional impact of a rapidly de
veloping cultural marketplace. To anticipate points that will be elaborated
in later chapters, the arts world felt the force of newly developing arts
markets in three major ways. First, a rush of new approaches and com
modities enlivened China’s cultural scene, enormously expanding the
range of arts experiences available and challenging artists and audiences
alike to experiment with new experiences. Pushing the aesthetic bound
aries often challenged political conventions as well. Second, the state arts
bureaucracies soon encountered political demands that they learn to ap
ply simple market considerations to their own operations by raising more
of their own funds and by trimming expenses. Third, the arts bureaucra
cies found themselves responsible for producing and supervising a
smaller proportion of China’s art as the market for commercial culture ex
panded. Art-as-propaganda gave way to art-as-commodity.
China’s first patronage revolution provided employment to artists, rais
ing their economic well-being, while placing them under enormous polit
ical influence. Maoist cultural policies relied upon state-subsidized artists
to fashion a mass-mobilizing propaganda art intended to teach political
virtue and occasionally to entertain.
The ongoing second patronage revolution has had a very different impact.
State-sponsored culture, when no longer a monopoly, must contend for au
diences, rather than take them for granted, and runs the risk of becoming ir
relevant. Politics has hardly vanished from China’s arts, but in contrast with
the Mao period, there is now much art that is not self-consciously politi
cized. A great deal of this apolitical art is produced by the state.
Ministry of Culture officials have deliberately sought to limit their reach.
Minister Zhu Muzhi commented in 1986, “The scope of work handled by
the Ministry of Culture is rather narrow. In fact, the Ministry of Culture
cannot shoulder the task of studying the strategy for cultural develop-
ment.”100 The retreat of the state from supervision of the arts parallels its
withdrawal from its once fearsome overseeing of local popular culture. In
Fujian, for instance, thirty thousand temples were restored or newly cre
ated in the decade after the Cultural Revolution.101 At one time China’s arts
world complained, if privately, about interference from political leaders;
more recently, some have felt that being ignored is not always beneficial.
The Bureau of Cultural Relics was so low on the totem pole that only a
deputy secretary general had responsibility for it. Some in the bureau be
moaned the lack of deep personal interest that current vice premiers dis
played in the preservation of China’s historical sites. While the situation
had improved from the Cultural Revolution days, the bureau looked back
with nostalgia at the 1950s and 1960s, when Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi took
a close and personal interest in its activities.102
The chief patron of China’s arts remains the state, but its dominance has
eroded seriously. The reforms may seem at times to have had a stately
pace, yet they have steadily redefined the relationship among state, artist,
and cultural consumer. The consequent reordering of power among ele
ments of the cultural system has most clearly raised the relative authority
of the Ministry of Culture, which in the late 1990s was beginning to re
semble the arts ministries of other countries. Its tasks include supporting
worthy arts groups, raising standards of appreciation and performance,
preserving the arts and monuments of China’s past, and managing cul
tural exchange programs—typical responsibilities in today’s world, but a
long way from the Maoist challenge to use culture to mobilize the masses
in the cause of revolution.
NOTES
1. My debt to earlier research on the politics of Chinese culture will be appar

ent to any who know this body of scholarship. I single out four titles as especially
helpful for understanding the initial years of cultural politics: D. W. Fokkema, Lit
erary Doctrine in China and Soviet Influence 1956–1960 (The Hague: Mouton, 1965);
Merle Goldman, Literary Dissent in Communist China (Cambridge: Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1967); Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times (Lon
don: Thames and Hudson, 1975); and Bonnie McDougall, ed., Popular Chinese Lit
erature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984).
66 Chapter 2
2. Useful chronologies for arts developments in the 1950s include Liushinian

wenyi dashiji 1919–1979 [“Record of major events in the arts for sixty years
1919–1979”] (Macao: Zhongguo Xiandai Wenxue Yanjiu Zhongxin, 1979);
“Meishujie liang tiao luxian douzheng dashiji (1949–1966)” [“Record of major
events in the struggle between two lines in fine arts (1949–1966)”], in Meishu fen
glei [“Fine arts tempest”] 3 (August 1967), 2–30.
3. On the need to consider bureaucratic structure, see Kenneth Lieberthal and
Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Prince
ton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
4. See James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Tra
ditional China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
5. Xin Fengxia, Reminiscences (Beijing: Panda Books, 1981).
6. Similar details of wretched working conditions for North China drum
singers are richly described in “The Autobiography of the Drum Singer, Jang
Tsueyfenq (as told to Liou Fang),” Rulan Chao Pian, trans., Chinoperl Papers 13
(1984–1985), 7–106; See also Lao She’s novel, published as Lau Shaw, The Drum
Singers, Helena Kuo, trans. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), and
A. C. Scott’s memoir, Actors Are Madmen: Notebook of a Theatregoer in China (Madi
son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982).
7. Beijing in the 1920s included guilds for actors, storytellers, cloisenné de
signers, paper hangers, leather-box makers, dyers, table and chair makers, silk
thread makers, tailors, cooks, and carpenters, alongside more conventionally
working-class occupations. See John Stewart Burgess, The Guilds of Beijing (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1928). For a broader view of these guilds and
their role in China’s postimperial politics, see David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City
People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
8. Scott, Actors Are Madmen, 78.
9. T. D. Huters, “Critical Ground: The Transformation of the May Fourth Era,”
in McDougall, Popular Chinese Literature, 50–80.
10. Paul Bady, “The Modern Chinese Writer: Literary Incomes and Best Sell
ers,” China Quarterly 88 (December 1981), 646–648.
11. For an overview of the arts economy in the republican period, see Li Xiang-
min, Zhongguo yishu jingji shi [“An economic history of Chinese arts”] (Nanjing:
Jiangsu Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1995), 674–717.
12. Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”
New Left Review 82 (1973), 6. Quoted in Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art
(London: Macmillan, 1981), 78.
13. See David Holm, Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991).
14. Zhu Zongyu, Yang Yuanhua, Zhen Junyan, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo
zhuyao shijian renwu [“Important events and persons of the People’s Republic of
China”] (Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe: 1989), 474.
15. “Show Concern for Folk Artists, Help Folk Artists,” Guangming ribao (No
vember 11, 1956).
16. Bady, “Modern Chinese Writer,” 650–651.
17. See John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union (New
York: The Free Press, 1990); Marilyn Rueschemeyer, “State Patronage in the Ger
man Democratic Republic: Artistic and Political Change in a State Socialist Soci
ety,” in Judith Huggins Balfe, ed., Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of Art
Patronage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 209–233.
18. See Andrew Solomon, The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
19. See Jerome Silbergeld, Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the
Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 59–60;
and Jerome Silbergeld, “Art Censorship in Socialist China: A Do-it Yourself Sys
tem,” in Elizabeth C. Childes, ed., Suspended: Censorship and the Visual Arts (Seat
tle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 299–332.
20. See Bonnie S. McDougall,”Writers and Performers, Their Works, and Their
Audiences in the First Three Decades,” in McDougall, Popular Chinese Literature,
279–280.
21. Hong Yung Lee, From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist
China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 61
22. Garrard and Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union, 60.
23. The cultural system overlaps other systems. For instance, universities fall
within the educational system, and the New China News Agency is part of the
propaganda system, despite its frequent cultural interests.
24. See Stefan Landsberger, Chinese Propaganda Posters: From Revolution to Mod
ernization (Amsterdam: The Pepin Press, 1995), 29–31.
25. See John P. Burns, ed., The Chinese Communist Party’s NOMENKLATURA
System (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1989), xiii, xxvii, xxxiii.
26. The National Writers Association is a constituent of the Arts Federation, but
is equal to the parent in enjoying ministerial-level status, putting it ahead of mu
sic, fine arts, dance, drama, and the like. Su Yong, “Zhongguo zuoxie ‘wuda’
neiqing” [“The inside story of the Fifth Congress of the Chinese Writers Associa
tion”], Jing bao 227 (June 1996), 41.
27. David Holm, “Folk Art as Propaganda: The Yangge Movement in Yan’an,”
in Bonnie S. McDougall, ed., Popular Chinese Literature, 22, 29.
28. See my Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle
over Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 80, 83, 98,
29. Guo Feng, “Guanyu ban kanwu (er)” [“On managing magazines (2)”],
Fuzhou wanbao (June 13, 1989).
30. “Zai quanguo huaju, geju, ertong zuangzuo zuotanhuishang de jianghua”
[“Speech at the national conference on spoken drama, opera, and children’s liter
ature”], in Zhang Xizeng and Li Shuliang, eds., Yishu jingjixue cankao ziliao huiben
[“Anthology of reference materials in the economics of the arts”] (Shenyang:
Liaoning Shehuikexueyuan Wenxue Yanjiusuo, 1982), 12.
31. “Approximately 25 to 35 people constitute China’s top leadership. . . . The
group is partly defined by the positions its members hold: most of the Politburo
and Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Standing Committee
of the State Council, the top commanders of the military, and the leaders of the
wealthiest and largest cities and provinces.” Lieberthal and Oksenberg, Policy
Making in China, 36.
32. On Chen, see David M. Bachman, Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System
(Berkeley: University of California Center for Chinese Studies, 1984).
68 Chapter 2
33. “Chen Yun shi wenyijie niugui sheshen de heizhushuai” [“Chen Yun is the
black commander of the literary and art world’s ghosts and monsters”], Beijing
dongfanghong [“The East is red”] (February 25, 1967), reprinted from Caimao hongqi
[“Finance and trade red flag”].
34. Chen Yun tongzhi guanyu pingtan de tanhua he tongxun [“Comrade Chen
Yun’s conversations and instructions about ballad singing”] (Beijing: Zhongguo
Quyi Chubanshe, 1983). I am indebted to David Bachman for my copy of this
book.
35. Zhang Shuyong, “Zhou Enlai tongzhi jieshao Faguo meishu” [“Comrade
Zhou Enlai introduces the fine arts of France”], Meishu 142 (September 1979), 3–5.
The postcards were of Rodin’s “The Age of Bronze,” Millet’s “Gleaners,” and a
sentimental gem by Trioson Griodet (1767–1824) called “The Burial.”
36. Jerome Grieder, Intellectuals and the State in Modern China: A Narrative His
tory (New York: Free Press, 1981), 26.
37. Ward Just, Echo House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). Just, a writer of po
litical fiction, once worked for Time magazine, and surely knows about propa
ganda.
38. See the excellent study by Timothy Cheek, Propaganda and Culture in Mao’s
China: Deng Tuo and the Intelligentsia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
39. See Gordon Bennett, Yundong: Mass Campaigns in Chinese Communist Leader
ship (Berkeley: University of California Center for Chinese Studies, 1976); and
Lynn T. White III, Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China’s
Cultural Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
40. White, Policies of Chaos, 17–18.
41. Quoted in Byung-joon Ahn, Chinese Politics and the Cultural Revolution: Dy
namics of Policy Processes (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 166.
42. On the Writers Association, see Perry Link, The Uses of Literature: Life in the
Socialist Chinese Literary System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000),
118–122.
43. See Chen Qitong et al., “Some of Our Views on Current Literary and Art
Work,” Renmin ribao (January 7, 1957), in Survey of the China Mainland Press 1507
(April 9, 1957), 17–19.
44. Xiao was not helped by the fact that his patrons were the moderate Chen Yi
and Ye Jianying, rather than radical Lin Biao. See Xiao Wangdong, “Gandan
zhaoren xian yingcai—huai Chen Yi tongzhi duiwo de bangju jiaoyu” [“His heroic
spirit shows us a man of great ability—Recalling how Comrade Chen Yi helped
and educated me”], in Zhonggong Zhuzhou Shiwei Xuanchuanbu, ed., Huainian
Chen Yi tongzhi [“Cherish the memory of Comrade Chen Yi”] (Changsha: Hunan
Renmin Chubanshe, 1979), 221–223; and “Yeh Chien-ying’s Criminal Activities in
the World of Literature and Art,” Beijing hung-teng pao [“Red lantern news”] 3
(May 20, 1967), in Joint Publications Research Service 41,884 (July 18, 1967), 53–56.
45. Summary of the Forum on the Work in Literature and Art in the Armed Forces
with Which Comrade Lin Piao Entrusted Comrade Chiang Ching (Peking: Foreign Lan
guages Press, 1968). A slightly different (earlier) version is in Survey of the China
Mainland Press 3956 (June 9, 1967), 1–15.
46. Artists often asked Jiang Qing for aid in joining the army. See “Jiang Qing
tongzhi he Shanghai Wudao Xuexiao ‘Baimaonu’ Juzu quanti gongzhi zuotanshi
de jianghua”[“Comrade Jiang Qing’s talk with the comrades of the ‘White-

Haired Girl’ troupe of the Shanghai Ballet School”] (April 25, 1967), and “Chen
Boda, Jiang Qing deng shouzhang jiejian sige yangbanxi danwei de zuotan
jiyao” [“Summary of the conversation of Chen Boda, Jiang Qing, and other lead
ers in receiving four model opera units”] (November 9, 1967), in Jiang Qing
tongzhi lun wenyi [“Comrade Jiang Qing Discusses Literature and Art”] (May
1968), 167–168, 171; Talks of November 9 and 12, 1967, in CCP Documents of the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 1966–1967 (Hong Kong: Union Research In
stitute, 1968), 601.
47. Interview with pianist Yin Chengzong (May 13, 1987), in New York City.
48. See my Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
49. 1 tael = 50g or 1.33 oz.
50. “Exposing the Towering Crimes of Counter-revolutionary Revisionist Li
Ch’i against the Party, Socialism and Mao Tse-tung’s Thought” (April 1, 1967), in
Survey of China Mainland Magazines 23(Supplement) (April 16, 1968), 16.
51. Quan Yanchi, Zouxia shentan de Mao Zedong [“Mao Zedong off the alter”]
(Beijing: Zhongguo Wenhua Chubanshe, 1989), 47–49. I have modified my trans
lation based on Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong: Man, Not God (Beijing: Foreign Lan
guages Press, 1992), 45–47.
52. Li Honglin, “‘Right’ and ‘Left’ in Communist China: A Self-Account by a
Theoretician in the Chinese Communist Party,” Journal of Contemporary China 6
(summer 1994), 11.
53. Feng Shufan, ed., Zuotian de zhongguo [“Yesterday’s China”] (Xian: Shaanxi
Renmin Chubanshe, 1988), 59, 97. On the Water Margin campaign, see Lowell
Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution: The Post-Liberation Epoch 1949–1981 (Berke
ley: University of California Press, 1987), 155–156.
54. “Violently Bombard China’s Khrushchev—Chief Backer of the Black Line in
Literature and Art,” Chieh-fang-chun wen-i 12 (August 10, 1967), in Survey of China
Mainland Magazines 605 (December 11, 1967), 18.
55. The following paragraphs encapsulate an argument I develop at greater
length in “Arts Policies of the Cultural Revolution: The Rise and Fall of Culture
Minister Yu Huiyong,” in William Joseph, Christine Wong, and David Zweig, eds.,
New Perspectives on the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1991).
56. An excellent analysis of political infighting of the late Cultural Revolution
is in Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution, 108–209.
57. Criticism Group of the Central Broadcasting Affairs Bureau, “The ‘Gang of
Four’ Cannot Shirk Responsibility for Their Crimes in Brutally Encircling and
Suppressing the Broadcast of Literature and Art,” Renmin ribao 2 (February 1977),
in Survey of the People’s Republic of China Press, 6300:87(16) (March 1977); “Song
Recitals Popular in China’s Cities and Countryside,” NCNA-English, (May 23,
1976), in Survey of the People’s Republic of China Press, 6107:72(3) (June 1976).
58. See Ellen Johnston Laing, The Winking Owl. Art in the People’s Republic of
China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 85–87, and Julia F. Andrews,
Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: Univer
sity of California Press, 1994), 368–376.
70 Chapter 2
59. As early as 1975, Deng asked Hu Qiaomu to gather materials on the imple
mentation of the Hundred Flowers policy in culture, education, science, and pub
lishing. Deng assigned He Long’s daughter, He Jiesheng, to recruit informants in
arts. The plan to rehabilitate old arts cadres was premature when Deng lost power
in January 1976. See Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution, 204–205.
60. See Kenneth G. Lieberthal, “Introduction: The ‘Fragmented Authoritarian
ism’ Model and Its Limitations,” and Carol Lee Hamrin, “The Party Leadership
System,” in Kenneth G. Lieberthal and David M. Lampton, eds., Bureaucracy, Pol
itics, and Decision Making in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992), 1–30 and 95–124.
61. In addition to works cited in chapter 1, see Connie Squires Meaney, “Mar
ket Reform in a Leninist System: Some Trends in the Distribution of Power, Status,
and Money in Urban China,” Studies in Comparative Communism 22(2–3) (sum-
mer/autumn 1989), 203–220; and Benedict Stavis, China’s Political Reforms: An In
terim Report (New York: Praeger, 1988). The early phase of cultural reform is dis
cussed in John Fitzgerald, “A New Cultural Revolution: The Commercialization
of Culture in China,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 11 (January 1984),
105–120; Perry Link, “The Limits of Cultural Reform in Deng Xiaoping’s China,”
Modern China 13(2) (April 1987), 115–176; and Richard Kraus, “China’s Cultural
‘Liberalization’ and Conflict over the Social Organization of the Arts,” Modern
China 9(2) (April 1983), 212–227.
62. Qi Laiping and Tao Jialun, “Gong xiao lu kuan wencai liangwu” [“A small
palace with a broad road, art and finance flourish together”], Zhongguo wenhua bao
(January 18, 1989).
63. Zhong Ming, “Xi’an huajuyuan gongkai zhaoping yuanzhang” [“Xi’an spo
ken drama academy hires head through open competition”], Zhongguo wenhua bao
(April 12, 1989).
64. Interview with Comrade Jiang of the Guilin Cultural Bureau (November 8,
1979).
65. Written and shouted slogans are typically negotiated in advance in Chinese
culture. This was demonstrated anew at the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sov
ereignty. In the early hours of the morning of July 1, 1997, in Hong Kong, Martin
Lee, leader of the Democratic Party, led followers in chanting “long live democ
racy” (in English) from the balcony of the Legislative Council from which his
party had just been excluded. The precise manner of this demonstration, includ
ing the slogans to be used, had been negotiated in advance with the police.
66. “People’s Daily on Gang‘s Crimes in Ministry of Culture,” Peking NCNA
Domestic Service (May 14, 1978), in FBIS (May 15, 1978), E14–20.
67. “Wenhuabu dui ‘sirenbang’ zhankai dajiepi daqingcha” [“Ministry of Cul
ture opens big exposure and big inspection of ‘gang of four’”], Renmin ribao (May
15, 1978).
68. Wei Liming, “Criticism: Key to Flourishing Culture,” Beijing Review 29(27)
(July 7, 1986), 14.
69. “Wang Meng renwei: yishu bushi shengcai zhi dao” [“Wang Meng: Art is
not the road to riches”], Fuzhou wanbao (May 25, 1989); “Wenyijia buyinggai
beiyangqilai” [“Artists should not be carried as a burden”], Fuzhou wanbao (June
1, 1989).
70. Li Jun, Kunrao yu zhuanji—Wenhua yishu guanlixue chutan [“Perplexities and

resolutions—An exploration of culture and arts management”] (Wuhan: Hubei
Renmin Chubanshe, 1987).
71. See Geremie Barmé, “Chinese Drama: To Be or Not,” Australian Journal of
Chinese Affairs 10 (July 1983), 143.
72. Guan Xin, “Shaoxingshi wenhuaju teyao Jilinsheng Huamianshi wen
huaguanzhang jieshao gaige jingyan” [“Shaoxing municipal cultural bureau in
vites the head of the cultural center of Huamin city in Jilin to introduce his expe
rience with reform”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 8, 1989).
73. On the post-Mao demoralization of propaganda cadres, see Lucian Pye, The
Dynamics of Chinese Politics (Cambridge: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1981), 32.
74. John P. Burns, ed, The Chinese Communist Party’s NOMENKLATURA System,
xviii–xix, xxxiii–xxxiv.
75. See Luo Weinian, Zhan Songsheng, and Tian Naiqi, Shiyong gonggong guanxi
88 li [“Eighty-eight rules of practical public relations”] (Guangzhou: Kexue Puji
Chubanshe Guangzhou Fenshe, 1988).
76. A Chinese-born professor at Occidental College found that in the campaign
against spiritual pollution, “One of my colleagues in Nanjing was sent to the
countryside to receive ‘re-education’ for his ‘unhealthy soul.’ He was accused of
looking closely at the breasts of a woman student while he talked excitedly about
graphic sexual portrayals in the fiction of Saul Bellow.” Xiao-huang Yin, “China’s
Gilded Age,” The Atlantic Monthly 273 (April 1994), 42–43.
77. Shen Tong, Almost a Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), 127.
78. Liu Binyan, “Tell the World”: What Happened in China and Why (New York:
Pantheon, 1989), 92.
79. “Some Important Leadership Cadres in Charge of Cultural and Propaganda
Work,” Issues & Studies 5 (1986), 150–152.
80. Lynn T. White III, “The End of the Chinese Revolution: A Leadership Di
versifies,” in Victor Falkenheim, ed., Chinese Politics from Mao to Deng (New York:
Paragon, 1989), 99.
81. As part of a major government restructuring in March 1998, the Ministry of
Radio, Film, and Television was reorganized into the State Bureau of Radio, Film,
and Television under the direct supervision of the State Council, which presum
ably keeps close tabs on policy. Its governmental functions were given over to a
new Ministry of the Information Industry, which also absorbed the former min
istries of Posts and Telecommunications and Electronics Industry.
82. Personal visit, Fuzhou, January 1989. See also the account in Zhongguo wen
hua bao (August 13, 1989).
83. “The General Political Department’s Request for Instructions Concerning
the Proposal to Revoke the Summary of the February 1966 Forum on the Work in
Literature and Art in the Armed Forces” (March 26, 1979), Issues & Studies 20(9)
(September 1984), 87–92.
84. Ellis Joffee, The Chinese Army after Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1987), 173–176.
85. June Teufel Dreyer, “The Demobilization of PLA Servicemen and the Rein
tegration into Civilian Life,” in June Teufel Dreyer and Ilpyong J. Kim, eds., Chi
nese Defense and Foreign Policy (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 297–330.
72 Chapter 2
86. “Woguo yiyou qianyu zhijun yuedui” [“Our country now has over a thou
sand military bands”], Fuzhou wanbao (April 21, 1989).
87. See Richard Kraus, “Bai Hua: The Political Authority of a Writer,” in Tim
othy Cheek and Carol Hamrin, eds., China’s Establishment Intellectuals (Armonk,
N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1986), 185–211; Dong Kangding, “Jiejia guitian hou di Bai Hua”
[“Bai Hua after coming out of his shell and returning to the field”], Jing bao 1 (Jan
uary 1986), 30–31.
88. Liu Binyan, Tell the World, 133.
89. Silbergeld, Contradictions, 162. See also 165–166, 191–192.
90. Lu Zhong, “Chubanshu ‘saohuang’ Jingpingmei zaoyang” [“Publishing
officials fail to ‘sweep the pornography’ of The Golden Lotus”], Jingbao 133 (August
1988), 98–99.
91. Jian Feng, “Jiefangjun zongzheng gejutuan gewutuan tuichu Yidali
minggeju ‘Tuosika’” [“The opera and dance troupes of the general political de
partment of the people’s liberation army stage the famous Italian opera Tosca”],
Zhongguo wenhua bao (March 12, 1989).
92. Willy Wo-lap Lam, “Grip tightens on army funds,”South China Morning
Post (December 7, 1996).
93. “Zhongguo wenlian zhaokai tizhi gaige zuotanhui” [“Chinese Arts Feder
ation convenes forum on structural reform”], Wenyi bao (January 30, 1988).
94. See Hu Hao, “Mao Zedong youling zai zhaohuan” [“Calling up Mao Ze-
dong’s ghost”], Zhengming 136 (February 1989), 10.
95. “Quanguo wenhua gongzuo huiyi zai Jing zhaokai” [“National cultural
work conference opens in Beijing”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (May 15, 1988).
96. On the decline of the traditonally cultured official, see Cheek, Propaganda
and Culture.
97. Willy Wo-Lap Lam, “Beijing Banks on April,” South China Morning Post
(November 5, 1997).
98. Orville Schell, “Children of Tiananmen,” San Francisco Chronicle (February
25, 1989). On the decline of the traditional intelligentsia, see Cheek, Propaganda and
Culture.
99. Qi Xin, “Cong Deng Xiaoping guanyu tequan wenti de jianghua tanqi”
[“Talking of Deng Xiaoping’s speech on bureaucratic privilege”], Qishiniandai 120
(January 1980), 74–75.
100. Zhu Muzhi, “Several Questions to Be Taken into Consideration in Formu
lating Strategies for Cultural Development,” Guangming ribao (January 13, 1986),
in FBIS (January 24, 1986), K22.
101. Kenneth Dean, “Funerals in Fujian,” Cahiers d’Extreme Asie 4 (1988), 19–78.
102. Michel Oksenberg, “Economic Policy Making in China: Summer 1981,”
China Quarterly 90 (June 1982), 193.
3
Normalizing Nudity
T he representation of the naked body is an arena of persistent contro

versy in China’s cultural politics. As in many nations, the distinction
between art and pornography is contested. An obscurely shifting zone of
separation between the two reminds us that the difference is political as
well as aesthetic. The late 1980s brought a sudden rage for nude paintings.
Unprecedented exhibitions of paintings and photographs of nude models
attracted thousands of visitors in Beijing, Shanghai, and several provincial
capitals. Even more Chinese skimmed books of nude photographs and
paintings, as the state relaxed its formerly close supervision of the sexual
content of art. The 1989 Beijing Massacre halted this episode; a campaign
against pornography dampened public interest in nude painting, but
hardly eradicated it. Sex remains a continuing battle line at the conver
gence of art and politics, although naked images in oils have lost their
power to startle the public and unnerve the politicians.1
Nude painting is foreign to China’s cultural tradition, and the political re
actions to this phenomenon provide a useful perspective for viewing changes
in the meaning of culture and who is empowered to determine what consti
tutes art. What do nude paintings mean to the Chinese and why did they be
come popular at the end of a decade of reform? The rage for nude painting
brings into focus several issues: the erosion of Communist authority, artistic
dissent against state-directed cultural policy, underpaid art professors hus
tling to cope with runaway inflation, rampant sexism, and curiously earnest
claims that nude painting is “scientific.” On one level, nude paintings simply
exist to titillate; on another, the noisy insistence that they are art challenges
the state’s right to classify troublesome culture as pornography.
73
74 Chapter 3
Nude art seems a lightweight artistic phenomenon to bear the load of

such diverse connotations, yet it offers a helpful position from which to
explore the emergence of new uncertainties about the formerly pre
dictable relationship of art to the Chinese state. First, the state ceased de
manding that artists only apply their skills to immediate political tasks.
Second, artists increasingly regarded themselves as professionals with the
right work according to their own standards. Some used nude painting to
assert their own politics of autonomy, others as a welcome form of apolit
ical painting. Third, the sensationalism of nude painting joined other pop
ular culture phenomena in eliciting a limited private arts marketplace as
an alternative to state patronage.
It is difficult to find an appropriate tone in writing about a subject that
affords such easy opportunities to offend both men and women, Chinese
and Westerners alike. The category of nude art is China’s social construc
tion, not mine. Much about the nude art rage may seem absurd to West
erners, but I do not intend to make light of the seriousness of those who
have created the art or participated in the public discussion of its mean
ing. Art that draws attention to sex poses messy problems for any nation
as tolerance clashes with modesty and morality with license. The West has
by no means handled these questions more smoothly than China.
NUDITY AS A FORBIDDEN ZONE
Imperial China was a harshly prudish place, at least in public. Mark Elvin
has commented, “The human body in traditional China was not seen as
having its own intrinsic physical glory.” There was no Chinese counter
part to the “complex interfusion of sexuality, maternity and spirituality
that one glimpses in the face of a Bellini Madonna.”2 Nude painting ex
isted only in pornography for the wealthy, a furtive tradition that under
scored the scandal with which most people regarded representations of
the uncovered body.
A number of Chinese painters learned figure-painting techniques in Eu
rope as students of oil painting early in the twentieth century. On return
ing to China, they often outraged the established authority by including
the nude as a painting subject, along with the still life and other staples of
the Western oil tradition.3 Liu Haisu returned from France to become di
rector of the Shanghai Fine Arts School, where he taught figure painting.
Liu defended a student who included nudes in a 1924 exhibition in Nan
chang, although the military governor immediately banned the paintings.
When the minister of education sided with Liu, other schools began using
female nude models. Battles over nude art continued in 1926, when
Shanghai officials investigated Liu’s school, reporting that female models
Normalizing Nudity 75
“take off all their clothing and assume positions of sleeping, sitting, stand
ing, and all kinds of strange postures.”4 Even the Chinese word for model
is foreign, unusual in modern Chinese because the English sound has
been borrowed (mote’er), rather than the meaning. Warlord Sun Quanfang
banned nude models and threatened to arrest Liu Haisu and close his
school. The overthrow of Sun by Chiang Kaishek the following year
ended the crisis, but not before Liu Haisu fled to Japan.
Christian missionaries joined Chinese warlords in opposing nudity in
art. When the new Beijing Hotel was opened with murals that included
naked mermaids, Western preachers successfully demanded the addition
of bathing suits.5 Even politically progressive Chinese painters criticized
painting the naked body, not out of prudishness, but because Western
subjects for paintings seemed irrelevant to Chinese social needs. One rad
ical painter of the 1930s said that students at the Hangzhou Academy
painted “nothing but apples, bananas, and women’s thighs.”6
Communists and the Body

The appearance of figure painting was a consequence of the introduction
of realist painting, which eventually became the basis for the political art
that once dominated China. The celebrated Xu Beihong returned from Eu
ropean training to lead the Central Academy of Fine Arts, training a cadre
of painters who took figure studies as a central part of their training.7
Many went on to teach realist techniques that helped propagandize the
revolution.
Although paintings of nudes shared a realist curricular heritage with
paintings of model soldiers, the Communist Revolution discouraged
nude art, which especially offended the peasants among the new lead
ership. In the 1950s the Soviet painter Maksimov included nudes in a
short course in oil painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and
the Romanian artist Baba offered a similar six-month course in
Hangzhou; both exerted considerable influence over the art world.8 But
after the split with Moscow in 1960, these “revisionist” nudes were con
tested, as many sought to ban nude models from figure-painting
classes, bringing arts academies in line with traditional Chinese moral
ity, which on this point seemed to share the austere spirit of the revo
lution. A group of propaganda officials, unhappy that art students were
drawing nude models instead of working in the countryside, pressed
the Ministry of Culture to ban nude modeling in August 1964. At the
Guangzhou Fine Arts Academy, a campaign to “rectify the bourgeois
education system with modeling at its core” was soon underway.9 But
when three Central Academy of Fine Arts professors petitioned Mao to
overturn the ministry’s decision, Mao used a letter to five top leaders
76 Chapter 3
(Lu Dingyi, Kang Sheng, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, and Peng Zhen) to do
so on July 18, 1965:10
Fundamental training in drawing and sculpture requires models—male, fe

male, old, and young; they are indispensable. The prohibitions of feudal ide
ology are inappropriate. It is unimportant if a few bad things emerge. For the
sake of art and science, we must put up with some small sacrifices.11
Mao’s directive on nude models was out of phase with the Cultural
Revolution that soon followed. Red Guards did not quote the chairman’s
encouragement of this “small sacrifice”; instead, they regarded nude
painting as bourgeois smut. And the deputy head of the Propaganda De
partment, who opposed the use of nude models most forcefully, was crit
icized for his anti-Maoist standpoint.
Nude painting reemerged when the academies reopened in the early
1970s. Models reappeared in the classroom in 1973, but were withdrawn
again in 1975. When the Lu Xun Fine Arts Academy resumed figure-
painting classes in 1978, Mao’s instruction was dusted off in justifica-
tion.12 The nude tradition was further justified when Fine Arts Research
reprinted Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” alongside a prerevolutionary nude
sketch by Wu Zuoren, who had returned from studies in Brussels and
Paris to become one of China’s fine arts leaders.13 By 1979, a Hunan mu
seum held a show titled “Exploration of Nude Painting,” explaining that
the Gang of Four had blocked the development of this tradition. How
ever, accompanying signs warned that the nudes were for academic re
search and the use of arts students only. While foreign visitors could tour
the show (which also included landscapes and other less controversial
paintings), Chinese needed official credentials for admission.14
Yet, nudes began to make their way into popular culture as well. A 1980
television show included a scene of art students painting “Venus de
Milo.”15 Shortly after this Venus was unearthed in 1820, it became an em
blem of the European bourgeoisie’s amalgam of daring and propriety,
qualities that the image carried along with it to China in the twentieth
century. Some bold entrepreneurs took advantage of the nascent tolerance
for nude art to peddle plaster reproductions of “Venus de Milo” at
Hangzhou’s West Lake in 1980, along with other foreign high-culture im
ages such as busts of Goethe and Beethoven.
Nudes of Rebellion
Old controversies were rekindled as nude art began to appear in public
places. Some artists used nude images to test the limits of what cultural
officials would tolerate. One bold sculptor used nude art to subvert a
massive propaganda campaign about Zhang Zhixin (1930–1975), a Liao

ning propaganda official who was jailed during the Cultural Revolution
for her stubborn loyalty to Liu Shaoqi. Zhang was executed in 1975 in a
particularly grisly manner (her throat was cut in order to prevent her
from shouting slogans before her death). The propaganda drive sought to
purge Maoists from power in Liaoning and accompanied the posthumous
rehabilitation of Liu Shaoqi.16
Amidst thousands of songs, stories, and paintings of Zhang Zhixin,
Tang Daxi offered a nude statue of Zhang as a fierce archer astride a rear
ing horse, entitled “Brave Warrior—To Those Who Struggle for Truth.”
The Guangdong literary magazine Zuopin reproduced this statue on its
November 1979 cover.17 The ploy was clever: who could criticize a work
celebrating an official martyr? A Western counterpart might be a nude
Joan of Arc or, perhaps, Susan B. Anthony. Zhang was typically repre
sented playing her violin, but a nude rider was perhaps more striking
than a naked fiddler.18 Some Chinese viewers took the nudity quite seri
ously as part of a political message in which the martyr proclaims, “even
if my body is exposed, I will still oppose you.”19 Others saw the statue as
a taunt to Party propaganda officials.
A complex dispute arose over nude art at the new Beijing airport in 1979.
Intended to show off China’s new openness after the Cultural Revolution,
the airport was well appointed with new art. Amidst the fifty-eight spe
cially commissioned works of art was a mural by Yuan Yunsheng, “Water-
Splashing Festival, Song of Life,” a massive painting of the springtime cel
ebration of the Dai minority people of China’s Yunnan Province. Among
more than a hundred painted figures are the unclothed forms of two
bathing women, which became the focus for a double-barreled contro-
versy.20
The first clash was within the arts world. Speeches given to celebrate
the unveiling of the airport art make it clear that the two nude figures
were supported enthusiastically by part of the Chinese political and cul
tural establishment in a drive against “feudal” barriers.21 Many speakers
praised Shen Tu, head of China’s aviation system, for his tasteful patron
age, the head of the Central Party School even likening the airport to the
Sistine Chapel. Ai Qing, the most celebrated poet of the senior generation,
applauded Shen Tu especially for backing the nudes:
If Comrade Shen Tu had no courage, they could not appear. Now that they
have been hung, will people denounce them? I dare not say, but I see that the
comrade from the Party School has come to support them. The Party School
represents the authority of the highest leadership, so I am happy. Just now [an
other participant] said: “Do you dare to have your photograph taken in front
of the nude paintings?” What should I fear? I’ve seen lots of nude paintings.22
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Supervising the airport construction project was Li Ruihuan, a former

model worker who had just built Mao Zedong’s mausoleum. Li, a rising
star in Chinese politics, would soon become mayor of Tianjin and, in 1989,
join the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau as overseer of culture
and ideology. Li spoke with surprising vigor:
People called me on the phone and wrote me letters; even responsible com
rades said “You tell them, you think of a way to put underpants on those
nudes on the Western wall of the Water-splashing Festival, all right?” (laugh
ter) I said: what are you doing sounding off before you understand art? Sup
pose you wait and listen to other views, then speak, ok? If you stick your
nose in now as an oppositionist, when the time comes in a few days to criti
cize that point of view, you’ll really be in it (applause and great laughter).
There are a great many people who are not enlightened about this kind of
thing; I think that when a new and good thing emerges, a correct sort of
thing, its protectors are not necessarily in the majority.
Li remarkably deferred to the professional expertise of artists, in con

trast with those who did not “understand art.” In 1979 the Party encour
aged better treatment for intellectuals, a policy intended to reverse the im
pact of the Cultural Revolution. Li’s verbal respect for the expert
autonomy of artists came as China held its Fourth National Arts Con
gress, which did much to lift the spirits of arts professionals.
Those in the leadership who wanted to open China more quickly used
the nude figures in Yuan’s painting to challenge conservatives. The new
airport artworks were an important symbol of openness to the outside
world, and the project received massive publicity. Those who doubt a co
ordinated campaign should note publication in People’s Daily of a poem in
praise of the airport murals that included the line “who says we turn fear
ful at the sight of the human figure’s beauty?”23
But after the ceremony, Yuan’s mural became embroiled in a second (yet
related) conflict between Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng; both used
arts issues to advance their causes, and Yuan’s painting came under attack
for more expressly political reasons. A group of Dai living in Beijing had
“confirmed that they did indeed bathe nude.” But a few months later,
some Yunnan officials—apparently not Dai themselves—complained that
the mural embarrassed the Dai. It is likely that these critics were
prompted by Hua Guofeng’s supporters, eager to take advantage of the
fact that Deng Xiaoping had personally visited and approved Yuan Yun-
sheng’s mural. Hua appealed to traditional Chinese modesty and propri
ety, while Deng backed intellectuals tired of prudery and official restric
tions. Yuan Yunsheng had been labeled a rightist in 1957; Deng had
backed the rehabilitation of such rightists in 1979 (even though he
had been a major leader of the 1957 antirightist campaign), while Hua had
been unenthusiastic about removing the rightist labels. Many also criti
cized Yuan for the “distortions” caused by painting the bodies of the Dai
people in an elongated style.
The offending section of the wall was covered with a curtain while of
ficials debated its fate. The curtain merely tempted people to peek. In
1981, the nudes were covered by a permanent wall, despite petitions from
the arts world to protect the mural’s integrity. Yuan declined an invitation
to “revise” his painting. By this time Deng Xiaoping had prevailed over
Hua Guofeng and probably reasoned that he no longer needed to curry
the favor of intellectuals so much as to win over Hua’s former supporters.
In subsequent years, Yuan Yunsheng’s Beijing airport mural was sealed or
opened according to the political climate, and Yuan emigrated to the
United States.
Despite Deng’s betrayal over the mural, his victory over Hua Guofeng
brought about a systematic reduction in the role of the Central Commit-
tee’s Propaganda Department, which gradually withdrew from day-to-
day supervision of the work of artists, trying instead to set broad policies.
At several points in the 1980s, the propagandists erupted in frustration,
especially in the 1983 campaign against spiritual pollution and the 1987
campaign against bourgeois liberalization. In the 1983 investigation of
Sichuan painter Li Huasheng, authorities seized his books containing re
productions of nudes by Picasso and Gauguin as pornography, while
other artists in Sichuan were imprisoned for their use of nude models.24
Yet, these were ultimately rearguard protestations, incapable of matching
the force of three trends: the assertion of self-governance by artists, the
emergence of a commercial economy, and the disrepair of the Party’s or
gans for policing ideology.
At the beginning of the reform decade, nude art was a forbidden zone. Ten
years later, it had achieved respectability. The 1980s brought more and more
public nudes, especially in the movement to build statues to decorate China’s
cities. Hundreds of sylphs and nymphs of modernization dance in these stat
ues, sometimes wearing diaphanous drapes, but often publicly baring
breasts and limbs in ways that had not been tolerated in China for thousands
of years. New commercial advertising contained so many fleshy images that
there was no longer much controversy over the exhibition of academic
painters‘ figure paintings. In 1983, Yan’an, the cradle of the revolution, was
the scene of nude dancing; what could be so terrible about genteel painters
and sculptors using nude figures in their art? When two Liaoning painters
won prizes for their nudes in the 1987 “Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition,” the
Ministry of Culture’s newspaper commented that “this the first time that
paintings of nudes have won prizes in a Chinese exhibition. This reflects
changes and progress in popular viewpoint.”25 With this signal of approval,
a group of Beijing painters began to plan China’s first all-nude art exhibition.
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THE 1988–1989 NUDE ART SHOWS
The nude art show, which began on December 18, 1988, at Beijing’s China
Art Gallery created a sensation even before it opened. As early as June,
forty-seven Chinese papers and magazines and seven foreign news serv
ices carried reports on the coming show. Art schools and work units em
ploying painters began requesting tickets half a year in advance,26 and 28
faculty from the Central Fine Arts Academy presented 135 nude paint
ings. Most were realistic, but the show included a few expressionist
works; one artist had two abstract canvases that he mischievously or op
portunistically labeled nudes and included in the show. Almost all of the
subjects were women; all but one of the painters were male. The unprece
dented exhibit attracted about a quarter of a million visitors in eighteen
days.27 This record attendance comprised mostly male viewers (perhaps
two-thirds) who were primarily officials, intellectuals, or students. Few
workers, peasants, or merchants attended.28 The Beijing show was backed
publicly by the Ministry of Culture. Vice Minister Ying Ruocheng admit
ted that the nudes were “no doubt a shock to people still harbouring feu
dal concepts,” but said that the exhibition was a positive experience from
the points of view of art, science, and education.29
Artists of other cities took this endorsement as a green light for their
own nude art shows. Early in 1989 such shows opened in Shanghai,
Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Fuzhou. Members of the fine arts faculty of Fu
jian Teachers University put on the Fuzhou exhibit from March 19–28,
1989.30 The show was arranged in one week, during which there was
fevered construction of frames for paintings pulled from the closets of the
artists. This copycat exhibition illustrates a basic principle of Chinese pol
itics: innovations spread throughout the nation after the publicized suc
cess of a single prototype. Fuzhou is a city of 1.5 million people on the
coast of Fujian Province across from Taiwan. It has been an important re
gional capital for over a thousand years; in the past decade, it has been a
showcase for policies of economic reform, partly to attract investors from
Taiwan. But Fuzhou also has a moralistic heritage, partly from a strong
military presence; during three decades of armed tension with Taiwan
and the United States, Fuzhou was the capital of a frontline military
region.
The Fuzhou exhibition was staged in a hall directly behind a giant
statue of Mao Zedong in the city’s May First Square. It featured some
eighty nude paintings by twenty-seven professors. Only four showed
males; of these only one included a penis. The styles were varied, includ
ing some expressionist canvases and a nude in the manner of Modigliani,
but most were in the realist tradition. Some portrayed fleshy women with
coy smiles and could easily be imagined hanging in old-fashioned saloons
in the United States. Perhaps the most striking work showed a sturdy
young woman painted in the meticulous watercolor style favored in the
late Cultural Revolution; wearing only a steel wristwatch, she, a model
worker who had just stepped back from her machinery and out of her
clothes, stared rather defiantly at the viewer.31 The Fuzhou paintings were
quite skillfully done, reflecting more than a generation’s experience of
painting clothed figures in propaganda art.
Nearly a thousand persons per day visited the show, a remarkable
number for Fuzhou. The crowd was curious and included some soldiers
in uniform, although most viewers were male intellectuals. Visitors
showed high spirits tempered by anxiety, not altogether different from the
crowd that attended the inauguration of Fuzhou’s first escalator in Feb
ruary 1986—people had dared one another to go first, but were not com
pletely sure that this new thing would work. What did this nude fever sig
nify? This minor social movement bore several distinct meanings, some of
which were contradictory.
Nudes of Science and Democracy

The artists said they were proudly destroying feudal barriers, and were
advancing the cause of science and democracy. Many felt that they were
struggling against the restrictions of the old society in much the way the
May Fourth figures did earlier in this century. Just as Liu Haisu was at
tacked by a reactionary warlord for daring to bring nude painting to
China, so contemporary artists resented puritanical restrictions from out
side their ranks. At this simple level, the painting of naked women was a
blow for artistic freedom.
Many Chinese intellectuals believed that nude paintings were a specific
weapon against feudalism. When Mao Zedong used science to justify
nude modeling in 1965, he was expressing the common belief among
modernizing male intellectuals that the Chinese arts were unscientific and
that Western figure painting reflected an admirable tradition of the scien
tific study of anatomy. Yet, the linkage of science and sex is more com-
plex.32 Nude painting permitted the artists to replace feudal kinship and
gender with a “modern” form of erotic sexism that still manages to keep
women in their place and denies them a subject position from which they
can be viewers.
Nudes as symbols of science and progress encourage many Chinese in
tellectuals to speak of them in rather pretentious terms, explicitly denying
their sexual aspect. For instance, an architect commented on the Beijing
show that “the greatest potential contribution of nude art is to remind us:
humanity is the center of art and science.”33 Two of the painters who par
ticipated in the Beijing exhibition had similar grandiose formulas. Xie
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Dongming claimed, “one is not painting an external surface with the

nude, rather describing certain aspects of the human condition. It’s about
life.” Another artist, Chaoge, insisted that “the message we have to get
across is that the nude is not essentially concerned with physical beauty
but with the beauty of life.”34
Out of context, such words seem to have little to do with pictures of
naked women. A staff member at the China Art Gallery insisted that it is
feudal to look at nude art with sexual consciousness, while the ability to
detach nudity from sexuality is a test of sophistication.35 Others argued
that in the West the classical Greek heritage demonstrated the accord be
tween high ideals and beautiful bodies. Flesh may be the immediate ob
ject of nude painting, but not of the artistic feelings that it elicits.36
Yet, despite the brave rhetoric, no special courage was required to paint
and exhibit nude art in China in 1989, in contrast with 1979. No longer a
forbidden zone, nude painting had become a growth industry, despite the
sanctimonious talk that accompanied it. Indeed, Chen Zui, author of a
1988 history of nude art, claims that he encountered no major problems
after he began his research in 1981, even during the campaigns against
spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization.37
The appeal to science reflects demands for greater professional auton
omy in the arts. One commentator demanded the resumption of a project
initiated by Chinese art sixty years before, recognizing that figure art has
its own laws.38 The common reference to the “laws” of nude painting
places this controversial art in the comforting cloak of other arts that have
been alleged to have their own laws in the reform era. The content of such
laws is unspecified; rather, they are professional arcana, by which artists
stake their claim to diminish outside interference by bureaucrats who do
not share their expertise. Similarly, the appeal to artistic laws distances
professionals from amateur enthusiasts, whom Maoist cultural policy
imagined to be morally superior to professionals.39
At times the association of nude painting with the struggle for truth
seemed frivolous. In the spring of 1989, an eight-part television series was
based on the career of Pan Yuliang, a noted woman painter.40 In the fourth
episode, young Pan flees captivity in a brothel to become an art student in
Shanghai in 1920. As students assemble for the academy’s new class
in figure art, the professor complains that “it is difficult for art to progress
in China.” The earnest students, eager to bring Chinese art into modern
times, are ready to paint their first nudes. However, the model finds it dif
ficult to face so many eyes upon her unclothed body. She begins to disrobe
behind a curtain, but breaks into tears, finally refusing to work. What can
be done? Must China do without nude painting? At the last minute, Pan
Yuliang, the only woman in the class, boldly stands and announces that
she will be the model. The soundtrack swells with lush music as Pan
bravely takes off her clothes; her face glows with radiant and joyous
courage as China’s viewers are treated to a brief, but full glimpse of her
naked body, leaning back in profile.41
The juxtaposition of “progressive” nude painting against “backward”
social conservatism, mixed with a bit of lechery, is not unique to China.
Theodore Dreiser in The “Genius” described the initiation of a provincial
American student into the sophisticated world of Chicago’s Art Institute
in 1880s. Like the Chinese television show, Dreiser combined the morally
comforting stance of indignation against ignorance and repression with
sniggering promises of naked models! Mistresses! French pictures of
naked women! Dreiser’s painter, Eugene Witla, eventually fails because
of his sexuality, enabling the reader to enjoy the simultaneous pleasures
of titillation and moral superiority.42 This same unbeatable combination
was at work in China in the 1980s.
Eroticism
The potential for controversy frightened some artists. As the Beijing nude
show opened, one writer appealed for everyone to “take it slowly and
there will be no calamity.” Ke Wenhui argued for a sharp distinction be
tween nude paintings and the issue of sexual liberation. Insisting that the
most beautiful nude paintings are of mothers, not wives and certainly not
whores, Ke deplored the fact that the rage surrounding the exhibition was
over the nudity, not the art: “I hope that everyone will welcome the nude
painting exhibition, and that people will appreciate it not in a mad fever,
but with proper feelings.”43
In response to this caution, Zhai Mo insisted that “the furor is good!”
Separating nude art from sexuality is not possible, argued Zhai, who
jeered at Ke’s claim that Western nudes mostly represented good girls.
Zhai maintained that China’s artists must affirm the sexual worth of
women and that progress is bound up with the cause of nude painting.44
The 1980s was the decade when many Chinese intellectuals discovered
Freud, whose works had previously been banned. Yet, despite the rage for
Freud, few writers were willing to affirm the sexuality of nude painting
publicly. Far more common was the concealment of sensuality behind sci
ence or the elevating banner of high art. A calendar, for instance, justified
appreciation for the “fully developed breasts, her moderate waist, her
well-rounded hips” of the “Venus de Milo” by referring to the findings of
“aestheticians,” who “recognize that an important standard for the hu
man body’s beauty is the symmetry and proportion of the body’s parts.”45
Another way of denying the erotic aspect of nude art was to misrepresent
Western tradition. One book on Western nude paintings discussed the
often-painted myth of Leda and the swan. But the bird was described as
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Leda’s little friend, rather than the animate form the god Jupiter assumed
in order to rape Leda.46 Other accounts tended to ignore the content of
Western nude paintings, concentrating upon their formal aspects.
A third safety mechanism was to paint nudes that were not Han Chi
nese. Han Chinese, who constitute 93 percent of the population, often re
gard members of China’s national minorities with condescension, some
times as exotic primitives. This attitude gives license to paint minority
women without any clothes.47 In the Han popular imagination, the mi
norities of Southern China are often reckoned to be morally loose, fond of
casually removing their clothes. Han males have a special fascination
with the Lisu and other southern peoples who share a spring water-
splashing festival.48 Yuan Yunsheng’s controversial 1979 mural Water-
Splashing Festival, Song of Life was of naked minority women. Many Chi
nese artists felt that painting “primitive” women with no clothes was less
likely to arouse controversy. Even when the models were Han, painters
often added respectability and distance to their nudes by placing them in
minority settings or by adorning their Han models with central Asian
headdresses or jewelry characteristic of non-Han peoples.49 Nude pho
tography is more risqué than painting, both because the images are po
tentially more lifelike and because few Chinese count photography as
high art. Unsurprisingly, the first nude photograph in a mainland publi
cation was of a group of smiling young Tibetan women bathing in lake.50
The other popular exotics are Western women, who are perhaps even
more openly regarded as wanton, but lack the appealing status of naive
natives of paradise. Images of naked foreign women are plentiful in China,
where reproductions of the West’s own tradition of nude art are widely
available. Many popular posters have featured cavorting Caucasian
nymphs. Especially popular is Bouguereau’s “Maiden and Love,” with cu
pid kissing a buxom white woman. One could argue that Han Chinese
men are especially titillated by exotic women, but it is more likely that im
ages of Han Chinese women are simply more controversial. The Victorians
reconciled sexuality with prudery, making nude painting legitimate by
displacing eroticism to exotic scenes. “In high Victorian painting the nude
which would have shocked in contemporary scenes is somehow accept
able when set in Ancient Greece or Rome.”51 Han Chinese have discovered
a similar safety by shifting the naked body either to the West or to China’s
own minority regions. Nonetheless, as Harriet Evans points out:
The official objection to representations of the sexualized body depends on a

simple categorization of the images of the naked, invariably female, body as
a source of moral corruption and shame, regardless of the place or narrative
context within which it appears, and regardless of the different meanings
that the viewer might read into it.52
SEXISM
Embarrassed by the Fuzhou exhibition, one thirty-year-old Chinese

woman intellectual commented that she had never in her life seen so
many images of naked bodies, but noted that the pictures were almost all
of women, mostly young women, at that. Even a supposedly more
worldly American woman college student remarked that she felt as if the
male visitors were viewing her as well as the paintings. This feeling was
no doubt strengthened by the fact that there was only one woman specta
tor for every twenty-five or thirty men. The few women who braved the
sea of mostly young men either came in groups or with male escorts.53
Yet, the public-relations hype accompanying the show insisted that it
was not only daring and pioneering, but even uplifting. Newspaper art
critics reassured their readers that naked ladies constitute the very
essence of high art.54 One Chinese authority on nude painting, Zuo
Zhangwei, quoted at length a passage from Rodin to show that “only an
artist with an eye for beauty can discover what is splendid about the hu
man body.”
“Ah! This woman’s shoulder is so enchanting! Her lines are true perfection.”
“Look at this woman’s chest: full breasts, incomparably splendid and love
able. This kind of beauty is simply not human, but of the spirits.”
“Look at another woman’s buttocks: what a miraculous undulation! As
fair as jade, with such marvelous muscles! She truly makes me want to fall
on my knees before her!”55
Because Rodin was an internationally celebrated artist whose works are

worth a lot of money, Chinese critics cannot imagine that he was also a
dirty old man, albeit a brilliant and talented one.56
In the West, the woman’s movement forced a reconsideration of the
West’s tradition of nude painting. According to Rosemary Betterton:
It has exposed the nude as a particular construction of female sexuality that

signifies male desire. At the same time the privileged position assigned to the
fine-art nude in European culture has come under attack, by situating the
nude in relation to a whole range of representations—which exploit female
sexuality in pinups, pornography and advertising. Male artists and critics
have consistently justified their enjoyment of the nude by appealing to ab
stract conceptions of ideal form, beauty and aesthetic value. Such a view ren
ders invisible the relationships of power and subordination involved when a
male artist depicts the female body. It ignores or denies the difference be
tween looking at the body of a woman and looking at a pile of fruit. There
fore a feminist critique of the nude has focused upon analysis of the ways in
which the act of viewing itself reinstates male power.57
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John Berger described the classical nude as celebrating male possession:
In the average European oil painting of the nude the principal protagonist is
never painted. He is the spectator in front of the picture and he is presumed
to be a man. Everything is addressed to him. Everything must appear to be
the result of his being there. It is for him that the figures have assumed their
nudity. But he, by definition, is a stranger—with his clothes still on.58
Yet, when American anthropologist Carolyn Bloomer described such

ideas to Zuo Zhangwei, the man who quoted Rodin so effusively, Zuo
was unable make sense of her comments.59 Western feminism’s reevalua
tion of our own tradition of nude art has had little or no impact on Chi
nese artists and critics. I asked Xie Xingbiao, the painter who organized
the Fuzhou exhibition, why the show contained so many more paintings
of women than of men. Xie responded with complete sincerity that
women have fine white skin, which requires greater skill to paint: female
skin reflects the play of light so that painters may better understand the
theory of color. Xie added that women’s figures are also more challenging
than men’s. “[Male] artists already understand the principles of the male
body, so their talent is better developed by painting women.”60
One writer, Chen Zui, unusually admitted that nude art appeals to sex
ual feelings and that it reflects male domination: “figure culture in class
society always reveals the ideology of male strength.” Yet, Chen also of
fered a banal aesthetic “division of labor: male is power, female is beauty;
male is brilliant, female is soft; male is wisdom, female is feeling; male is
philosophy, female is poetry!”61 It should be noted that artists and art stu
dents are far more likely to be male in China than in the West, reflecting
Chinese notions of art’s social importance. There are as yet no Chinese
Guerrilla Girls, although there is now greater awareness of Western fem
inist critiques of the fine arts world.
The first feminist criticism of the Beijing art show published in China
was by an American, Jeanne Moore, a foreign expert working for a Chi
nese publisher, whose comments were printed in China Women’s News.62
Moore complained that it was false to profess that nude art combated feu
dal thinking when the paintings were all of women. This continued feu-
dalism’s male domination more subtly and buttressed it by misleading
claims about the Western art tradition. When Moore suggested an exhibi
tion of nude men painted by female artists, her Chinese friends only
laughed.63 Somehow naked female bodies combat feudalism, while nude
men violate common decency.
Some Chinese women commented on the absence of male forms in
nude art books and in the pinup posters and calendars that even state-
owned firms distribute.64 Yet, the view that China was marching on the
road to modernization beneath a banner of nude females was far more

widespread. When I visited the Fuzhou show, several Chinese art stu
dents naively asked me how it compared to nude art exhibits in the
United States. Sophisticates, such as Xie Xingbiao, however, know that the
West does not have such exhibits. They argue that Asia needs specialized
figure-painting shows because this art is so new. Xie did not believe that
all-nude exhibitions would last long, however. He hoped that in the long
run nude art would, as in the West, be integrated with other art as it be
came less controversial. In the short run, Xie and his colleagues were plan
ning a new stage. They would no longer paint single naked women, but
whole batches of them, linking their figures with stories from Chinese his
tory and legend. Xie illustrated the coming wave of nude art by pulling
out a book printed in Guangzhou; it was full of Western orientalist harem
scenes, nineteenth-century French nudes in Roman settings, and Septem
ber Morn, rounded off with some photorealist American women in bath-
tubs.65
Nude art’s course in the West followed the opposite direction. Accord
ing to Kenneth Clark, the painting of the isolated female body “with no
pretext of fable or setting, was in fact extremely rare before the nineteenth
century.”66 The Fuzhou plan echoes more common European nineteenth-
century practice, where harems and classical backgrounds served to dig
nify otherwise questionable pictures of naked women. In China censorship
and other distorted access to contemporary Western culture means that
young Chinese women are being exposed not to recent Western female im
ages but to those of the gender-typed 1940s and 1950s, if not of much earlier
periods: from the literature of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to television
and film productions such as Anna Karenina and the wholesome Sound of
Music.67
For nude painting, Europe’s nineteenth century was China’s main point
of reference. It was then that the “Venus de Milo” was established as a
popular symbol of classical beauty in Europe, as it became in China.68 It
was also in the nineteenth century that “the nude came to mean, almost
exclusively, the female nude.”69
The Women Art-Workers: Models

Except for a handful of women artists, men paint the nudes. Art students
are far more likely to be men than women, so the pool of female profes
sional painters is small. Women typically work as models. Controversies
about models clarify the sexism of the nude art fad. Even the mere word
“model” is worth a snigger in many quarters.
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China abounds with trashy books and stories with titles such as A Peep
ing Tom Artist Paints a Nude Model. One of these books, My Wife Is Not a
Model, tells the story of painter Ouyang Mu, whose wife refuses to pose
for him. Even when he cites the precedent of Xu Beihong (China’s pioneer
oil painter) and his wife, Ouyang’s wife refuses to undress except in the
dark. Ouyang finds a model, a student in his oil class. Proving the disrep
utable nature of models, the young woman plies Ouyang with liquor un
til he is dead drunk. She puts him in her bed, then calls his virtuous wife
to come fetch him, tricking her into discovering them in bed together. The
wife divorces Ouyang, who endures twenty years of miserable marriage
to his model, before the city commissions him to paint the portrait of a
successful woman entrepreneur. She turns out to be his former wife, who
at last becomes his model.70 The image of models presented in such works
is harshly unforgiving toward the bad girls who take off their clothes.
China’s models became increasingly unhappy with their treatment.71 In
a notorious 1986 case, Chen Shuhua, a nineteen-year-old woman from the
Nanjing countryside, suffered a nervous breakdown after her relatives
shunned her for working as a model at the Nanjing Arts College. When
Chen returned home to recover from an illness, villagers crowded her
home to stare at her. Her family threw her out; Chen was reported to be
“weeping inconsolably: ‘I offered my body for art!’”72 Male models are
also subject to harassment. Ding Yi, who modeled for statues of Sun Yat
sen, Cai Yuanpei, and Li Dazhao, reported that after a dispute with a
neighborhood child over a bow and arrow, the young archer’s father
scolded him in the Fine Arts Academy dining hall: “You worthless old
goat, you lose face for all China when you stand bare-assed and let peo
ple paint you.”73
The grievances of the models came into the open through a well-
publicized strike during the Beijing show. Spectators cursed two mod
els when they went to view their own pictures in the gallery. A by
stander remarked to one model that her head resembled the woman in
the painting, but he didn’t know about the part below. Two married
models were angry that the show violated their privacy. They had not
been told that the paintings might ever be shown in public; after the
show opened, their husbands threatened to divorce them. Other mod
els had concealed their work from their families.74 Watching a televi
sion news report on the controversy with her husband, one model
asked for his reaction. He said that if she were to pose nude he would
divorce her and take their child. “How could you let a child go with a
woman who strips naked and poses for painters?” Models also wanted
a share of the profits from the sale of their portraits in catalogs, slides,
postcards, books, and porcelain figurines. The models claimed that they
had never consented to the exhibition or reproduction of their images.
The Central Academy of Fine Arts responded by claiming the precedent

of Western art, where they claimed (erroneously) that no artist ever had to
seek a model’s permission. Amidst threats of lawsuits and countersuits,
Chinese Women’s News sought a legal opinion; the court replied that the
question of models and the value of the images of their bodies remained
unclear. Academy officials ultimately removed five paintings from the ex
hibition in response to the models’ demands.75
A questionnaire distributed at the Beijing exhibition included queries
about models. Four-fifths responded that models do “respected work,”
which ought to be treated with the same dignity as an artist’s. But nearly
30 percent of these presumably sophisticated viewers sympathized with
the husbands who threatened to divorce their model wives.76 Chinese
Women’s News appealed for a rise in public understanding of figure paint
ing through education, including proclamations of the artists’ respect for
their models.77
As the controversy over models raged, Chinese women were being re
moved from the workplace. Nude art flourished amidst a massive, but lit
tle publicized, purge of women from the workforce, comparable to the
dismissal of female workers in the United States after World War II. Many
women avoided unemployment only by leaving state firms for private
and collective enterprises, which have lower wages, few benefits, and no
security.78 The Beijing models drew parallels between their own “eleva
tion” (in this case to the walls of art galleries) and the tenuous position of
all women in China.
The nude painting rage helped reinforce the status quo of male domi
nation as it enabled professional artists to supplement their incomes. The
reform decade enlarged the sphere of personal freedom for China’s pro
fessional artists; but in the case of nude art, this was achieved by drama
tizing the powerlessness of women.
NUDES FOR PROFIT
Nude art created opportunities for big profits, unless you were a model.
A quarter of a million viewers in Beijing meant nearly U.S. $135,000 in
ticket sales. The Beijing models earned less than three yuan per hour,
while their Fuzhou counterparts earned five. The Beijing models also
complained that their average monthly income was less than two hun
dred yuan and that they were excluded from other routine benefits at the
Central Fine Arts Academy, such as access to the dining hall and free
movie tickets.79
Tickets to the Beijing show cost two yuan, ten times the usual entrance
fee. Books and pamphlets on nudes, ranging in price from 4.50 to 50 yuan,
90 Chapter 3
sold briskly.80 Fuzhou saw a similar leap in ticket prices and the busy sale
of expensive art books. Fuzhou organizers justified charging two yuan
(the highest ticket prices ever charged in the city) with the need to prevent
children from seeing the exhibit and to keep the gallery from being
crowded with the “wrong kind of people.” The real motive was financial:
after deducting overhead for the hall, the painters and Fine Arts Depart
ment split the profits, according to the number of works exhibited. I do
not mean to imply that the painters of Beijing and Fuzhou were driven by
simple greed. On the contrary, China’s rapid inflation in the 1980s hit
salaried state employees, including fine arts professors, especially hard.81
China’s increasingly relaxed cultural climate also coincided with the de
cay of both state supervision and financial support for the arts. A decade
of economic reform and rising personal incomes had created a nascent art
market. If hawkers could sell the “Venus de Milo” at West Lake in 1980,
why couldn’t real artists supplement their incomes by painting nude
women in 1989?
Nude painting, like other unorthodox cultural phenomena (such as
Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music or the fascination with qigong) reached
out for support from the small, but rapidly expanding, marketplace. In
both the Beijing and Fuzhou exhibitions, male artists used their base in
state educational institutions to link up with the market by organizing de
liberately provocative and highly profitable exhibitions. China lacked a
class of individual patrons that could afford to purchase oil paintings, so
the artists did not sell their paintings, but in effect rented them to ticket
holders. When the shows ended, the painters took their works home.
The publishing industry responded quickly to opportunity. By mid-Feb-
ruary, postcards of the Beijing show were for sale in Hangzhou. Within
three months of the Beijing exhibition, some twenty publishers issued new
volumes of nude paintings or photographs. During the Beijing show, a
book stall in front of the China gallery charged forty-two yuan (one-third
of the average monthly income) for World Nude Art Photos.82 The Fujian
Fine Arts Press added to the allure of its twenty-three yuan book by mark
ing it “restricted” (neibu), even though the official New China Bookstore
sold it openly.83 These prices were beyond the means of most Chinese, but
proprietors of private book stalls could rent them out ten times in a single
day at two yuan a peek to be examined on the premises.84
Many of these publications were of poor quality. The survey of nude art
by Zuo Zhangwei, the Rodin enthusiast, was an opportunistic effort to make
money, with sloppy accounts cribbed from Western art history texts. It min
gled undiscussed illustrations with unillustrated discussions. The sixteen
color plates are unusually garish, and the sixty-four black-and-white illus
trations are a model of blurred printing. But his publisher printed sixty-one
thousand copies in 1988 and presumably turned out even more for 1989.85
Other organizations were quick to take financial advantage, while self-

righteously combating “feudalism.” The Shanghai Library dug through
its files to mount an exhibition of nude photographs: tickets cost 2.5 yuan.
After an opening at the Shanghai Population Planning Center, the exhibi
tion toured in neighboring provinces “to let more people see nude art,”
according to a library official.86 Some grumbled that the Shanghai Library
was more interested in money than in art, and others criticized the “Great
Exhibition of Chinese and Foreign Figure Painting” put on by the Fuzhou
Municipal Workers Cultural Palace and the Nanchang Municipal Mass
Arts Center: many viewers felt cheated by the cheap arrangement of il
lustrations from books, rather than original art.87
The quest for money was most blatant when nude art spread to the
countryside. An exhibition arranged by a Sichuan County Cultural Cen
ter consisted solely of photographs of foreign women.88 Residents of this
remote area were quite excited about the “pictures of bare-assed foreign
women.” One journalist wondered if the exhibit could have been held if
it had been of “bare-assed Chinese women.” Partly to pacify the local
Party Propaganda Department head, the Cultural Bureau invited officials
to a private showing prior to the public exhibition. In total silence, more
than 100 middle-aged males inspected 130 colored photographs of naked
foreign women, finally proclaiming that the pictures, apparently mostly
cheesecake, were healthy art, in the traditions of the Dunhuang Buddhist
murals. But they added that the tickets should be priced at 1.5 yuan and
obtainable only upon presentation of a work permit and a letter of intro
duction from one’s work unit, because the art was a bit advanced for a ru
ral community. No children were allowed into the show. Some young
men, expecting to see real foreign women instead of photographs, com
plained that they had been cheated. Three thousand people visited the ex
hibition in the four days before the country government canceled it.89
It is important that stories of the opportunistic hustlers who came for
ward during this movement not eclipse the seriousness of purpose with
which many academic painters began to expand the limits of the permis
sible by experimenting with nude subjects. The honest classicism pro
duced by such serious painters as Wang Yuqi and Yang Feiyun was far
from cheesecake; their work was carefully rendered and quite unsensa
tional, qualities that did not characterize the rage for nude art as a whole.
IS IT ART OR IS IT PORNOGRAPHY?
The nude paintings were merely the most refined manifestation of a

decade’s movement toward greater sexual explicitness, whether in calen
dars, books, advertising, film, or television. As in the United States, few
92 Chapter 3
were certain where to draw the line between pornography and art; many
were unclear about nude painting, but most Chinese agreed that some im
ported videotapes were pornographic. Pornography was said to lead to
sex crimes or at least to keep young students from studying. On a more
general level, pornography was associated with crime, prostitution, gam
bling, and a widely perceived breakdown of decency and the public or-
der.90 Artists were often afraid of crossing obscure social boundaries in
their work. The Photography News reassured its readers that they could
protect themselves in court if officials condemned their harmless work as
pornographic.91
By 1985, concerns about pornography led to regulations that tried to
distinguish lewd materials from works of art and science that showed the
human body.92 China’s most detailed administrative regulations on
pornography were issued in January 1989 at the time of the Beijing exhi
bition. The State Press and Publication Administration distinguished be
tween obscene and sensual items.
According to the standards, obscene publications contain pornography
throughout and are capable of leading physically and mentally normal
adults to degenerate morally while possessing no artistic or scientific
value.
The complex regulations specifically banned detailed descriptions of
sexual intercourse, rape, incest, as well as sex involving minors, sadism,
or homoeroticism.93 The growing concern for pornography also resulted
at this time in a system for rating movies, designed to bar children from
adult entertainment.
China’s tardiness in making formal rules about pornography is initially
puzzling, until we compare it with the European experience. In the West,
despite a lengthy history of sexually explicit writings and pictures, the is
sue of pornography did not emerge as an issue until the nineteenth cen
tury when cheap printing and looser cultural restrictions enabled the
masses to look at dirty pictures. As long as obscene materials were ex
pensive and available only to the European elite, no controversy erupted.
It was only after ordinary people could obtain the same images that the
imagined capacity of pornography to inspire criminal and degraded be
havior was invented as a social problem. While gentlemen “knew how to
handle it,” men of the lower orders could not be trusted.94 According to
Lynn Hunt, in the West inclusion of women in public life created a crisis
in pornography.
The prospect of the promiscuity of representations of the obscene—”when it

began to seem possible that anything at all might be shown to anybody”—
engendered the desire for barriers, for catalogues, for new classifications and
hygienic censoring. In this sense, it might be said that pornography as a cat
egory was invented in response to the perceived menace of the democratiza

tion of culture, which prominently included the participation of women in
the consumption of culture.95
THE POLITICAL USES OF PORNOGRAPHY
The Beijing Massacre of June 4, 1989, put a break on the craze for nude art,
which political violence had rendered trivial and irrelevant. By autumn,
images of nude women came under fire as pornography as the decade’s
relaxation toward sex was brought into the complex world of postmas
sacre Chinese politics.
Ostensibly, the campaign to “sweep away pornography” was intended
to protect the Chinese people from contamination by the dreaded “bour
geois liberalization” that Beijing claimed sparked the spring’s antigov
ernment protests.96 Beijing’s war on porn masked political censorship.
Most of the purged materials were sexual, even if their content was tame
by American standards. But a source close to Fujian’s biggest bookstore
reported that works removed from the shelves also included many by po
litical critics of Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng, such as Yan Jiaqi, the exiled
political scientist and Zhao Ziyang backer. A July directive from the Press
and Publications Administration ordered withdrawal of publications
with bourgeois tendencies, including collections of writings by Zhao
Ziyang and Hu Yaobang; ironically, the order set off a speculative rush for
works by Liu Binyan, Yan Jiaqi, Fang Lizhi, and Su Shaozhi.97 A drive
against sexually titillating materials offered a useful cover for purging
bookstores of politically exciting books.
Many saw the antipornography campaign as an adroit political maneu
ver by Li Ruihuan, who was put in charge of propaganda and ideology af
ter the dismissal of Zhao Ziyang and his ally, Hu Qili. Li, the former car
penter and mayor of Tianjin, perhaps recalled his patronage of Yuan
Yunsheng’s Beijing airport mural in 1979. Only the horror of the Beijing
Massacre could make book burning seem a step toward moderation. Even
some notoriously “liberal” professors viewed the porn purge as a helpful
development; for the first time since the massacre, the Party came up with
an issue beyond a mindless defense of Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng, and their
murderous associates.98 I will argue in the following chapter that it is not
just the Communist Party that keeps China from developing an equiva
lent to the American Civil Liberties Union. Most Chinese intellectuals be
lieve that their works should not be destroyed, but almost no one believes
in an absolute right to distribute controversial or even disgusting materi
als. While lewd materials find a market, efforts to stamp out pornogra
phers are popular among mainstream artists.
94 Chapter 3
The antiporn campaign provided nervous local officials with an oppor

tunity to give the appearance of acting firmly without damaging the in
terests of any of their constituents. If reform-style politics were to make a
comeback, local officials might more likely be forgiven for burning some
Hong Kong videotapes than for arresting dozens of intellectuals.
In Fujian, a main target of the drive against porn was the town of Shishi
(“Stone Lion”), once a favorite of local reformers.99 This rocky hamlet is
known as Little Hong Kong for its ambitious entrepreneurs and open con
tempt for socialist planning. Many Shishi entrepreneurs pirated foreign
videos, then sold them throughout China. The Fuzhou airport seized ten
thousand allegedly pornographic tapes from Shishi, and three quarters of
the pornographic videotapes seized in Shanghai were manufactured there
as well.100 A drive against Shishi porn in the spring of 1989 netted a bun
dle of risqué videotapes, but quickly fizzled out.101 But in the fall, after the
massacre and the dismissal of Zhao Ziyang, a brace of Stone Lion mer
chants had their heads shaven and were paraded on television in an open
outdoor trial; their jail sentences sent a warning to entrepreneurs through
out the province.102 Many Chinese, especially urban bureaucrats and pro
fessionals on fixed incomes, blamed this class and its rapid prosperity for
China’s inflation and were quick to condemn newly successful merchants.
The campaign against Beijing demonstrators had a clear class dimen
sion. The state arrested far more workers and entrepreneurs than stu
dents. Moreover, those executed seem all to have been young male work
ers, as the government sought to pacify its critics among the intelligentsia
by punishing those accused of “infiltrating” the ranks of allegedly patri
otic, but misguided students.
PROTECTING “ART”
The antipornography campaign showed a parallel class dimension as the

government sought to attack pornography, while protecting the high art
of nude painting. In Shanghai detailed regulations for the antipornogra
phy drive specified that neither nude art nor sex-education materials
were to be treated as pornographic.103 Managers of the campaign at
tempted to reassure intellectuals that their interests would not be harmed.
The crusade against pornography was eventually repackaged so that sex
ual materials became only one of six evils: prostitution, pornography, sell
ing women and children, drug pushing, gambling, and feudal supersti
tion.
Nonetheless, the Office of News and Publications complained that 69
percent of the questionable materials submitted from four coastal
provinces were not pornographic. Overzealous (or perhaps lazy) local of
ficials simply seized publications whose titles included the words “sex,”
“love,” or even “woman,” regardless of their content. They also judged
books by their covers and illustrations, condemning dull books with spicy
jackets.104 Some communities in Jiangxi Province were said to require each
family to turn in two pornographic magazines, driving up the black mar
ket prices as families scurried about to find them.105 As in the United
States, “the antipornography movement is not always consistent, but
there is a tendency to extend the concept of pornography in such a way
that it could cover almost all representations of women.”106
But in more sophisticated cities, officials sought to maintain a distinc
tion between elite art and common pornography. The Xiamen Daily sent a
reporter to accompany a porn raid on a hapless sailor. They discovered
playing cards with pictures of naked women and some imported video
tapes that the sailor had shown to his friends (one of whom informed on
him). The fact that this sailor had been detained in 1983 on a similar
charge suggested that officials were not expanding their campaign very
vigorously.107 Similarly, Xiamen Television News reported that the local
Xinhua bookstore was returning unsuitable materials to their publish-
ers.108 When I checked the store two days later, most of the earlier stock
on sex education and figure painting was still in place, indicating that the
sweep was perfunctory. No store clerks or managers were under investi
gation. Yet, the campaign was serious enough that graduate students in
literature at Fujian Teachers University were blocked from obtaining
copies of The Golden Lotus, a four-hundred-year-old classic and porno
graphic novel.
During the spring of 1989, Chinese television showed nudity relatively
frequently, certainly more frequently than American broadcasters. In No
vember 1989, right in the midst of the antiporn campaign, a Jiangxi tele
vision production opened with some fifteen preadolescent boys cavorting
in a river with bare butts and penises. Admittedly, Chinese audiences are
less easily panicked by preadult nudity than Americans, yet the close-ups
of rear ends was not relevant to the show’s subject, the needs of disabled
veterans.109
In a more narrowly targeted signal, the Ministry of Culture newspaper
for arts officials printed an illustrated account about Chang Shuhong,
who taught painting classes in the countryside outside Kunming during
the war against Japan. Using a dilapidated Buddhist temple for his class
room, this Paris-trained artist had nude models posing for his students
even while Japanese planes made their daily bombing raids.110 The Min
istry of Culture did not ban nude paintings, although it restricted their
public exhibition. Only 10 percent of the art in any show might be nudes,
and most of these should be painted from the side, a vantage apparently
deemed to be less arousing than front or back.111
96 Chapter 3
Renewed calls for increasing sex education and appreciating the art of
nude painting appeared by April 1990.112 Yu Yanfeng, a cultural market in
spector, reported noticing a band of young men hunkered down in front
of a village bookstall, leering as they examined a book of nude photo
graphs. Yu discovered that the book was an official state publication of
“artistic quality.” Yet, in the eyes of these rural youth a healthy book had
become a “yellow” publication. Yu praised the antipornography cam
paign for getting rid of cultural garbage, but demanded greater efforts to
educate young people about sex and about figure art.
Painter Pan Yuliang again helped mark the respectability of nude paint
ing. In 1993 China released A Soul Haunted by Painting (Hua hun) (directed
by Huang Shuqin), a movie biography of the pioneering woman artist. In
this version Pan, played by Gong Li, does not model except in a mirror for
herself, producing paintings that even her supportive husband balks at
displaying. The film dwells on the petty-minded intolerance of Nanjing
intellectuals of the 1930s and treats Pan, who spent most of her career in
Paris, as an artist China was too feudal to appreciate during her lifetime.
By 2002 a Beijing art exhibition featured nudes that Pan created in Paris,
suggesting how normal nude painting had become.113
THE TRIUMPH OF SEX
China is by no means alone in lacking widely acceptable standards to sep

arate pornography from other erotic materials. Debating this problematic
boundary has split the women’s community in the United States. An
tipornography activists, appalled by our nation’s unwillingness to pro
hibit violence against women, argue that “pornography is the theory, rape
is the practice,” while civil libertarians are dismayed that restrictions
against free expression may rebound to restrict lesbian art.114
For China, the distinction between art and pornography became less
contentious in the 1990s, especially after Deng Xiaoping’s “southern in
spection.” In 1992 Deng sought to jump-start an additional wave of mar
ket reforms by a much-publicized visit to Shenzhen (Hong Kong’s cross-
border partner) and other leading centers of market economics in South
China. Deng simultaneously urged the Chinese to “combat leftism” as a
way of reassuring them that they would not be criticized if they looked
for profits.
With the rage for the market came a new tolerance for sensational im
ages of naked bodies in fine art, illustrating the covers of popular fiction,
and found in pornographic books and videos. The decade of the 1990s
brought sex talk radio and, at least in urban China, public attitudes to
ward sexual matters that would have seemed brazen two decades ear
lier.115 In the summer of 1992, in Xiamen, teenage women sold porno

graphic videos at midday from boxes alongside the main thoroughfare,
Sun Yatsen Road.
China’s press took advantage of the newly permitted mix of commerce
and sexual titillation; editors printed images of naked women as they
hunted new readers to ward off declining circulation. The most notorious
instance involved the China Culture News, a rather dull paper of the Min
istry of Culture. On January 1, 1993, this paper’s weekend edition, Cul
tural Weekend, appeared chock full of nude pictures, mostly of Western
women. The Ministry of Culture’s publications, like any others, were fac
ing a financial crisis. Zha Jianying interviewed its editor, Zhang Zuomin,
who knew what lines he could not cross: “I will not run anything an
tiparty in my paper,” he said emphatically, “ and I will not run pornogra
phy.”
He went into an absurdly meticulous explanation of how the degree of bod

ily exposure in the nude photos he prints falls well within the prescribed
rules of decorum. This seems to be a particularly Chinese technique among
the professional orders: the art of creatively interpreting Party policies to pro
tect and advance yourself as engaged in a nobly subversive cause.116
The following year, Golden Sands, Running Waters, a film commemorat

ing the sixtieth anniversary of the Long March, included a nude scene in
which a naked young woman is sent by the Yi minority to embarrass the
Red Army out of crossing Yi territory. Mao Zedong’s brother-in-law is
sent to cover the woman with a cloth.117 In this example, the Party made
its peace with public sexuality, compelled not by tolerance, but by money.
The prediction that the next phase of Chinese nude painting would be
illustrations of Chinese legend was born out in the work of the Nanjing
artist Fu Xiaoshi, who painted a series that included imperial concubines
and a scene from the classic novel Journey to the West.118 Yet, although
high-art painters had broken the ban on nude images, they were less in
terested in the issue after their victory.
The growth of a serious pornography industry in the 1990s made ear
lier suspicions of sex in fine arts seem absurd and effectively weakened
the purported link between painting and porn. Chinese authorities fought
a losing struggle against materials that most Westerners would count as
obscene, even as they executed the organizers of distribution rings.
Yet, pornography found another great political use. Railing against
pornography helped ameliorate the harshness of the political campaign
against government critics in 1989. By the middle of the 1990s, China
cynically repeated this ploy for foreign-policy purposes. The United
States pressed China steadily to tighten up enforcement of intellectual-
property rights, especially the manufacture of unlicensed, pirated videos
98 Chapter 3
and compact discs. Enforcement of intellectual-property rights had very

little popular appeal as an issue in China, whereas most people could
easily become indignant about pornography. The government’s solution
was to wage a long-term campaign “against pornography and piracy of
intellectual-property rights,” as if all unauthorized Microsoft software
and Polygram compact discs were really pornographic. They were not, of
course, but linkage to the crusade against porn gave legitimacy to the ef
fort to broaden intellectual-property rights, a cause that in China still had
few believers.
It was much more difficult to shock China after the Beijing Massacre
than at the beginning of the reform period; risqué images no longer star
tled in a world hardened by bullets and blood. The movement for nude
painting, which represented a naughty kind of cultural dissent in 1979,
had won state protection by its end. By 1989, instead of real protest, nude
painting had become a mere posture of rebellion. By the century’s turn, it
no longer had even this pretense.
China has become more sophisticated about nude art, especially in the
elite world of professional artists. Painter Liu Xiaodong has even special
ized in representations of male nudes, and male nudity has been incorpo
rated into the art of the new avant-garde. For instance, Ma Liuming’s per
formance art shocks by challenging gender through such juxtapositions as
female makeup and the artist’s naked male body. And Zhang Huan star
tles by using his own body in photos and videos.119
In popular culture, however, naked bodies continue to spark contro
versy, perhaps now more for their profit potential than because they
shock the censors. In 2001 a “first nude photographic exhibition” was
staged in Guangzhou (selected for its open-mindedness). It was some
thing of a sensation, although organizers had learned to be careful about
securing permissions for the use of images.120 Accounts of the show sug
gest, however, that the models remain likely to be women.121 Nor has a re
cent rage for young women to hire photographers to take their nude por
traits extended to men.122
The normalization of nudity in the 1990s resolved the previous
decade’s discussion by protecting the rights of intellectuals to portray
women, especially non-Han women, without clothing. Neither artists nor
the Party addressed the power arrangements underlying nude images,
thereby reaffirming (if not strengthening) existing gender relationships.
Men remained the viewers, and women remained the viewed. Sex be
came a part of a bread and circus public culture in which nudity was al
lowed to compensate for a still-limited political speech. Hedonism had
priority over political rights. Yet, the loosening of strictures against nudity
was politically significant, as it reflected a broader relaxation of the ca
pacity and desire of the Chinese state to censor art.
NOTES
1. For a recent overview of a complex topic, see Harriet Evans, Women and Sex
uality in China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).
2. Mark Elvin, “Tales of Shen and Xin: Body-Person and Heart-Mind in China
during the Last 150 Years,” in Michel Feher, ed., “Fragments for a History of the
Human Body, Part II,” Zone 4 (New York: Urzone, 1989), 267.
3. Jerome Chen, China and the West: Society and Culture, 1815–1937 (Blooming
ton: Indiana University Press, 1979), 201; Mayching Margaret Kao, China’s Re
sponse to the West in Art: 1898–1937, Ph. D dissertation, Stanford University Fine
Arts, 1972, 110–111; Lin Tong, “Liu Haisu yu Mote’er fengbo” [“Liu Haisu and the
controversy over models”], Chuanji wenxue [“Biographical literature”] 334 (March
1990), 13–20; Michael Sullivan, Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century (Berkeley: Uni
versity of California Press, 1959), 49; Shi Nan, Liu Haisu zhuan [“Life of Liu
Haisu”] (Shanghai: Shanghai Wenyi Chubanshe, 1995), 49–122.
4. Lin Tong, “Liu Haisu,” 18.
5. Denis L. Noble, The Eagle and the Dragon: The United Military in China,
1901–1937 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 202.
6. Julia F. Andrews, “Traditional Painting in New China: Guohua and the
Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Journal of Asian Studies 49(3) (August 1990), 561.
7. Ralph Croizier has developed this point in “‘Opening the Mind’: Nudity
and Eroticism in Chinese Art of the 1980s,” paper for the Annual Meeting of the
College Art Association of America (February 16–18, 1989).
8. Interview with painter Xie Xingbiao, head of the Fine Arts Department at
Fujian Teachers University in Fuzhou (March 30, 1989). The arts academies were
critical in strengthening the role of figure studies. See Julia F. Andrews, “Tradi
tional Painting in New China,” 555–585.
9. Tan Yuanheng, Diaosu bainian meng: Pan He zhuan [“Dreaming of a century
of statues: a biography of Pan He”] (Beijing: Huawen Chubanshe, 2000), 165–166.
10. The episode is described in Chen Pu, Wenren Mao Zedong [“Mao Zedong,
the literary man”] (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1997), 555–558.
11. “Important Directives on Literature and Art,” Peking chingkangshan (May 26,
1967), in Survey of the China Mainland Press (Supplement) (July 14, 1967), 191.
Translation modified after comparison with original in “Lu Xun Meishu Xueyuan
huifu yong ‘mote’er’ jinxing renti xiesheng jiaoxue” [“Lu Xun Fine Arts Academy
resumes use of ‘models’ for classes in life drawing”], Meishu 16 (May 1978), 46.
12. “Lu Xun Meishu Xueyuan huifu yong ‘mote’er,’” 46.
13. In the same issue Wu wrote about figure drawing, models, the Venus de
Milo, and his patron, Xu Beihong. Wu Zuoren, “Sumiao yu huihua mantan” [“A
talk about sketching and drawing”], Meishu yanjiu 3 (1979), 8–15. On Wu Zuoren,
see Mayching Kao, “The Quest for New Art,” in Mayching Kao, ed., Twentieth-
Century Chinese Painting (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988), 140–142.
14. Personal visit (November 1979).
15. Beijing Television (June 28, 1980).
16. Zhu Zongyu, Yang Yuanhua, and Zhen Junyan, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo
zhuyao shijian renwu [“Important events and persons of the People’s Republic of
China”] (Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe, 1989), 356–357; Ouyang Mei,
100 Chapter 3
“Zhongguo dangdai di ‘shengnu zhende’” [“Contemporary China’s ‘Saint

Joan’”], Zhengming 21 (July 1979), 26–28; “Why Was an Outstanding Woman Com
munist Killed?” Beijing Review 22(26) (July 27, 1979), 19–21; Zhang Zhixin, “Shei
de Zui” [“Whose crime?”], Gequ (July 1979), 2; Zhang Zhixin, “Yao ba qin dang
qiang shi” [“Use your violin as a gun”], Renmin yinyue (August 1979), 3–4. See the
discussion of the campaign for Zhang’s memory in Colin Mackerras, The Perform
ing Arts in Contemporary China (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 173–174.
I have discussed Zhang Zhixin in Pianos and Politics in China: Middle Class Ambi
tions and the Struggle over Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press,
1989), 179.
17. Zuopin 11 (November 1979).
18. See Wang Kai, “Renti zaoxing de yishu yuyan” [“The artistic language of
figure sculpture”], Zuopin 11 (November 1979), 72. Hong Kong controversy over
the statue may be seen in Jiang Nanyu, “Wo kan lounu yingxiong suxiang” [“I
look at the statue of the naked heroine”], Zhengming 27 (January 1980), 32; and
Chang Xin, “‘Lounu,’ yingxiong, yishu” [“‘Nudes,’ heroes, art”], Zhengming 29
(March 1980), 64–65.
19. Interview with Bi Meishu, an emigree artist in Hong Kong (October 27, 28,
30, 31, November 1, 5, 1979).
20. The Dai are ethnic Thais. For accounts of the airport mural fiasco, see Joan
Lebold Cohen, The New Chinese Painting, 1949–1986 (New York: Harry N.
Abrahms, Inc., 1987), 39–44; Chang Er, “Beijing jichang bihua de fengbo” [“Winds
and waves of the Beijing Airport murals”], Guanchajia 31 (May 16, 1980), 30; Barry
Wain, “Peking Airport’s Controversial New Murals,” Wall Street Journal (August
29, 1980); Fox Butterfield, “In China, Nudes Touch Off a Debate on Art,” New York
Times (July 6, 1980); Du Feng, “Zhonggong wentan de jige fengbo” [“Several dis
turbances in the Chinese Communist arts scene”], Zhengming 33 (July 1980), 56–57;
Zhang Yuli, “Beijing jichang luotihua de chuangzuo” [“The making of the nude
painting at Beijing Airport”], Dongxiang 29 (February 1981), 20–21; and Dru C.
Gladney, “Representing Nationality in China: Oppositional Aspects of Minor-
ity/Majority Identities,” Journal of Asian Studies 53(1) (February 1994), 103–104.
21. “Beijing guoji jichang bihua jungong jiemu dianli zhaiyao” [“Extracts from
the ceremony to unveil the Beijing International Airport murals”], Guanchajia 34
(August 20, 1980), 31–34.
22. Ai Qing had studied in France in the 1930s.
23. Zhai Mo, “Feiba! Meili di bihua” [“Fly! beautiful murals”], Renmin ribao
24. Jerome Silbergeld, Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chi
nese Painter Li Huasheng (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 157, 166.
25. “Shouju Zhongguo youhua dazhan zaihu zhanchu” [“First Chinese exhibi
tion of oil paintings opens in Shanghai”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 6, 1988).
26. Zhen Cheng, “Luoti yishu huazhan xiaoxi fabu zhihou” [“After the an
nouncement of the exhibition of nude art”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (June 19, 1988).
27. Guan Yecheng, “Sannao luoti huazhan” [“Three disturbances at the nude
art exhibition”], Zhengming 136 (February 1989), 16–17. The catalog of the show
was published as You hua renti yishu dazhan zuopin [“Works of the Chinese nude
oils exhibition”] (Nanning: Guangxi Renmin Meishu Chubanshe, 1988).
28. Xu Jinsheng, “‘Youhua renti yishu dazhan’ minyi diaocha” [“Survey of pub
lic opinion at the ‘oil figure painting exhibition’”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January
18, 1989).
29. “Nude Shock Due to Old Feudal Ideas, Says Ying,” China Daily (January 9,
1989).
30. I visited the show twice and interviewed Xie Xingbiao, head of the Fine Arts
Department at Fujian Teachers University and organizer of the Fuzhou Figure
Painting Exhibition (March 30, 1989).
31. For an example of this style, see Liang Yan’s 1973 painting “Applying to
Join the Party,” in Ellen Johnston Laing, The Winking Owl: Art in the People’s Re
public of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), figure 92.
32. See Gail Hershatter, “Sexing Modern China,” in Gail Hershatter et al., eds.,
Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain (Palo Alto: Stanford University
Press, 1996), 90.
33. Bu Mengchao, “Renti yishu yu jianzhu fangsheng” [“Nude art and archi-
tecture’s imitation of life”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 25, 1989).
34. Simon Johnstone, “The Naked and the True,” Chinese Literature (autumn
1989), 102–104.
35. Zhen Cheng, “Luoti yishu huazhan xiaoxi fabu zhihou.”
36. Shao Yanxiang, “Ren yu mei: renti yishu suotan” [“Humans and beauty:
a few remarks about the art of figure painting”], Guangming ribao (January 6,
1989).
37. Chen Zui, “Luoti jingshen de zhuisu” [“Tracing the spirit of nude art”],
Meishu yanjiu (April, 1988), 44–48, reprinted in Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Shubao
Ziliao Zhongxin, ed., Fuyin baokan ziliao: Zaoxing yishu yanjiu (January 1989),
13–17. Chen’s book is Luoti yishu lun [“The theory of nude art”] (Beijing: Zhong
guo Wenlian Chuban Gongsi, 1988).
38. Shao Yanxiang, “Ren yu mei: renti yishu suotan.”
39. An anonymous reader of an early draft for this chapter argued that the
nude exhibitions were motivated by the desires of realist painters to regain influ
ence being lost to the influx of new styles from Europe and America. This may
have also been a factor, although the haste with which the Fuzhou exhibition was
assembled makes it less likely. Morevoer, nude paintings seem a risky medium
upon which to make a claim for artistic influence.
40. Pan Yuliang, a student of Liu Haisu, spent most of her career in France. See
Michael Sullivan, Chinese Art, 48, 58–59.
41. This episode was broadcast on Fujian Television (May 6, 1989).
42. Theodore Dreiser, The “Genius” (Cleveland: World Publishing Company,
1915), esp. 50–56.
43. Ke Wenhui, “Renti yishu: xishui changliu mo chengzhai” [“Nude art: Take
it slowly and there will be no calamity”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (December 4, 1988).
44. Zhai Mo, “Lun renti yishu de hongdong xiaoying” [“On the furor over nude
art”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 18, 1989).
45. “Weineisa mei zai nali” [“Where is the beauty of Venus de Milo?”], Wenhua
shenghuo liu 1989 [“Cultural life No. 6 1989”] (Shanghai: Shanghai Rili Yin
shuachang). This desk calendar was in the Communist Party’s guesthouse for vis
iting officials in Xiapu, Fujian.
102 Chapter 3
46. Zuo Zhangwei, Xifang luoti yishu xinshang [“Appreciating Western nude
art”] (Changsha: Hunan Meishu Chubanshe, 1988), 61.
47. Dru C. Gladney discusses erotic aspects of Han treatment of minorities in
“Representing Nationality in China.” See also Louisa Schein, “Gender and Inter
nal Orientalism in China,” Modern China 23(1) (January 1997), 69–98.
48. For instance, see the smirking report by Shi Zhiyi, “Bathing Festival of the
Lisu People,” China Reconstructs 37(10) (October 1988), 66–68. Or consider Kuo
Kuo-fu’s 1959 novel, Among the Omnians, Shang Huai-yuan, trans. (Beijing: For
eign Languages Press, 1961). Here a Han soldier’s civilizing gift to the primitives
is a safety pin with which the buxom Noni can close her buttonless jacket and
keep her chest properly covered.
49. For example, see the paintings by Liu Bingjiang (p. 46), Zhao Yixiong (p. 61),
Qin Yuanyue (p. 75), He Neng (p. 76), Tang Muli (p. 101) in Cohen, The New Chi
nese Painting.
50. In Zhongguo huabao (January 1988). See the back cover of Dongxiang 46 (Jan
uary 1988).
51. Janet Wolff, “The Culture of Separate Spheres: The Role of Culture in Nine-
teenth-Century Public and Private Life,” in Janet Wolff and John Seed, eds., The
Culture of Capital: Art, Power and the Nineteenth-Century Middle Class (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1988), 130. See Jeremy Maas, Victorian Painters (Lon
don: Barrie & Jenkins, 1978), 164–187.
52. Evans, Women and Sexuality in China, 181.
53. Huang Cunle and Xu Xu, “Rentimei shi meizhong zhi zhimei” [“The beauty
of figure art is beauty’s extreme”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 21, 1989).
54. For example, Zheng Gong, “Manhua renti yishu” [“Chat about the art of the
human body”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 22, 1989).
55. Zuo Zhangwei, Xifang luoti, 2.
56. For a more sympathetic reading that finds feminist liberation in Rodin’s carnal
concerns, see Anne M. Wagner, “Rodin’s Reputation,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., Eroticism
and the Body Politic (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 191–242.
57. Rosemary Betterton, “How Do Women Look? The Female Nude in the
Work of Suzanne Valadon,” in Hilary Robinson, Visibly Female. Feminism and Art
Today (London: Camden Press, 1987), 252. See also Thomas B. Hess and Linda
Nochlin, eds., Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730–1970. Art News An
nual 28 (1972); Lynda Nead, “The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality,”
Signs 15(2) (winter 1990), 323–335; Norma Bourde and Mary D. Garrard, eds., The
Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (New York: HarperCollins, 1992);
Rosemary Betterton, ed., Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and Me
dia (London and New York: Pandora, 1987); and Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Pa
tricia Mathews, “The Feminist Critique of Art History,” The Art Bulletin 69(3) (Sep
tember 1987), 326–357.
58. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), 54.
59. Conversation with Carolyn Bloomer, Xiamen (October 4, 1989).
60. Interview with Xie Xingbiao (March 30, 1989).
61. Chen Zui, “Luoti jingshen de zhuisu.”
62. Mao Zhenni [Jeanne Moore], “Huangdi de xifu” [“The emperor’s Western
clothing”], Zhongguo funu bao [“China women’s news”] (February 20, 1990).
63. For a selection of Western feminist paintings of male nudes, see “The Male
Nude: The Gaze Returned,” Heresies 24 (1989), 46–48.
64. Mao Qi, “‘Meiren’ shengyiyan de kunhuo” [“The puzzle of the business in
‘pin-ups’”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 27, 1989); Shen Yuan, “Beijing luolu
guali zhengduozhan” [“Beijing’s battle over pinup calendars”], Dongxiang 46
(January 1, 1988), 24–25; “Albums Profit on a Fine Line Over Nude Art,” China
Daily (April 10, 1989).
65. Interview with Xie Xingbiao (March 30, 1989).
66. Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (New York: Pantheon Books,
1956), 127.
67. Beverly Hooper, “China’s Modernization: Are Young Women Going to Lose
Out?” Modern China 10(3) (January 1984), 330–331.
68. Maas, Victorian Painters, 202.
69. Clark, The Nude, 219.
70. Shao Liu, Qizi bushi mote’er [“My wife is not a model”] (Nanchang: Jiangxi
Renmin Chubanshe, 1988).
71. Situ Ying, “Dalu luoti mote’er lueying” [“Mainland nude models remain in
the shadows”], Jing bao 57 (April 1988), 48–49.
72. “Yige mote’er de beiju” [“A model’s tragedy”], Guangming ribao (February
2, 1988); Wei Liming, “Stripping Back Tradition,” Beijing Review 32(3) (January
16–22, 1989), 31–34.
73. Guo Zhong, “Mote’er de meng” [“A model’s dream”], Baogao wenxue [“Re
portage”] 2 (1987), 53.
74. One of the Beijing models demanded that her husband go out for a walk so
that he would miss her image on the evening television news broadcast. But his
parents saw and recognized her and accused her of disgracing the family. Lai Ren
qiong, “Thought-Provoking Nude Paintings Exhibition,” Renmin ribao (January 7,
1989), in FBIS-CHI-89-010 (January 17, 1989), 35–36.
75. See Wang An, et al., “Zhongyang meiyuan mote’er tingke jishi” [“Account
of the strike of the models at the Central Fine Arts Academy”], Zhongguo qingnian
bao (December 28, 1988); Jiang Li, “Mote’er fengbo liangmianguan” [“Two sides of
the storm over models”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January 11, 1989); Wang Rong,
“‘Upset’ Models Hire Attorneys, Seek Royalties,” China Daily (January 7, 1989);
Wang Xin, “Models Clamour about Nude Art,” Beijing Review 32(3) (January
16–22, 1989), 11–12.
76. Xu Jinsheng, “‘Youhua renti yishu dazhan’ minyi diaocha.”
77. Zhong Guoxiang, “Cong renti mote’er shuokaiqu” [“Starting from the nude
models”], Zhongguo funu bao (January 23, 1989).
78. See, for instance, Tamara Jacka, “Back to the Wok: Women and Employment
in Chinese Industry in the 1980s,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 24 (July
1990), 1–23.
79. Jiang Li, “Mote’er fengbo.
80. Zhai Mo, “Lun renti yishu de hongdong xiaoying”; Johnstone, “The Naked
and the True,” 102.
81. See Benedict Stavis, “The Political Economy of Inflation in China,” Studies
in Comparative Communism 22(2–3) (summer/autumn 1989), 235–250.
82. “Albums Profit.”
104 Chapter 3
83. Liu Changhua and Sun Zhichun, eds., Zhongguo xiandai gudianzhuiyi renti
youhua [“Modern Chinese classical oil figure painting”] (Fuzhou: Fujian Meishu
Chubanshe, 1988).
84. Yu Yanfeng, “Buguang ‘qingsao’ hai ying yindao” [“‘Purification’ is not
enough, we must also lead”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (April 11, 1990).
85. Zuo Zhangwei, Xifang luoti.
86. Chen Weihua, “Art Exhibit Challenges Feudal Ideas,” China Daily (April 8,
1989).
87. Guo Hui, “Yishu hu? Liyu hu?” [“Art or greed?”], Fuzhou wanbao (April 8,
1989).
88. Su Hang, “Luoti yingzhan fengbo” [“Storm over an exhibition of nude pho
tographs”], Jizhe wenxue (June 1989), 17–20.
89. A show of foreign magazine pictures in a nearby county had sparked con
troversy. The most offensive showed a male musician fondling a naked female
singer with one hand as he played the drum with his other. Galleries in the United
States also exploit controversial art for money. The Cincinnati Contemporary Arts
Center hoped to profit by hosting the exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photo
graphs. The center raised ticket prices from two to five dollars, claiming a need to
need to keep the crowd small, the same rationalization as used in China. Isabel
Wilkerson, “Furor in Cincinnati as the Cutting Edge of Art Scrapes Deeply Held
Beliefs,” New York Times (April 14, 1990).
90. For earlier critiques of pornography, see Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter,
Personal Voices. Chinese Women in the 1980s (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press,
1988), 59–67.
91. Xieying bao (March 24, 1988), cited in Wang An et al., “Zhongyang Meiyuan
mote’er tingke jishi.”
92. Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices, 62. The April 17, 1985 “State Council
Regulation Strictly Banning Obscene Material,” targeted items “that specifically
portray sexual behavior or consp[i]cuously publicize pornographic and lascivious
images; toys and articles bearing drawing or pictures of this category; and aphro
disiacs and sex aids.” “Literary and art works of artistic value having obscene con
tent and fine art works showing the beauty of the human body as well as works
on physiological and medical knowledge about the human body and other natu
ral sciences are not considered obscene and will not be included in the ban.” See
John L. Scherer, ed., China Facts and Figures Annual 9 (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic
International Press: 1986), 21.
93. Chang Hong, “Obscenity Standards Now Defined,” China Daily (January 6,
1989); Su Hang, “Luoti yingzhan fengbo,” 17–20. But see Yi Chen, “Publishing in
China in the Post-Mao Era: The Case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” Asian Survey 32(6)
(June 1992), 577–581, on the fate of shifting obsenity standards.
94. Walter Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture (New
York: Viking. 1987).
95. Lynn Hunt, “Introduction,” in Hunt, ed., Eroticism, 3–4.
96. The antipornography drive began in the four provinces of China’s
southeast coast: Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Hainan. With hundreds of
thousands of overseas Chinese visitors each year, foreign businessmen operat
ing factories, and a lively smuggling trade with Taiwan and Hong Kong, this
region does have more adventurous popular publications and more prostitu
tion than most of China. Yet, during the demonstrations that preceded the June
massacre, these provinces were among the nation’s quietest, making it very
difficult to blame the counterrevolutionary disturbances on dirty pictures in
Fujian.
97. “Clampdown Sparks Rush to Beat Censors,” South China Morning Post (July
8, 1989).
98. Two of Li Ruihuan’s August and September speeches on combating
pornography may be found in Zhao Yao, Hu Qinsheng, and Xu Kojun, eds.,
Zhongguo gaige quanshu (1978–1991) [“Complete book of chinese reform
(1978–1991)”] (Dalian: Dalian Chubanshe, 1992), 222–225. See also Jianying Zha,
China Pop (New York: The New Press, 1994), 28–30, 145–146.
99. For praise of Shishi’s private sponsorship of culture, see Chen Ning and Lu
Yida, “Yuhuanzhong de fenqi” [“Struggling through hardship”], Fujian ribao (May
6, 1989).
100. Cheng Gang, “China Declares War on Pornography,” Beijing Review 33(12)
(March 19–25, 1990), 26–29.
101. “Yindao qunzhong kaizhan jiankang wenti huodong yikao shehui liliang
xingban wule sheshi” [“Leading the masses to develop healthy cultural and
sports activities depends upon the strength of society setting up entertainment fa
cilities”], Fujian ribao (June 9, 1989).
102. “Dangzheng lingdao qinzi guashuai ‘saohuang’ liewei zhuanxiang
douzheng” [“Party and state leaders personally assume command of ‘sweeping
away pornography’ as the main item of struggle”], Fujian ribao (October 18, 1989).
103. Voice of America (December 6, 1989).
104. “Jiaqing dui chafeng tushu de shendu” [“Make a closer reading in closing
down books”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (February 21, 1990).
105. Zhang Wuchang, “Baicai yu huangse shukan” [“Cabbages and pornogra
phy”], Shibao zhoukan 253 (December 30, 1989–January 5, 1990), 49.
106. Kate Ellis, “I’m Black and Blue from the Rolling Stones and I’m Not Sure
How I Feel About It: Pornography and the Feminist Imagination,” in Karen V.
Hansen and Ilene J. Philipson, eds., Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 433.
107. Jin Fu, “Wohei huidao” [“A black nest is destroyed”], Xiamen ribao (No
vember 7, 1989).
108. Xiamen Television (October 16, 1989).
109. Xiamen Television (November 4, 1989).
110. Wu Guanzhong, “Wengu qixin” [“Reviewing the old, beginning the new”],
Zhongguo wenhua bao (September 28, 1989).
111. Alice Bishop, “Chinese Journalism, Literature, and Art: Return to the
Yan’an Way?” China Exchange News 18(2) (June 1990), 9.
112. Yu Yanfeng, “Buguang ‘qingsao’ hai ying yindao.”
113. Yang Yingshi, “From Red Lights to Painting the Town Red,” China Daily
(May 31, 2002).
114. See Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Put
nam, 1981); Catherine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge: Harvard
106 Chapter 3
115. See Kathleen Erwin, “Heart-to-Heart, Phone-to-Phone: Family Values, Sex

uality and the Politics of Shanghai Advice Hotlines,” in Deborah S. Davis, ed.,
China’s Consumer Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
116. Jianying Zha, China Pop, 106–107.
117. AFP (November 24, 1994), reported in China News Digest—Global (Novem
ber 26–27 1994).
118. Fu Xiaoshi menghuan shinu tu [“Fu Xiaoshi’s paintings of fantastic beau
ties”], a portfolio of twelve works by the eldest son of painter Fu Baoshi (Nanjing:
Nanjing Chubanshe, 1991). In turning to Chinese legend, Fu painted Han, instead
of minority, women. In contrast to these pieces of mock-ancient cheesecake, it is
said that Chinese scholars must petition the premier in order to examine genuine
ancient pornographic paintings, which show sexual acts.
119. On Ma Liuming, see Huang Du, “Special Focus—Ma Liuming,” Chinese-
art.com 3(2), at www.chinese-art.com/Contemporary/volume3issue2/
special_maliuming.htm (2000). Both Ma and Zhang are illusrated in Gao Minglu,
ed. Inside Out: New Chinese Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
120. “First Nude Photo Show Breaks Another Taboo,” South China Morning Post
(January 29, 2001); and “First Nude Photo Show Calmly Welcomed in
Guangzhou” Xinhua on China Internet Information Center (January 28, 2001).
121. “First Nude Photo Show.”
122. “Nude Photos Controversial in China,”China Daily (July 30, 2000).
4
The Chinese Censorship
Game: New Rules for
the Prevention of Art
T he proliferation of public images of nudity and sexuality shocked

many Chinese, stirred controversy about public decency, and height
ened consciousness of the changing role of censorship. Censorship, the
external prohibition or self-limiting of expression, has a bad name in the
United States, but is quite common in most of world and more normal in
the United States than many realize. Censorship’s reputation is so dis
honorable that censors usually claim to be engaged in something else al
together, such as protecting the nation against sedition or defending the
innocent against sex (“that’s not art, that’s pornography”).1
One great change in the politics of Chinese culture has been a dimin
ished role for the state as supervisor of art, including a dramatic reduction
of Party censorship over Chinese artists. As the reforms proceeded, artists
and editors grew increasingly independent, paying less heed to central
Party guidance and more attention to market pressures for commercial
success. The censor’s heavy hand still emerged several times, but awk
wardly, revealing a lack of elite consensus.
The hesitation of the censor’s hand belied no new commitment to free
expression. Deng Xiaoping restrained the Propaganda Department be
cause it was a major bastion of Maoists, who tended to support Hua
Guofeng in resisting Deng’s rise to power. Deng’s need to rein in these
critics appealed to urban intellectuals, many of them ill used by Maoist
propagandists and most tired of hyped up enthusiasm instead of honest
art. However, Deng demonstrated that he was not acting out of new lib
eral values when he arrested Wei Jingsheng and the activists of Democ
racy Wall.
107
108 Chapter 4
Conventional coverage of China often treats censorship as a weapon of ter

rible clarity, with the state calmly and regularly smacking artists who dis
please it. Even a more sophisticated understanding is perhaps too simple:
China under Mao had tight political control over the arts, and since his death,
these controls have become considerably looser. But little about China’s cen
sorship is uncomplicated. The odd history of nude art reveals diminishing
state intervention, but in a halting, irresolute, and unpredictable fashion.
Three factors explain this lack of resolve. One is indecision by the politi
cal elite about what to allow. A second is the rapid commercialization of
Chinese culture, which both increases the number of cultural products as it
sensationalizes them. A third is that censorship is poorly institutionalized—
it lacks regular organization and widely accepted norms, which enhances
the latitude available to artists during rapid social change.
Given the centrality of censorship to public life, the scholarly literature
on contemporary China offers surprisingly little analysis or even detailed
description.2 This is partly because information about censorship is itself
censored, leaving us more dependent than usual even in the study of Chi
nese politics upon rumors and partial accounts. Yi Chuan observes in his
study of the publication history of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that “no pub
lished Chinese source acknowledges the existence of censorship after
1949.”3 This chapter is not a review of all or even the most notorious cases
of censorship, but rather an examination of the range and limits of cen
sorship in China’s new cultural politics.4
Censorship may be seen as a kind of game, in which state officials and
artists contest the extent of free public expression. Status and power are
important factors in this game, but so are ideals such as beauty and moral
ity. Few state officials want to review all art. Few artists want to challenge
state definitions of public morality in every work. Most censors would be
happiest if artists produced only acceptable work, and most artists would
be happiest if they were never challenged. Like many bitterly contested
games, disputes frequently break out over the rules, which change fre
quently, confusing artists and censors alike. Unlike in most games, it is not
always clear how one wins or loses.
The prizes in this game are significant. At the grandest level, if one be
lieves that a nation is defined by its shared culture, the future of China is
at stake. At an individual level, participants risk their careers. Artists
whose work is blocked may not only feel frustrated, but may be avoided
by others, and in more extreme cases find themselves harassed or exiled.
Officials may find their careers harmed if others deem them too lenient
(poor custodians of public morality) or too harsh (having a poor under
standing of the needs of intellectuals). For all its seriousness, the censor
ship game also reveals a playful aspect. Artists impishly circumvent re
strictions, even as officials concoct new techniques to thwart them.
The Chinese Censorship Game: New Rules for the Prevention of Art 109
This chapter will first review the players and the rules, then consider
how economic change is altering the game. I conclude with some obser
vations about U.S. assessments of China’s censorship.
THE PLAYERS
The censorship game has four types of players: censors, editors-cum-

censors, artists, and audience members.
The Censors
China’s censorship system is not what most Westerners assume, a Stalin
ist apparatus of professional censors equipped with manuals of taboo
words and ideas, who carefully read each article prior to publication, lis
ten to each piece of music before public performance, and inspect each
painting before it may be placed in an exhibition. Unlike the former Com
munist regimes of Eastern Europe, China never created a special bureau
cracy of professional censors.5 Why did Mao and his colleagues not emu
late Soviet censorship? One reason is that the Guomindang had assigned
censors to newspaper offices, earning Communist scorn.6 Another is that
Party leaders simply felt that Soviet practice was irrelevant. Soviet Com
munism got off to a shaky start in its relationship to the experts, and the
army’s commissar system set a pattern later applied to other areas of so
cial and cultural life: Party monitoring of the work of non-Party special
ists. According to one account, seventy thousand Soviet censors super
vised seven thousand Soviet writers.7 The Chinese Communist Party
came to power with greater initial popularity and may well have thought
that external checks were not necessary.8
Although there is no nationwide censorship corps, the Party assigns
people to review artistic work in a few key organizations. One is the Party
Propaganda Department, the heart of the Party’s ambitions for ideologi
cal influence. But this agency does not have the capacity to review all art
produced in China and works mostly by reviewing cases that have al
ready sparked controversy. The Propaganda Department issues bulletins
that specify topics the leading newspapers are to avoid (in 1993 these in
cluded Guangdong horse racing, Russian prostitutes in China, and claims
for damages from Japan for wartime offenses), but artists are not brought
into this net.9 More traditional censors work in the film and television in
dustries, subjecting scripts to more rigorous scrutiny than is given any
other artistic genre. There is also the State Press and Publication Admin
istration, which supervises the publishing industry, but review usually
only takes place after publication (periods of political campaigns are
110 Chapter 4
sometimes an exception for publications under special scrutiny).10 In ad

dition to these permanent censors, there are various short-term arrange
ments, such as when the Party sends a work team to rectify a troublesome
publication or dispatches “resident inspectors” to all firms making audio
and video products for 1996 as part of the dual campaign against piracy
and pornography.11 There may well be some other organizations that em
ploy professional censors, but the striking fact about China’s censorship
is that there are few whose job is merely to censor.
The Editors-cum-Censors
Lacking a centralized censorship office in Beijing, the Party early dis
persed responsibilities for censorship among cultural and propaganda in
stitutions throughout the nation. This administrative heritage of the 1950s
has never been changed. In contrast with the small number of profes
sional censors, many people held jobs with vague responsibility for main
taining political and moral standards—they were ambiguously defined,
nonprofessional censors occupying leadership positions in arts organiza
tions.
What do we call a censor who is not a censor? Michael Schoenhals of
fers the formulation “editor-cum-censor,” an oddity in normal English,
but one that captures the ambivalence of the role. Most of these individu
als are themselves veteran arts workers, promoted to manage a drama
company, edit a magazine, or lead a neighborhood cultural center. They
supervise arts colleagues and are often artists themselves. Is their super
vision a form of censorship? Sometimes, but in many instances China’s
artists regard it as something more benign.
Just as there was no specialized bureaucracy, there is no Chinese coun
terpart to the notorious Polish handbook on how to censor.12 Individual
writers, editors, and local officials are expected “to read the major pro
nouncements on cultural policy and divine the direction of the wind for
themselves.” Propaganda officials especially are expected to drum up art
works that adhered to the Party line, and to discourage or censor those
that appeared to question it. Such a loose system suppressed heterodox
ideas effectively when officials throughout the nation believed in (or at
least followed) a common cause. Then there were censors aplenty: men
and women in leading positions throughout the cultural system who took
it to be among their responsibilities to check articles, books, paintings, po
ems, and song-and-dance extravaganzas. Their motivation was often po
litical in the sense of guarding beliefs that they treasured. But it was per
haps more often a question of determining how to avoid approving works
that would subsequently cause “trouble” and thus damage their careers.
In the Maoist years, especially during periods of special political tension,
the inclination of editors to show their mettle as censors could sometimes

overload the system. The Gang of Four ran a very tight cultural ship, yet
both Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan complained in 1973 that central
authorities need not bother to approve each new song.13
In the initial enthusiasm for the reforms, many Chinese artists were
thrilled to find that prior restraints had been lifted. A Youth
League–sponsored painting show in Guangzhou in 1979 included such
previously provocative themes as figures in bathing suits and romantic
representations of prerevolutionary mansions built by overseas Chinese
merchants. When I questioned one of the painters about the exhibition,
he vigorously denied that there had been any censorship. He meant that
there had been no prior process of approval by officials of either the lo
cal cultural bureau or the Propaganda Department as had been the nor
mal practice in the late Mao years.14 But how had these paintings gotten
there, I persisted? The selection had been by the fine arts association, the
professional organization of painters and sculptors.15
In this young painter’s optimistic view, “we have no censors” excluded
the leaders of his professional organization, functioning in this instance as
editors. Certainly, the very informality of China’s censorship made it eas
ier for cultural officials simply to let up their vigilance at a task many had
never much enjoyed.
The editors often liked assuming greater responsibility. In 1980 a
spokesperson for the Liaoning literary magazine Yalu River (Yalujiang) re
joiced that the propaganda department had ceased inspecting manu
scripts, relinquishing this responsibility to the editors: “It used to be that
we could edit the magazine passively, or not even use our brains at all,
and just follow the instructions from the upper levels.”16
In Changsha, Peng Ming, a musician who had been jailed for five years
for his “ultraleft” activities during the Cultural Revolution, found himself
head of the drama department of Hunan Television. Peng recognized that
his new post meant less time for composing music: “‘I’m willing to give
up my chances to write,’ he said, ‘if it means that with me as their leader,
ten composers will have their freedom.’ He smiled broadly. ‘I’m not afraid
of the censors anymore. The censors are me!’”17
When is an editor a censor? We confuse the issue when we describe
every frustration encountered by a Chinese intellectual as censorship. The
job of editors in all nations is in large measure to say no. Many Americans
write letters to editors of newspapers, often to complain about coverage of
a particular story. Because of its national status, the New York Times receives
far more letters than it can ever print. Are unprinted letters censored let
ters? An American can usually find an alternative outlet for his or her opin
ion, but that outlet is likely to be less widely distributed, thereby margin
alizing the opinion. Citizens on the left are especially inclined to suspect
112 Chapter 4
that the editors of the Times apply an ideological filter in the course of se
lecting which letters to print. Is this censorship? Not quite, but letters sent
to The Nation or Mother Jones will only be read by those who already un
derstand the point being made.18
Do not misunderstand: I am not suggesting that Chinese censorship is
just the same as that in the United States. The United States has a broader
range of media, under less unified control, plus it has a deeply embedded
tradition of speaking out. Yet, the processes by which opinion is selected,
approved, and publicized are similar enough in kind, if not in result, that
China’s world of censorship should be less exotic to us than it often
seems.
China’s censors are thus multiple. They include editors-cum-censors,
the successful colleagues of the artists who have jobs as editors of maga
zines, managers of performing-arts groups, and administrators of arts
schools and conservatories.19 They include any high-level official who
gets agitated about a piece of art that threatens to carry controversy into
his or her bailiwick. And they include a small number of full-time profes
sional censors, especially in broadcasting and film.
The Artists
From the preceding analysis, it is obvious that artists vary considerably in
their relationship to censorship. Is the artist also an official? Does he or
she work in a closely supervised field such as television? Artists also dif
fer in personal inclination to push the limits; some artists enjoy the for
bidden excitement of the rebel’s role, while others may be cautious by na
ture. Geremie Barmé reminds us that the demarcation between censor and
censored is not a simple one.20
One should not presume that Chinese artists have as clear an abhorrence of
censorship as their modern Western counterparts (for whom there is usually
little hazard in attacking the idea of censorship). First, some in China’s arts
world are in some sense “hardliners,” either from personal preference, or
from career associations that make liberalism unattractive. China’s artistic
cliques and factions often overlap with political factions, such as the connec
tion between those who became revolutionary artists at Yan’an and the
politicians who were most reluctant to see Chinese socialism in retreat. Sec
ond, a large number of artists may take a “moderate” position when attack
ing censorship. In 1980, Zhao Dan, perhaps China’s biggest movie star, wrote
the following thoughts on his deathbed, which have been much quoted by
those pressing for cultural openness: “The arts are the business of writers
and artists. If the party controls the arts too tightly, they will have no hope.
They will be finished.”21
Note that in Zhao’s “moderate” view, there is no question that the Party
should control the arts, but only an issue of whether it should do so
tightly or loosely. Of course Chinese artists believe that their own works
should certainly not be censored, and some have been bravely eloquent
on the need to abolish the practice of censorship for all.22 But even among
relatively wild and free-spirited intellectuals, few have that streak of an
archism that many Americans share. Dissidents often come to the United
States and conclude that Americans have “too much freedom,” a senti
ment far more common among the politically conventional and cautious.
Much discussion of China’s censorship concerns journalists rather than
artists, or the relatively small number of high-profile dissidents who have
captured Western attention (in contrast to the larger number who have not).
There are some obvious distinctions between artists and the other two
groups. Artists are less likely to be politically savvy; dissidents and jour
nalists who defy authority have probably thought through the possible con
sequences. Artists are perhaps more likely to get into trouble simply by mis
reading the times. While a similar dynamic governs censorship for artists
and others, few artists are likely to be under close public-security scrutiny,
and by the mid-1990s, most artists were given considerable leeway, as their
work rarely seemed seriously to challenge Party authority.23 The World As
sociation of Newspapers estimated that twenty-six Chinese “journalists
and dissidents” had been imprisoned in 1997.24 In contrast, relatively few
artists have been jailed in recent years. Exceptions include Ethnomusicolo
gist Ngawang Choephel, who was sentenced to eighteen years for espi
onage after his 1995 arrest while filming Tibetan music and dance.25 Four
Guizhou poets were arrested in 1998 and charged with plotting to over
throw the government as they prepared to start an unofficial publication,
China Cultural Renaissance. Ma Zhe, who had spent more than three years in
prison after the 1986 student protests, was given a seven-year term in this
case.26 Boston-based poet and editor Bei Ling was arrested in 2002 when
visiting Beijing.
The Audience for Art: Readers, Viewers, Listeners

The cumbersome controls on the audience for art decreased with the ex
pansion of the cultural marketplace. The Party understands that it is eas
ier to control writers and musicians than readers and listeners. This un
derstanding has deepened as the Party has learned how difficult it is to
get a grip on the cultural market. But one must be on guard against es
sentializing the Party, forgetting how many figures sympathetic to the
avant-garde are now working as officials in the media or other cultural
departments.
114 Chapter 4
There is vast differentiation within the audience for cultural goods in

China, which complicates the contest between artists and censors still fur
ther. Even when artists and officials both agree that it is good to lessen
pressure on the arts, some in the audience may disagree. For instance, the
filmmaker who shot the first on-screen kiss after the Cultural Revolution
received thousands of angry letters and complained that “audiences have
become more puritanically leftist than the censors.”27 Yet, a seemingly lim
itless market for erotic art and entertainment offsets the prudery of a few.
No one should mistake the public as merely passive. China has not yet
fully become a nation of docile couch potatoes (one plausible variant of
the Party’s vision for China), and the public can sometimes enforce rules
that the Party forgets. A 1985 circular of the Party Propaganda Depart
ment specified, “For the sake of caution, all movies, television dramas,
and plays in which leaders of our Party are portrayed must, without ex
ception, be submitted for censorship to the leading Comrades at the Cen
ter prior to being performed in public.”28 Ten years later actors who spe
cialized in representing Party greats of the past on the screen were earning
money by making commercial appearances at department store openings
in a kind of rent-a-revolutionary program. But in 1996 it was not the state
that censored two professionals acting the parts of Mao and Zhou Enlai,
but an indignant crowd of customers who chased them from the opening
of a Zhejiang clothing store, apparently feeling that revolutionary icons
should not be used to peddle pants.29
THE RULES OF THE GAME
There are rules that govern censorship in China. They are not written, but
constitute a shifting set of largely unspoken common assumptions. How
ever, the rules are widely, if vaguely, understood by participants, and a
foreign observer can make some generalizations.
Uncertainty about Censorship’s Reach

The very lack of clarity about censorship’s rules is the first rule. This has
been true throughout the history of the People’s Republic. For instance,
consider a March 5, 1962, dialog between Foreign Minister Chen Yi and
propagandist Hu Qiaomu, neither of whom was naive about the politics
of art.30
Hu: I’ve been on sick-leave for more than a year, and I don’t understand
why works of art must be censored. Is it because the Center recently decided
to institute censorship?
Chen: No! It has never been stated that works have to be censored. Neither
has it been said that works can be performed only after they have been cen
sored.
Hu: Why has such a thing happened?
Chen: The Center has never ruled that books must be censored before pub
lication. This is all the work of some people below. From now on, no book
should be censored before publication. . . . If someone spends several years
writing a book, and you reject it out of hand after looking at it for half an
hour, then who would be able to write books?
Hu: Nor must our political articles undergo censorship. All we have to do
is discuss the matter and come to a decision. If you don’t agree with an arti
cle, then send the author an additional paragraph or some opinions. The au
thor can accept them or not, and if they are not incorporated, the article will
still be published all the same.
Chen: Right!
If even this pair of high rollers from the political elite was puzzled by
the terms of censorship, so were lesser souls. The erratic, unpredictable
quality of suppression enhances effective control. Few need to be pun
ished in order for many to be intimidated—or kill a chicken to scare the
monkeys, as the Chinese cliché goes.
Censorship arrangements are constantly altered, keeping artists guess
ing about what limits they face. For instance, in 1993 the government in
troduced a requirement that fine arts dealers register with the Ministry of
Culture, allegedly because of “disorder” in the painting market, which
had quickly emerged from nowhere with too many “shoddy and fake
paintings.”31 In contrast, in 1996, the Film Bureau of the Ministry of Ra
dio, Film, and Television was said to offer greater accountability in the
form of written reports of reasons for vetoing film projects, for demand
ing changes, or for banning already completed movies.32 Was this hon
ored? The zigs and zags of Chinese politics do not impact all arts institu
tions at the same time; levels of tolerance and willingness to experiment
vary by genre, geography, bureaucratic unit, generational experience,
and, sometimes, simple good or bad luck.
Censorship conventions may also vary by region, adding to confusion
about the rules. Link tells how Shanghai editors sent galleys to the prop
aganda department, which then made cuts. But in most places, the prop
aganda department did not make cuts, but only approved or disapproved
of complete works. In Anhui, editors skipped the propaganda department
altogether, sending galleys directly to the printers.33
The broad trend, however, is clear. The Chinese state has come to rely less
on censorship as a tool for disciplining artists, and artists understandably feel
that they can anticipate greater laxness. Yet, everyone realizes that in indi
vidual instances, some unlucky artists will get caught in a political back draft.
116 Chapter 4
This growing relaxation accompanies a deterioration of older institu

tions of censorship. Lynn T. White III describes the fate of News Front (Xin
wen zhanxian), a secret, internal publication initiated during the 1957 an
tirightist campaign as a guide for journalists to tell them “what kinds of
stories to write” (and by implication what kinds to avoid). After the Cul
tural Revolution the magazine became public, changing “from being a po
litical guide for journalists to being just a professional publication.”34 Sim
ilarly, Party members within cultural work units could once be counted
on to spread the word of shifts in Party line for writers and artists to note.
But the Party no longer commands the loyalty and discipline that pro
vided cohesion to central policy—indeed, in many work units, Party cells
meet infrequently, or no longer exist.
Formalized Language Instead of Restricted Content

Michael Schoenhals argues that China’s political discourse, if you con
sider all fora (including private conversations) “is probably no more re
stricted with respect to content than political discourse in the United
States or the former Soviet Union.” The real control comes not from con
straints on content, but on form. The Party often specifies the terms in
which issues may be publicly discussed. “Only by replicating or mimick
ing the formal qualities of the discourse of the state can critics of the state
make their voices heard.”35 As Perry Link suggests, “the surface meanings
of words should make sense at a level of pretense whereas actual mean
ings lie deeper.”36 Rather than tell you what you are forbidden to say, the
Party establishes standards for how you say what you say.
China is certainly not unique in formalizing language, but it plays an es
pecially large role in public life, with an elaborate set of directives and man
uals specifying what terms shall be used to discuss political issues, certain
nations, and the like. Note that these are positive recommendations, not
lists of banned expressions. Schoenhals likens these to the stylesheets that
Western media use to let journalists know which forms to follow: Is the
Irish Republican Army to be identified as terrorist or not? Shall Israeli-Arab
(or should that be Arab-Israeli) violence be called a peace process? A differ
ence is that reporters who don’t like the forms favored by the Washington
Post can look for jobs at the Washington Times. For China’s artists and other
intellectuals, these forms provide cues by which all can make their personal
“kremlinological” analyses about what is possible.
Postpublication Censorship
Censorship takes place after, not before, the appearance of a work. A corps
of professional censors would be able to review art before its exhibition,
performance, or publication, but the effective decentralization of censor

ship makes it all ex post facto. Even in countries with professional cen
sors, postpublication review seems to be common, and it causes maxi
mum inconvenience for the censored.37 For instance, one of China’s most
celebrated writers in the 1980s was Liu Binyan, a rehabilitated victim of
the 1957 antirightist campaign whose investigations of corruption among
old Maoists helped Deng Xiaoping consolidate his power. But Liu was not
content to write what Deng wanted, which led to his dismissal from the
Party in January 1987. A magazine that had thought it safe to publish
Liu’s work had to rip his article from its pages prior to distribution.38
Postproduction censorship effectively turns political risks into eco
nomic risks. A publisher may well be stuck with thousands of books that
can no longer be sold, or a troupe may have to cancel a drama production
before it can recover its investment. As China’s economy becomes more
market dependent, these risks increase. Producers and publishers may
want to avoid the financial risk of politically controversial material.39
The State Press and Publication Administration does not have to pro
vide any specific reason for its displeasure. Beijing’s Dongfang magazine
was required, like other magazines, to file an annual report. After print
ing some articles deemed too controversial in 1996, its last report was re
turned with the annotation “insufficient.” The magazine was never for
mally closed, but merely “suspended,” until it could somehow
accomplish the impossible task of guessing what aspect of its report
needed fixing.40
Yet, even seemingly banned publications may survive. Fujian’s Explo
rations in Contemporary Arts (Dangdai wenyi tansuo) was shut down during
the 1987 campaign against bourgeois liberalism. But, because its staff en
joyed support from influential intellectuals in the province, editors con
tinued to draw salaries, and the journal eventually reemerged under a
new name, Cultural Annals (Wenhua chunqiu). The new title avoided loss
of face for the propagandists who had ordered the failed closure.
Variations among Genres

The censor’s reach is uneven. Music is widely regarded as the least con
trolled art, because it is abstract and typically has little political content.
Visual arts have considerable latitude, but have also drawn fire in several
incidents, including those discussed in the preceding chapter.41 Literature
occupies a middle ground. It is often problematic from the censor’s per
spective, but there are just too many books and journals to control very ef
fectively. Still, the state persists in efforts to regulate the printed word
more efficiently; early in the reform period, for instance, printers required
a special letter of introduction for works of literature or public affairs, but
118 Chapter 4
not for technical titles.42 Television and the movies are the most difficult
to manage. The state watches over them more carefully because of their
mass audience. Because technology centralizes their production, it is rela
tively simple to review a final cut before it is broadcast or distributed. Nor
is it very difficult to scrutinize one hundred fifty or so new movies in a year.
Stage plays (including both Chinese opera and modern spoken drama) also
are carefully scrutinized, perhaps because of a pre-Communist tradition of
supervising the morality of the stage.43
Differences among genres change over time, however. In the early
1980s, music was more controversial, as old songs from the 1930s and
1940s were revived and sometimes criticized for their Guomindang or
Japanese associations. Foreign songs were sometimes problematic; an
army commander in Fuzhou banned the song, “Never on Sunday,” when
he learned that it referred to the work schedule of a Greek prostitute in a
movie. These days, restrictions on music are lessened because of the vast
expansion of recording, broadcasting, and importation of song. And as
poetry has become ever more abstruse, it no longer has much of an audi
ence beyond other poets and, thus, poses little political threat.
Book Licenses
In its efforts to keep a handle on publications, the Party devised a curious
system. The State Press and Publishing Administration licenses the publica
tion of books by allocating book numbers to China’s nearly six hundred
publishing houses. Publishers then assign these numbers to their books. The
system was an attempt to cope with the explosion of new publications dur
ing the reform era, without subjecting each title to prepublication review.
This cumbersome mechanism has not worked well. Legitimate publishers
are often tempted to sell some of their book numbers to unlicensed and ef
fectively underground companies eager to bring disreputable and porno
graphic titles to market.44 The result has been a continuing series of scandals
in which presses are censured, fined, or even closed. In the fall of 1988, the
State Press and Publication Administration was reported to have closed the
China Braille Publishing House for selling thirteen book licenses to illegal
publishers who published obscene books. Hebei’s “TV Literature” also lost
its license for selling book numbers to an obscene magazine.45 Often, no one
can figure out who has actually produced the book that is for sale.
Covert companies flourish in the publication of sexual materials and
books telling the secrets of China’s political stars; the profits are too low
to risk serious books exploring risky political topics. Here the book num
ber system may work more effectively, enabling the state to discipline
publishers who have made political “errors,” such the Hainan Photo
graphic Arts Publishing Company and the Inner Mongolia Audiovisual
Publishing Company, both of which were closed in 1997.46
The Moral Purpose of Art

Chinese artists, their audiences, and their censors share the belief that art
must be suffused with morality, that high art has an ethical content. While to
Western ears this may echo the stuffy presumptions of our own nineteenth-
century high bourgeoisie, its source in China lies deep in Confucian civiliza
tion, which also holds that an artist is a kind of public figure—not a celebrity,
but a moral guide to the nation. The reverse of this is, of course, that Chinese
politicians often present themselves as artists. This rule complicates the lives
of artists. They cannot become too isolated from Chinese values.
Artists are almost obligated to take up moral demands, making the
Party anxious that without controls, artists will make moral demands for
dissident art. One of China’s more controversial writers, Wang Shuo, the
creator of best-selling novels of tough working-class life in Beijing, be
came rich by writing sensational narratives that avoid, even disdain, pol
itics. Wang cockily remarked:
There’s a very famous dissident named Liu Xiaobo, who tried to persuade
me to protest and make petitions and collect signatures. I refused. Now Liu
is in a labor camp, and I am here [in a Beijing disco]. I was proved right. A
writer is a writer. He should stay away from politics.47
Yet, Liu Xiaobo, a noted literary critic, is closer to Chinese intellectual tra
dition, which is exactly what makes him menacing to the Party. And many
intellectuals regard Wang Shuo with contempt, not for his failure to sign
petitions, but for rejecting the moral obligations of the artist.
Censorship for the Many/Access for the Elite

So-called internal or restricted (neibu) materials ease the need for censor
ship. Arts and information are available throughout China in a variety of
nonpublic formats. Elites may be trusted with images and knowledge that
might corrupt ordinary people. Such internal materials include newspapers
that print extensive translations from the foreign press (but that are distrib
uted only to officials of a certain rank), art exhibitions only open to “quali
fied” viewers, and films shown for free to invited audiences. Many state
agencies publish their own newspapers and magazines, not routinely avail
able, which may contain sensitive information—or they may be the Chinese
equivalents of American company newsletters. Large numbers of people
have access to such in-house materials, including the greater portion of the
urban intelligentsia. These restricted arts thus occupy a shadowy world of
quasi-censorship, where words and images are unavailable to the general
public, but accessible to those people who are most likely to be upset at ex
clusion. Indeed, some political criticism initially appears in internal sources
as a kind of test run, before it makes its way into the public media.
120 Chapter 4
This dual system of arts access does not always work as intended. For
instance, in 1967 and 1968 during the Cultural Revolution, screenings of
some movies, such as The Life of Wu Xun and The Secret History of the Qing
Court, were held to provide examples of “bourgeois”art. The practice was
discontinued when officials realized the invited audiences were enjoying
the films too much. In 1980 Party elder Wang Renzhong tried to halt in
ternal film screenings, not out of a sense that elite privilege was wrong,
but because he believed that the Foreign Ministry was showing French
pornography.48 And one must wonder why the innocuous Shanghai Phi
lately was a restricted publication in 1986. More recently, the entire dual-
access system has repeatedly been criticized as going against the spirit of
reform.49 But dual access lingers on, in part because it allows the editors
of Chinese culture to avoid having to censor. And it is also an exclusive
perquisite that flatters intellectuals as it contributes to cultural control.
Political Patrons for Artists

In a system with obscure, but significantly changing, rules, controversies
often cannot be resolved without superseding the cultural system and
bringing in the firmer hand of a member of the political elite. The system
generates a steady demand for referees. Political leaders are no longer so
deeply involved in the approval of individual works that members of the
Political Bureau routinely arbitrate disputes about specific paintings or
films. But awareness of a powerful backer can inspire potential critics of
an artist to fade away. Thus, the mighty are frequently called upon to
show their support for arts projects by providing prefaces or calligraphic
inscriptions for books, exhibits, or even the titles of controversial televi
sion shows. And direct intervention by political patrons remains a factor.
Director Zhang Yimou’s films Ju Dou (1989) and Raise the Red Lantern
(1991) were banned from distribution in China until 1992, when Ju Dou
was viewed by Li Ruihuan of the Political Bureau’s Standing Committee.
Li reversed the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television’s ban and also ap
proved joint ventures between state cultural organizations and foreign
companies, allowing open Taiwanese and Hong Kong coproduction of
Chinese movies.50
Self-Censorship
Most censorship in China, as elsewhere, is self-censorship. In his classic
essay “The Prevention of Literature,” George Orwell pointed to the utter
normality of censorship, even in a Britain that prided itself on being
“free.” The greatest inhibitors of literature, he argued, are writers them
selves, who restrain themselves in deference to authority.51 China’s
loosely structured cultural controls result in a shadowy mechanism of

hints, rumors, and speculation that is more effective, and certainly much
cheaper, than formal government review.
Western journalists blocked from the corridors of power in Beijing did
not invent the arcane arts of “China watching.” Instead, they were per
fected by Chinese intellectuals, officials, and artists alike, eager to divine
their futures from meager, but tantalizing, public hints of change. The
public placement of an article written by a formerly disgraced author sig
nals that others who shared in that particular category of disrepute will be
coming back. Public criticism of a play for bourgeois liberalism warns all
writers to be careful of replicating the offense. The harshest criticism is
that by name; indirect reference saves face and permits plausible denia
bility.
But just how far is going too far? Every song or painting is a kind of
miner’s canary in the caves of China’s cultural politics. Watch. See. You
can’t go that far, at least not yet. For most artists, the question of artistic
freedom is important, but indirect. For most, artistic freedom is a bell
wether issue, influencing the climate of professional work. Few show
much eagerness to be at the barricades themselves. An analogy might be
the dispute over academic freedom in U.S. universities. A professor need
not feel an immediate personal need to challenge the system’s limits to be
pleased that someone else has done so successfully.
Chinese intellectuals learn a tight set of internal controls. Let me pro
vide an example. Three images were displayed in the living room of my
1995–1997 Nanjing apartment. One was a perfectly conventional photo
graph of my wife and son, posed with me in Oregon. Second was a piece
of traditional Chinese art, a large white-on-black rubbing of a Buddhist
figure, one of the eighteen Arhats. More unusual was the third, a brightly
colored poster for a Hong Kong exhibition of 1930s and 1940s cartoons
from Shanghai. This poster contained images of eight cartoons, some
satirical (Chiang Kaishek and a Christian missionary before a Guomin
dang flag), some unsettling (a monstrous Japanese butcher slicing
Manchuria from a China-shaped chopping block), and others simply odd
(a modern young couple apparently in blackface). In the course of teach
ing in Nanjing, I invited at least eighty students to dinner in my apart
ment, always in groups of three or four. Many commented politely on the
small family portrait, many remarked on the more obvious rubbing. But
not one ever did more than glance furtively at the flamboyant poster.
What was going on? It was all right to talk about family and although
Buddhist rubbings are not likely to be found in a Chinese intellectual’s
apartment, they are easily classified as objects of interest to foreigners.
The poster’s art remained as dangerous and subversive as the cartoonists
intended half a century ago; better not to mention it, for fear of saying or
122 Chapter 4
hearing something one should not.52 The incident is trivial, but suggestive
of how tightly China’s educated class can control its tongue.
The Chinese, of course, have excellent reasons to censor themselves. The
older generation remembers past political campaigns. In 1955 twenty-one
hundred people were involved in the Hu Feng case. No one was helped by
connection to this famous literary critic, even though “only” ninety-three
were arrested, seventy-eight labeled as Hu Feng elements, and twenty-
three were labeled as hardcore elements. They were not rehabilitated until
1980, when their original work units were ordered to take them back
twenty-five years after the Party made its “mistake.”53 Political sanctions
against artists and others continued, including the vast purges during the
Cultural Revolution and subsequent purges of the left. In the 1980s a group
of former Red Guard leaders was paraded around the nation as negative
example for offenses committed twenty years earlier. Many were arrested
or otherwise punished for their involvement in the 1989 protests.54 There
were politically inspired purges at the Academy of Social Sciences in 1995.55
Persistent dissidents encounter difficulties with the police and other au
thorities. After police pressed his employer in 1998, poet Liao Yiwu lost
his job running a supplement for the Chengdu Commercial Newspaper. Liao,
who had been jailed for four years for a 1990 film on the Beijing Massacre,
watched a bookstore venture fail when commercial inspectors ransacked
his shop.56 The harsh punishment (multiple imprisonments and exile)
given Wei Jingsheng seems effective; many Chinese intellectuals blame
Wei and other dissidents for bringing trouble to themselves and for rock
ing the boat in which all intellectuals must sail.
CENSORSHIP IN RETREAT, USUALLY
The hand of censorship is visible, but it moves erratically. Nonetheless, it

retains some power, and all artists and intellectuals must play the censor
ship game, however unwillingly. The censorship has lightened, not
mainly due to the Party’s goodwill, but because many intellectuals have
pressed successfully for fewer restrictions and because the emerging cul
tural marketplace has complicated the censor’s job. Censorship will not
soon vanish in China, but the long trend of reform toward greater auton
omy for artists will continue, despite intermittent and painful counter
currents. Several factors will shape censorship’s future.
Breaking the Rules

Rules fall into disuse when people flout them. In 1979 I visited the Hunan
capital of Changsha; out of curiosity, I asked for a copy of the local televi
sion program guide, only to be refused by the vendor, who told me with
embarrassment that this publication was not allowed to foreigners. A kind
stranger overheard the conversation and beat the censorship simply by
buying the magazine, which he then presented as a gift. This violation
seemed low risk, but similar violations across the nation brought about
the demise of a disregarded rule.
In the arts as in other areas, the mere promulgation of a law, rule, or pol
icy is no indication that the measures will be followed or even acknowl
edged. For instance, China has repeatedly issued rules to restrict the use
of satellite dishes in order to control television. None of these has been ef
fective, following the pattern established in the early 1980s, when Guang
dong officials failed to ban television antennae that could pick up broad
casts from neighboring Hong Kong.
Fear of defying censorship has vastly diminished. In the wake of the
Beijing Massacre, the Press and Publications Administration ordered
the withdrawal of publications with “bourgeois tendencies,” including
the writings of overthrown Party heads Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang.
Many rushed to purchase such books, plus the works of such targets as
Yan Jiaqi, Fang Lizhi, Su Shaozhi, not necessarily for a bracing reformist
read, but for speculative investment.57
Censors were scandalized in 1991 to discover that a poem published in
the overseas edition of People’s Daily contained a coded demand for Prime
Minister Li Peng’s resignation. The poem was a qi lü (a seven-word, eight-
sentence rhyme) by Zhu Haihong, a student in the United States. Its content
is superficially quite conventional: “A wandering son atop the steps misses
his motherland, never abandoning his life-long urge to serve China.” Yet,
when read diagonally, one line of characters says: “Li Peng must step down
in order to assuage the people’s anger.” Public security agents arrested one
editor and combed through old faxes in the effort to discover how the poem
had reached the Shenzhen office responsible for the overseas edition. Any
one in China with access to this edition was required to turn his or her copy
into the authorities or provide written justification for not doing so.58
Media Expansion
Commercial pressure often works directly against censorship. Newly le
gitimate commercial ambitions rapidly expanded cultural products, from
television to novels to magazines and newspapers, overloading the
Party’s already weakened control mechanisms.59 In 1978, China had 186
newspapers and 930 magazines. By 1996 these numbers had grown to
1,053 newspapers and 7,543 magazines.60 New publications, new styles of
art, and new foreign contacts all appeared precisely as the control appa
ratus was on the defensive. Alternative distribution channels also
124 Chapter 4
appeared, making state supervision more difficult. The New China Book
store lost exclusive control over book distribution in late 1985, when com
peting private (as well as collective and state) book vendors spread
quickly. Some of that control was restored, albeit ineffectually, in 1989.
Widespread piracy in books, recordings, and films has also made control
difficult.61 The cultural market simply generates new stuff faster than the
state can regulate it. From 1992 into the new millennium, new media out
lets have not been seeking to subvert the state, but all are looking for ed
itorial content to put between the advertisements.62
The 1989 political repression was followed by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 sig
nal to strengthen the commercial economy. Chinese artists recently
branded as subversive went back into print, as publishers feared offending
the state less than missing out on profits. In 1989, influential aesthetician
Li Zehou was a critic of the government’s policies. His works were not for
mally banned, but the Press and Publishing Administration instructed that
his works that contained serious political errors could not be reprinted; of
course, no press would take up his works at all.63 By 1994, although Li Ze
hou lived in exile in the United States, his most celebrated studies were
reprinted in a single volume under the title Li Zehou Ten-Year Collection,
with a color photo of the author inside.64 In this spirit, the closely super
vised movie industry reconsidered previously banned movies as it
searched for new titles to win back its audience from television.65
The small number of “real” censors can only be effective under a regime in
which most of the editors-cum-censors show enthusiasm for imposing central
controls. In the absence of such enthusiasm, the Propaganda Department has
sought to limit its losses by focusing its attention on a mere eight institutions:
the New China News Agency, People’s Daily, Seek Truth from Facts (Qiushi, a
Party journal), Economic Daily, Guangming Daily, Central Television, Central
People’s Radio, and China International Radio.66 Dispirited propagandists
are apparently willing to settle for firm control over what they perhaps cyni
cally designate to be key media, rather than over the entire system.
In 1993, the Press and Publications Administration relinquished many
of its controls over the book industry. In a decentralization intended to
help publishers adjust to the commercial marketplace, the state declared
that they were freed from the need to limit titles to their nominal special
ization. This change followed several controversies over the administra-
tion’s efforts to limit the scope of publication. The state essentially sur
rendered, perhaps partly motivated by the desire to share in new profits,
knowing that it was abandoning an important censorship tool.67
Technological Change
The cultural marketplace and especially China’s integration into the
world economy has sped the introduction of new communications tech
nology that works against censorship. The enormous inconvenience of

producing unofficial periodicals impeded the 1979 Democracy Wall
movement, spread by mimeographing stencils using broken and second
hand mimeograph machines. Beijing Spring managed to print up to ten
thousand copies at Foreign Languages Press, but this was exceptional.68
Even then, Deng Xiaoping menacingly remarked, “Some secret maga
zines are printed so prettily. Where do they find their paper? What press
prints them?”69
Over two decades later, the technical environment is different. Com
puters have become common, fax machines abound, cellular phones are a
hot commodity. There are over eighty million cable television subscribers.
New technical ways to beat the censors continue to appear. In the summer
of 1997, an e-mail magazine was prepared inside China, sent electroni
cally to the United States, and then redistributed via e-mail to Chinese
subscribers. Topics included the 1989 Beijing Massacre and the collapse of
Communism in the Soviet Union.70
State efforts to control or even comprehend these changes are often pa
thetic or erratically fierce. Although the state promotes Internet expan
sion, one hapless Internet entrepreneur was jailed in 1998 to halt the crit
ical electronic magazine. Internet use has expanded to over fifty million
users, amid much discussion of the Party’s efforts to regulate it. Ironies
abound: Western firms sell the Chinese state the software with which it
seeks to regulate the information explosion, even as the Central Intelli
gence Agency invests in a firm that tries to break through the Great Fire
wall of China.
As in recent censorship politics in general, the Party’s primary goal is
to restrain online information and political discussion, which typically
means that the arts are not a special target. But some technologies are
more arts centered, such as cable television and DVD. The latter especially
frustrates the censor; propaganda officials may order cuts in a film for the
atrical distribution, but cannot prevent the sale of fuller DVD versions of
the same movies.
Rapid technological change is accompanied by a relentless drive to
make the media more commercial. Even publications once owned by the
state now operate in a thoroughly marketized manner. Daniel Lynch re
minds us, however, that the inevitable collapse of tight political control
over the media does not by itself constitute political liberalization.71
The Professionalization of Cultural Criticism

Early in the reform era, there was much angry discussion by artists who
had been criticized on political grounds during the Cultural Revolution.
Artists and officials alike agreed that the Maoist practice of “wielding
sticks” against artists in political campaigns had been a serious mistake.
126 Chapter 4
But what is a stick? When screenwriter Bai Hua came under attack in
1981, his supporters believed that any Party criticism of an artist was a
stick. Party leaders responded, “We should not flagrantly interfere with
creativity in literature and art, but we must not misinterpret it as casting
aside the party’s leadership.”72 Reforming intellectuals wished to render
illegitimate political criticism of their work, a goal crystallized in the
widespread (among artists) belief in the autonomy of the laws of art, not
understandable by untrained outsiders. This effort has not met with com
plete success, but when the results are compared to the practices of the
Cultural Revolution or even the early 1980s, the change is remarkable.
Illustrative of the trend is Zhang Xianliang, author of several novels
(such as Half of Man Is Woman, Mimosa, and Getting Used to Dying) that of
fend some people doubly, with their highly sexualized accounts of life in
labor reform camps. Despite harsh criticism (“Moral degeneration is
bound to lead to political depravity”), Zhang retained his post as chair
man of the Ningxia Arts Federation.73 Yet, many questions remain unre
solved: Where is the line between literary criticism and political attack?
Are politically based criticisms a form of censorship? What of the right of
conservative critics to publish, if they are not demanding the political de
struction of their targets?
Censored, but Available

The lack of formal institutions to block publication means that banned
works must be recalled from distribution, a cumbersome and often inef
fective process. Golden Years, Wang Xiaobo’s 1994 novel of the Cultural
Revolution was withdrawn amidst controversy about some sexual pas
sages, but not before it sold forty thousand copies.74 Technically, the book
was censored, and I could not purchase a copy at a Nanjing bookstore. But
with so many copies in circulation, I could certainly borrow one, making
the censorship issue a bit cloudier than the incisive word “censor” would
suggest. Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby similarly taunted the censors with its
tale of drugs and sex between Chinese women and foreign men.75 One ex
pects subsequent works by authors censored with such ample publicity to
sell briskly, whether they deliver steamy sex or not. The censored-but-not-
censored phenomenon is now a routine aspect of China’s cultural life.
Baiting the State: The Advantages of Being Censored

Artists also use the censorship of their work to enhance their reputations
as warriors for freedom. Novelist Jia Pingwa published The Abandoned
Capital (Feidu) in 1993. The book chronicles literary life in a thinly veiled
Xi’an (Jia’s home and capital of China in the Tang Dynasty), with more sex
scenes than Chinese readers expect, especially from a well-established au

thor. The book was banned, but not before it had become a best-seller. Bei
jing Publishing House was compelled to relinquish all profits, plus pay
double that amount as a fine.76 This seems like a harsh blow against a
writer, but in China’s newly commercial cultural world, there is no such
thing as bad publicity. Some think that Jia’s novel is brilliant, but even
many of these believe that The Abandoned Capital was a cynical produc
tion. Jia even included blank spots in place of characters in some steamy
passages as if he had been censored, just for effect. While I had to go to
Hong Kong for my copy of The Abandoned Capital, China’s bookstores
were filled with copies of Jia’s other works, released in new editions to
meet rising demand.77 By 1997, a major Chinese encyclopedia listed The
Abandoned Capital as one of Jia Pingwa’s important works.
Stylish film directors such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou have some
times simplified their admittedly complex relations with the Chinese
state. Both of these accomplished artists have had serious conflicts with
Chinese film authorities, including demands for changes in final cuts and
authorities have temporarily refused to screen some of their movies in
China. Yet, they have also enjoyed cooperation from the state, which, af
ter all, earns foreign exchange from their popularity abroad. Western re
porters would rather hear tales of artistic suppression than of coopera
tion. So Zhang Yimou does not call attention to the fact that hundreds of
People’s Liberation Army soldiers took part in Living (Huozhe) or that the
plot of Qiu Ju Goes to Court (in which a virtuous official intervenes to re
solve the political harassment of a feisty peasant woman) likely pleased
the Propaganda Department.78
Aesopian Discussion
The indirect language of parable or metaphor is a classic means of cir
cumventing censorship. This tactic has a long history in China and has
continued in the People’s Republic.79 Examples are often only slightly
roundabout. In Guangzhou the host of a late night radio talk show that
drew large audiences for its daring talk about sex reported that the topic
of homosexuality was banned, but talking about movies was not, so he
discussed movies with homosexual characters, like Philadelphia or The
Wedding Banquet.80
More complex are literary uses of allegory and symbolism. In “Hard
Porridge,” a story by former minister of culture Wang Meng, an old man
tries to persuade his four-generation family to try some Western breakfast
instead of rice porridge. Conflict arises when a weak and indecisive elder
son, a rash youth, wants to switch at once to eating nothing but Western
food at once. Wang Meng’s enemies read the story as a criticism of Deng
128 Chapter 4
Xiaoping, the old man who tried to introduce a little of the West. A letter
to the Wenyi bao criticized Wang for an oblique attack on Deng. The letter
turned out to have been written by the editor under a pseudonym. Wang
filed a lawsuit, denying any political intent.81 One thinks here of the 1970s
example of Huang Yongyu, who was fond of annoying Maoists by paint
ing winking owls, which elicited charges that these birds (evil in Chinese
lore) were closing one eye to indicate doubts about the political system.
No one could prove it, and Huang steadfastly denied it—until the fall of
the Gang of Four, after which he freely admitted that his owls were a po
litical protest.
The problem with such symbolic responses to censorship is that they do
not make one’s point very clearly, effectively conceding ground to the
censors from the outset.82 Once cynical readings of cultural symbols are
required, it seems that the established powers have won the game. Artists
are effectively hostage to the formalized terms of discourse set by the
Party, even if their words and images are subject to subversive readings.
New Forms of Censorship

The cultural market has contributed to a general loosening of controls
over art, but it has also evoked some new forms of censorship. For in
stance, China did not have a system for rating motion pictures according
to their alleged suitability for children until 1989. Movies that might titil
late were simply not shown, at least not in public and rarely in private.
But greater diversity on the screen, fueled in part by new competition
from television, led to some controversial films. Teng Jinxian, head of the
Chinese Film Bureau, said in the summer of 1988 that the nation needed
to protect children against sex and violence that may be vital to the story,
but harmful to young viewers, offering Red Sorghum as an example. A rat
ing system, he argued, would enable the Film Bureau to label movies as
unsuitable for children, rather than to cut scenes.83 Nearly a year later, on
May 1, 1989, the new system was introduced. Children could not buy tick
ets to four kinds of movies: (1) those portraying rape, robbery, drug tak
ing, drug selling, or prostitution; (2) films that can easily terrify children
with fighting or violence; (3) movies with sex; and (4) films with “social
abnormalities.” “Not suitable for children” signs were posted at ticket
booths and on the screen before the film.84
Is this censorship? Of course. Did Chinese people object? No. Parents
were pleased for the same reason that anxious parents in other nations
want to shield their children from alarming images. Filmmakers were
pleased to imagine that the Film Bureau might lighten up on cuts before
releasing new products. And theater operators could earn more money by
screening more risqué fare. Even before the new restrictions, the words “no
children allowed” enabled scalpers to charge twenty-seven yuan in

Guangzhou and ten yuan in Beijing for tickets to Village of Widows (Guafu
cun), a rather arty movie about old sexual mores along the Fujian coast.85
Controversy over this film stemmed from two things: Young women of
Hui’an county dress in an especially colorful way that features elaborate
headgear and exposed midriffs and leads many to doubt that they are re
ally Han Chinese. (They are. In Fujian, the constantly repeated local joke
about the dress of Hui’an women is “feudal heads, democratic bellies.”)
The story included a nocturnal and barely visible act of lovemaking in
which neither partner turns out to be sure of the other’s identity.86
Censorship for Profit

New forms of censorship seek to assure profits through control of intel-
lectual-property rights. Deng Xiaoping jailed his cultural critics; his
daughter takes her adversaries to court. In a property-rights battle, Deng
Rong sued a Liaoning publisher over unauthorized printing of her biog
raphy of her father, lest the Deng family money machine be impaired.
When China announced early in 1996 that Chinese organizations
would only be able to subscribe to foreign economic news services (Dow-
Jones, Reuters, Bloomberg) through the New China News Agency (Xin
hua), there was a sharp outcry in the Western media against censorship of
information about China’s and the world’s economy. China beat a hasty
retreat, announcing that the New China News Agency would not be in
specting the news prior to distribution. The incident seems best explained
by Xinhua’s desire to control not the information, but the revenue. The
agency can charge each subscriber a fee in its self-appointed role as un
wanted and monopolizing agent.87 What initially appeared to be censor
ship turned out to be something rather different, although state-granted
monopolies may be no less obnoxious.
Libel Laws
Intellectuals have long called for the strengthening of China’s legal system,
but may be disappointed with some of the outcomes. There was a dramatic
increase in the number of lawsuits among the intelligentsia, as private in
dividuals attempted to suppress criticism. One notorious case pitted two
linguists against each other, with one demanding damages for attacks on
his academic work. This kind of lawsuit, common in Taiwan, Singapore,
and Hong Kong, seems likely to spread in the mainland as an unantici
pated consequence of the rule of law. Wang Meng’s suit over his short
story shows that reformers can use the legal mechanism against their crit
ics, but often the results may well be less favorable to the arts world.
130 Chapter 4
Censorship by Price
As China continues to prosper, a new twist is being introduced into the
censorship system. While the old official system of internal distribution is
in decay, a new system of price distribution is flourishing. In the 1989
nude art rage, books of reproductions of oil paintings were kept out of the
hands of the masses not by state edict, but by their expense. The market’s
logic can be as effective as the state’s in keeping “dangerous” materials
away from the masses, while making them accessible to privileged mem
bers of society.
“BANNED IN CHINA”
Who wins the censorship game? One’s answer depends on his or her per
sonal political values. Those who oppose any form of censorship will con
clude that there are no winners. Artists lose because they must waste their
time dealing with silliness. The game is exhausting and distracting, even
when artists are successful. The state loses because it wastes resources in
an oppressive and dehumanizing activity. And the citizens of China lose
access to the ideas that have been closed off, silenced, or disguised, as well
as to some fun. But, of course, many Chinese will not agree with my
American Civil Liberties Union perspective.
China’s censorship is complex, the product of a weakening regime
taking aim at a moving target. The marketization of culture has both
complicated the job of the censors and generated new tasks. The end re
sult has been a loosening of censorship, although it is too simple to say
that markets bring freedom. There are certainly many artists who feel
the bite of censorship, but China’s censorship, like other aspects of its
politics, resembles that of other countries far more than it did at Mao’s
death.
There is some irony in the fact that China’s censorship has been so rou
tinely condemned by the Western press just as it has lost much of its bite.
Some of the pressure applied to China is tactical; pressure on a regime in
the process of change may discourage backsliding and further limit cen
sorship. But most Western commentary seems more ignorant than tacti-
cal.88 Several factors account for this discrepancy between a loosening
Chinese censorship and ever-fiercer Western condemnation.
Lack of Information
One problem in assessing censorship is the dearth of reliable information.
There is no consistently reliable source for censorship news in any coun
try. After a group of intellectuals petitioned for the release of Wei Jing
sheng in early 1989, a Hong Kong report asserted the Propaganda De
partment had barred mention of Su Shaozhi and the other thirty-three sig
natories in the press or on television.89 But Su’s ideas were in fact reported
at the time in the Fuzhou Evening News.90 Was the report of censorship mis
taken? Did the Propaganda Department lack the authority to make local
newspapers follow its directive? Or did someone in Fuzhou simply mis
place or ignore the instructions?
In October 1995, a group of avant-garde artists were arrested in Yuan-
ming Park Village in Northwest Beijing for ignoring police orders to va
cate the houses that they had rented from peasants. This was reported
widely in the Western press. It was not reported, however, that the artists
successfully returned to their unofficial arts community despite police ha
rassment and that they were still there in the summer of 1997, although
they remained skittish of contact with the police.
How does one interpret such inconsistent reports? There is a tendency
in the Western press to highlight censorship stories, which may exagger
ate the frequency of incidents. Many other bad moments for artists never
become news, which can delude observers into believing that no one is
having any problems.91 At the same time, rarely do we read follow-up sto
ries about artists who have become uncensored. For example, there was
much notice when Taiwanese pop star A Mei was banned from perform
ing on the mainland after singing the Republic of China’s national anthem
at the 2000 inauguration of Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian. But lit
tle notice was paid of her return to Shanghai two years later.
“Banned in China” as Sales Appeal

A major impediment to understanding censorship in China is the way
Western media hype the “banned in China” theme, exaggerating censor
ship. Virtuous outrage at human rights abuses, simple anti-Communism,
and efforts to make cultural products seem more significant, and therefore
more attractive to purchasers, all play a role in assessments that are often
extreme or ludicrous. For instance, the normally staid Chronicle of Higher
Education, a trade paper for deans of U.S. universities, asserted that pho
tography had been “banned by Communist decree.”92
In a more complicated example, Penguin books published Howard Gold-
blatt’s fine translation of Mo Yan’s novel The Garlic Ballads. On the back
cover, where publishers have their last chance to make a sale to the reader
who is contemplating the volume in hand, Penguin says, “The Garlic Ballads,
banned in China, is a powerful and apocalyptic vision of life for the innu
merable people of China who exist at the mercy of an uncaring state.”93 In
fact, by time of the 1995 Viking-Penguin publication, Mo Yan’s novel was
readily available in Chinese bookstores.
132 Chapter 4
Penguin was technically correct. The Garlic Ballads had been withdrawn
from sale shortly after its 1989 publication. The reality of the censoring of
Mo Yan, however, is subtler than Penguin publicists can handle. The rea
son the novel was banned in 1989 is almost certainly its sympathetic rep
resentation of an antigovernment riot by peasants furious that the state
will not purchase the garlic that it has encouraged them to plant. Such ri
ots happen in China, and the state does not want to publicize them. By
1993, however, the Party’s panic over the 1989 political crisis had sub
sided, and The Garlic Ballads joined Mo Yan’s other popular novels on the
bookseller’s shelves. Yet, it appeared in a “revised” edition. The novel
was originally written in the fall of 1987 and published by the People’s
Liberation Army Publishing House. Mo Yan was unhappy with some
cuts, which he restored in a 1988 Taiwan edition.94
When Mo Yan revised the book, he added a preface declaring that his
book is not to be taken as a model, but as a warning (“The ultimate goal
in writing this kind of novel is to hope that the phenomena it describes do
not become a model for real life”). He also removed a prefatory quotation
from Stalin, whose irony had probably not been enjoyed by the Propa
ganda Department.95 Most significantly, he substituted a new concluding
chapter (one of twenty). The Penguin final chapter is grim: a blind ballad
singer is tortured with an electric cattle prod, then murdered by the po
lice. There is also a suicide, a posthumous marriage with a corpse, and a
suicidal escape from prison. The 1993 final chapter uses the device of a
newspaper account to sum things up at the end of the novel. The official
and familiarly hypocritical language of the Masses Daily newspaper make
an effective ending, but one not so shocking or depressing as the censored
version. At the same time, the alternate ending is hardly a kiss blown to
the Chinese state.
From the Penguin blurb, however, the reader might well imagine Mo
Yan is a nonperson, a dissident artist who writes underground and at
great peril. In fact, as Penguin explains inside the book, Mo Yan, who was
born in Shandong in 1956, “has won virtually every Chinese literary prize
and is the most critically acclaimed Chinese writer of his generation, in
both China and the West.” Among other works, he is the author of Red
Sorghum, the basis for the popular Zhang Yimou film. Is Mo Yan a
“banned” writer? Hardly. Any decent bookstore stocks many of his nov
els. His place in China’s literary life is central, not peripheral. So we have
a banned (but only for a few years) book, but not a banned writer or even
a writer who was punished for writing a questionable book. To add yet
another layer of ambiguity: Mo Yan is a professional writer for the Peo-
ple’s Liberation Army, his employer since 1976.96 I do not blame Penguin
for trying to sell more copies of Mo Yan, a fine writer who should be bet
ter known in the West. But how can a back-cover blurb capture this com
plex history of editing, withdrawal from sales, republication in Taiwan,

and rewriting of the concluding chapter?
Another example comes from the world of fine arts. “New Art in China
Post 1989” was a traveling exhibition of Chinese painting, including many
works of oblique political and social commentary. It showed at the Uni
versity of Oregon Museum of Art, December 17, 1995, to February 18,
1996.97 While I missed the exhibit, I read the press clippings with fascina
tion. Most Western publicists and art critics are driven to try to character
ize all of the paintings as banned, even misrepresenting the facts to pre
sent each painter as a tormented rebel. Even House & Garden described the
show as “underground art (officially banned in China).” The New York
Times agreed: “This exhibition has been banned in China for its provoca
tive avant-garde content.” Yet, the exhibition was never assembled or pre
sented in China. It would likely not have found a sponsoring organiza
tion, but this is a different question. “Come and see art that the Chinese
government has denounced as dangerous” seems to capture the odd mix
of hype and outraged liberalism that Americans so often adopt when
speaking of contemporary Chinese culture.98
Some reporters connected the New Art show to Beijing’s 1989 avant
garde exhibition, where “artist Xiao Lu pulled out a pistol and fired a shot
into her own work, declaring it dead. The government quickly agreed and
closed the exhibition down.” Reporters did not mention that the Beijing
show reopened successfully after the flamboyant performance; nor did
they wonder what might happen if an American artist were to fire a round
or two into her installation at the Whitney or the Museum of Modern Art.
One doubts if it would be business as usual, and it is likely that the police
would temporarily close the exhibition while they investigated the crime.99
A second account of the New Art show in the New York Times got it
right: “In this new era, ‘unofficial’ artists—while not persecuted for their
work—are not allowed to exhibit and are viewed as dissidents, the more
provocative among them going underground.”
A Double Standard for China and the West

Surprisingly, none of the press clippings mentioned that one of the pieces,
Gu Wenda’s “Oedipus Refound No. 1 The Enigma of Blood,” made of
used sanitary tampons attached to pillows, was banned from an earlier
exhibition in Columbus, Ohio. Any American who cares about human
rights should know that Ohio can be a dangerous place for art: the direc
tor of a Cincinnati museum was prosecuted for obscenity in the notorious
Mapplethorpe trial.100 But, of course, the good people of Ohio did not
imagine that they had censored Gu’s art so much as dismissed it for being
indecent, surely a different matter altogether.
134 Chapter 4
Our understanding of Chinese censorship would be advanced by

greater honesty about the West’s own censorship. Amidst anxieties in
1997 over freedom of expression in Hong Kong under Chinese rule, few
noted that until 1995 British colonial law authorized the police to review
and censor drama productions.101 In the United States publishers of com
modity market newsletters are required to register with a government
agency and provide fingerprints of employees and information about
subscribers.102 France’s attempts to restrict Hollywood movies are treated
as evidence of a romantic, but impractical, cultural nationalism; China’s
attempts to do the same are invariably characterized as a fear of new
ideas. When Chinese film studio bosses force directors to make changes
in their movies, it is censorship, but when Hollywood studios do the
same, it is not.103 Nor is there much concern when the U.S. Defense De-
partment’s Film and Television Liaison Office demands changes in
screenplays in exchange for cooperation with Hollywood.104 Wal-Mart,
the largest U.S. seller of pop music, demands that record companies pro
vide it with new and sanitized versions of their products, changing both
cover art and song lyrics. Wal-Mart claims that this is not censorship, be
cause music fans can purchase the original product elsewhere. Yet, Wal-
Mart often drives competing stores from the small towns that it domi
nates.
Western reporting on Chinese intellectual issues is doggedly negative,
in contrast with our treatment of other parts of the world. The Western
press made much of the 1996 regulation that all Internet users in China
must register with the police. I duly registered in Nanjing in 1996. No
jack-booted thug examined my hard drive; I filled in a one-page form,
providing my identification (passport) number, address, the name of my
network, my e-mail address, and declared that my “purpose for net
working” was e-mail. Around the same time, there was a false report that
China had closed access to China News Digest, an electronic periodical
published by Chinese in the West. But China News Digest continued to ap
pear on my Nanjing computer, unimpaired.105
Many Americans seem to feel much more threatened by limits to free
dom in China, over which they have little influence, than by government
action in their own country, whether it be school boards expurgating clas
sic art, the Justice Department examining library records, or the National
Security Agency eavesdropping on phone conversations.106
One well-meaning businesswoman in Oakland, California, shipped over
eight thousand books to China, arguing that “They need books . . . because
of the mandatory dark ages that occurred there, and all of the book burning.
All of the library shelves—everything—were emptied.” She worked through
an organization called Gateway to China. “They’re going to send me pictures
back of all the Chinese people holding the books, being so happy.”107
Some readers may be unhappy with my treatment of censorship. The

struggle against tyranny is aided by black-and-white representations,
thus the complex nuances of Chinese censorship is frustrating. Censor
ship of the sort that most Westerners resist certainly exists. But there is
also business as usual “editing” that is not so different from our own ex
perience. My point is not that Western and Chinese styles of censorship
are identical, for they are not, but that we cannot understand the complex
issues faced by China’s intellectuals as long as we pretend that freedom is
without limit in the West. No nation can ever remove all forms of censor
ship, although all can struggle to undermine its power. If we continue to
treat China as if its artists are sullen robots subject to Cultural Revolution
conditions, we only use censorship as an ideological whip and contribute
little to a more open China or a more intelligent America.
NOTES
1. For U.S. examples, see Marjorie Heins, Not in Front of the Children: “Inde
cency,” Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001).
2. Notable exceptions are Perry Link, The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist
Chinese Literary System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Geremie R.
Barmé, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York: Columbia Univer
sity Press, 1999); Perry Link, “The Limits of Cultural Reform in Deng Xiaoping’s
China,” Modern China 13(2) (April 1987), 115–176; Judy Polumbaum, “The Tribu
lations of China’s Journalists after a Decade of Reform,” in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed.,
Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Journalism (New York: Guilford Press,
1990), 33–68; Michael Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics
(Berkeley: University of California Institute for East Asian Studies, 1992); Jerome
Silbergeld, “Art Censorship in Socialist China: A Do-It-Yourself System,” in Eliza
beth C. Childes, ed., Suspended: Censorship and the Visual Arts (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1997), 299–332; Lynn T. White III, “All the News: Structure
and Politics in Shanghai’s Reform Media,” in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed., Voices of China,
88–110; and Yi Chen, “Publishing in China in the Post-Mao Era: The Case of Lady
Chatterley’s Lover,” Asian Survey 32(6) (June 1992), 568–582.
3. Yi Chen, “Publishing in China,” 569.
4. On the history of censorship, see An Pingqiu and Zhang Peiheng, eds., Zhong
guo jinshu daguan [“A survey of banned books in China”] (Shanghai: Shanghai
Wenhua Chubanshe, 1990). This volume ends with the fall of the Qing Dynasty, but
its publication shortly after the 1989 crackdown was itself a statement against cen
sorship. On censorship in the republican period see Lee-hsia Hsu Ting, Government
Control of the Press in Modern China 1900–1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University
East Asian Research Center, 1974); and Frederick Wakeman Jr., Policing Shanghai
1927–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press), esp. 171–173, 238–240.
5. On the Soviet censorship system, see Marianna Tax Choldin and Maurice
Friedberg, eds., The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR (Boston:
Unwin Hyman, 1989).
136 Chapter 4
6. White, “All the News,” 103.

7. J. M. Coetzee, Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996), 34.
8. There is a parallel in China’s adoption of Soviet practice in statistics, where
China’s statistical bureaucracy was much more decentralized and politically
weaker. The Soviet Union had 41,000 personnel in central statistical agencies in 1987,
while China had 46 in 1976, and 280 after the beginning of the reforms in 1981.
Yasheng Huang, “The Statistical Agency in China’s Bureaucratic System: A Com
parison with the Former Soviet Union,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies
29(1) (March 1996), 59–75.
9. “Some Topics Reportedly Banned in ‘Major’ Papers,” Hong Kong mingbao
(February 16, 1993), in FBIS Daily Report China (February 17, 1993), 11–12.
10. The Publishing Bureau preceded the Press and Publishing Administration
in having a national body of censors.
11. Chen Zhuli, “Anti-Porn Drive Focuses on Electronic Products,” China Daily
(December 29, 1995).
12. Jane Leftwich Currey, ed. and trans. The Black Book of Polish Censorship (New
York: Vintage, 1984). This manual came from a Krakow censor who defected to
Sweden in 1977. Its excellent introduction contains the depressing information
that the typical Polish censor was a recent female university graduate in the hu
manities, put on the job after a six-week training course. More happily, the job had
a high turnover.
13. Criticism Group of the Central Broadcasting Administrative Bureau, “The
Gang of Four Cannot Escape from Their Crimes of Encircling and Suppressing
Broadcasts on Literature and Art,” Beijing Domestic Radio (February 4, 1977), in
FBIS (February 7, 1977), E18.
14. The conventional word for censor is shencha (“to inspect”), which implies
prepublication, preperformance, or preexhibition inspection.
15. On the relaxation of exhibition supervision, see Maria Galikowski, Art and
Politics in China, 1949–1984 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1998),
183–187.
16. “Fangxin, fangshou, fangxia jiazi” [“Relax, let go, put down your airs”],
Renmin ribao (October 22, 1980).
17. Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro, After the Nightmare (New York: Knopf,
1986), 31.
18. For several years, a lively monthly entitled Lies of Our Times tracked the dis
tortions of our national newspaper of record for leftist newshounds, but it pre
dictably died from financial weakness. The propaganda model developed by
Chomsky and Herman describes how ideological filters cleanse the mass media in
a capitalist society. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent:
The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988).
19. It may seem odd that artists can also be censors, but there is precedent in
nineteenth-century Russia, where several outstanding poets and the novelist Gon
charov helped the czars block unsavory books from the West. See Marianna Tax
Choldin, A Fence around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas under the
Tsars (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1985).
20. Barmé, In the Red.
21. Zhao Dan, “Guande tai juti, wenyi mei xiwang” [“If controlled too tightly,
the arts have no hope”], Renmin ribao (October 8,1980).
22. See especially Wu Zuguang, “Against Those Who Wield the Scissors: A Plea
for an End to Censorship,” in Helmut Martin and Jeffrey Kinkley, eds., Modern
Chinese Writers: Self-Portrayals (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1992), 34–40; and
“Wu Zuguang: A Disaffected Gentleman,” in Geremie Barmé and John Minford,
eds., Seeds of Fire, 2nd ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988), 368–372.
23. While few artists seem to have been jailed, several publishers have been
jailed or sentenced to death for publishing pornographic materials.
24. Tom Korski, “Press Gag Protests Dismissed as ‘Impractical’ by Beijing,”
South China Morning Post (April 4, 1997).
25. “UN Cultural Event Riles Tibet Exiles,” South China Morning Post (August
20, 1997). Choephel was released on medical parole in 2002.
26. See “Poets ‘Arrested, Work Seized,’” South China Morning Post (February 2,
1998); “Detained Poets May Face Sedition Trial,” South China Morning Post (Feb
ruary 3, 1998); Chan Yee Hon, “Poet Ma Given Seven Years’ Jail for Subversion,”
South China Morning Post (January 1, 1999).
27. Judith Shapiro and Liang Heng, “Letter from China—Young Writers Test
the Limits,” New York Times Book Review (January 11, 1987).
28. Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words, 46.
29. China News Digest—Global (December 9, 1996).
30. “Chen Yi de hei guanxi” [“Chen Yi’s black relationships”], Wenge fengyun
[“Cultural Revolution wind and clouds”] 4 (1967), 8–9. This Red Guard maga
zine, published by the Red Flag Revolutionary Rebel Corp of the Beijing Foreign
Language Institute, seemingly drew upon public security taping for this conver
sation in Guangzhou, which took place the day before Chen Yi gave a famous
speech urging more autonomy for artists. The Red Guard journalists observe that
Hu Qiaomu had not hesitated in the past to use his power to censor works he did
not like.
31. UPI, 11/21/93, Beijing, in China News Digest Books and Journals Review (De
cember 5, 1993).
32. Tony Rayns, “The Well Dries Up,” Index on Censorship 26(1) (January–
February 1997), 91.
33. Link, The Uses of Literature, 81.
34. White, “All the News,” 100.
35. Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words, 20–21.
36. Perry Link, Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 179
37. V. S. Naipaul wrote about Iran in “After the Revolution,” “There was cen
sorship, of course; there was no secret about that. There was an especial cruelty
about book censorship. Every book had to be submitted to the censors not in type
script but in its printed and finished form, and after the full print run. It made for
a passionate and searching self-censorship. However much you wanted to be in
the clear, though, you couldn’t always be sure that you were. Was music all right?
There were different opinions. Was chess all right, or was it a form of gambling?
Eventually Ayatollah Khomeini had said it was all right, and that had become the
law.” (The New Yorker [May 26, 1997], 48)
138 Chapter 4
38. Liu Binyan, A Higher Kind of Loyalty (New York: Pantheon, 1990), 269–271.
39. Taiwan censorship was also postpublication. Lin Wenyi of the Qianwei
[“Vanguard”] Publishing Company reported that four of his company’s books
were suppressed by the Guomindang in 1989, causing considerable financial loss
to his company. Personal interview (September 1, 1989).
40. On Dongfang, see Willy Wo-lap Lam, The Era of Jiang Zemin (Singapore: Si
mon & Schuster, 1999), 42–43.
41. According to Jerome Silbergeld, “Art Censorship in Socialist China.”
42. Zhang Xinxin and Sang Ye, Chinese Lives (New York: Pantheon, 1987), 143.
43. Wu Zuguang, a fearless critic of the censors, summarized the genre differ
ences: “Fiction and poetry, for example, get by much better because one must first
carefully read them, word by word, and the hatchetmen are unwilling to work so
hard. In general, the fine arts can get by all right, too, and music is so deep and
mysterious that it can survive well above the fray. Drama and film, however, are
most unfortunate in being easily understood and therefore having no place to
hide.” Wu Zuguang, “Against Those Who Wield the Scissors,” 37.
44. For a clear account, see Orville Schell, The Mandate of Heaven: A New Gener
ation of Entrepreneurs, Dissidents, Bohemians, and Technocrats Lays Claim to China’s
Future (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 293–310. See also Daniel C. Lynch, Af
ter the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and “Thought Work” in Reformed China (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999), 84–93; and Yang Lian, “Return to Beijing,”
New Left Review 4 (July–August 2000), 37–48.
45. “Publishing House Accused and Closed,” China Daily (April 21, 1989).
46. China News Digest—Global (April 18, 1997).
47. Jamie James, “Bad Boy,” The New Yorker (April 21, 1997), 50–53.
48. Fox Butterfield, “China Sending Party Workers to Villages in New Indoctri
nation Drive,” New York Times (May 15, 1980). Jiang Wen’s 1994 film In the Heat of the
Sun, a coming-of-age tale set during the Cultural Revolution, contains a satirical
scene of an internal showing of a European costume drama. Teens sneak into the
forbidden screening, catching their revolutionary leaders watching naked actresses.
49. Some internal publications were closed in 1996 and 1997. “Beijing dan-
g’an,”Jiushi niandai (April 1997), 93.
50. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital:
An Interview with Chinese Director Zhang Yimou,” Public Culture 5 (winter 1993),
297–313.
51. George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” in John McCormick and
Mairi MacInnes, eds., Versions of Censorship (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), 285–299.
52. The Guomindang flag might have been problematic around 1985, but not in
1997, especially with the cartoon’s blatant mockery of Chiang and his foreign sup
porters.
53. Su Tong, “Hu Feng pingfan zhi hou” [“After Hu Feng’s rehabilitation”],
Zhengming 37 (November 1, 1980), 20–21.
54. On the dismissal of the editors of Meishu [“Fine arts”], see John Clark, “Of
ficial Reactions to Modern Art in China since the Beijing Massacre,” Pacific Affairs
65(3) (fall 1992), 334–352.
55. Willy Wo-lap Lam, “Academics Lose Jobs in Purge of Liberals,” South China
Morning Post (October 12, 1995).
56. “Poet Accuses Authorities over Sacking,” South China Morning Post (May 22,
1998).
57. “Clampdown Sparks Rush to Beat Censors,” South China Morning Post (July
8, 1989).
58. Marsha Wagner, talk at Bryn Mawr College (April 19, 1991). The poem is in
Renmin ribao (haiwaiban, “overseas edition”) (March 20, 1991). In much the same
spirit, Chinese wishing to access a computer for the Asian games had first to re
spond yes to the question, Is Li Peng a killer? Fang Lizhi, talk at University of Cal
ifornia, Berkeley (May 9, 1991).
59. Lowell Dittmer, China’s Continuous Revolution. The Post-Liberation Epoch
1949–1981 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 247.
60. Zhongguo nianjian 1996 [“China yearbook 1996”] (Beijing: Zhongguo Nian
jian She, 1996).
61. Yi Chen, “Publishing in China,” 568–582.
62. See Anthony Kuhn, “Mass Media—Rushing into Print,” Far Eastern Eco
nomic Review (September 1, 1994), 52.
63. Li Xiaozhuang, “Zuobiezi dangdao, dalu wentan xianru tongkuqi” [“With
the leftists blocking the way, the mainland literary scene descends into a bitter pe
riod”] Jiushiniandai 256 (May 1991), 38–40.
64. Li Zehou, Mei di licheng [“The course of beauty”] (Hefei: Anhui Wenyi
Chubanshe, 1994).
65. Hong Kong Zhongguo tongxun she (June 9, 1992), in FBIS-CHI-92-117 (June 17,
1992), 25. One of the movies released, three years after its production, was Zhang
Yuan’s Mama, which explores the problems of retarded children and their families.
Zhang Yuan remains controversial for his recent film on a homosexual theme, East
Palace, West Palace. Geoffrey Crothall, “‘Controversial’ Film Released after 3 Years,”
South China Morning Post (June 3, 1992), in FBIS-CHI-92-108 (June 4, 1992), 14–15.
66. Joseph Man Chan, “Calling the Tune without Paying the Piper: The Re
assertion of Media Controls in China,” in Lo Chi Kin, Suzanne Pepper, and Tsui
Kai Yuen, eds., China Review 1995 (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong
Press, 1995), 5.13–5.14.
67. See Qu Zhihong, “Publishers to Receive ‘Greater Autonomy’ in 1993,”
Beijing xinhua (December 24, 1992), in FBIS-CHI-93-002 (January 5, 1994), 18–19.
68. Goran Lijonhufvud, Going against the Tide: On Dissent and Big-Character
Posters in China (London: Curzon Press, 1990), 87.
69. “Deng Xiaoping guanyu muqian xingshi he renwu de baogao” [“Deng
Xiaoping’s report on the current situation and responsibilities”] (January 6, 1980),
Zhengming 29 (March 1, 1980), 17.
70. “Underground E-Mail Magazine in China,” China News Digest—Global
(June 23, 1997).
71. Lynch, After the Propaganda State.
72. “Uphold and Safeguard the Four Basic Principles,” Jiefang Ribao 17 (April
1981), in FBIS, April 21, 1981, K3.
73. Hua Li, “Some Critical Notes on the Novel Recurring Death,” Wenyi bao (Oc
tober 19, 1991), in FBIS-CHI-91-216 (November 7, 1991), 29; “Chairman of Ningxia
Artists Federation Reelected,” Beijing xinhua (March 9, 1993), in FBIS-CHI-93-054
(March 23, 1993), 65.
140 Chapter 4
74. A Taiwan newspaper awarded Wang a literary prize for the novel. See
“‘Huangjin shidai’ liang’an dayu butong” [“‘Golden Years’ receives different treat
ment on the two shores of the Taiwan Strait”], Mingbao yuekan 360 (December 1995).
75. Wei Hui, Shanghai Baby (New York: Pocket Books, 2001).
76. “Best-Selling Novel Banned for Sexual Contents,” China News Digest—
Global (February 8, 1994).
77. For background on Jia and his novel, see Zha Jianying, China Pop (New
York: The New York Press, 1994), 129–164, and Barmé, In the Red, 181–187.
78. For example, see the interview with Chen Kaige, Patrick E. Tyler, “Who
Makes the Rules in Chinese Movies?” New York Times (October 17, 1995), or Agence
France Presse English Wire, “Government Denies Banning Zhang Yimou from
Making Movies” (September 12, 1994), in China News Digest (September 14, 1994).
79. For example, Rudolf G. Wagner, The Contemporary Chinese Historical Drama:
Four Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
80. Maggie Farley, “China’s Late-Night Radio Programmes Tell It Like It Is” Los
Angeles Times (November 8, 1994), in China News Digest Books and Journals Review
81. Timothy Tung, “Porridge and the Law,” Human Rights Tribune 3(21) (spring
1992), 9.
82. See Schoenhals, Doing Things with Words, 124.
83. Los Angeles Times (July 7, 1988).
84. “Sizhong yingpian dingwei ‘shaoer buyi’” [“Four kinds of movies desig
nated ‘not suitable for children’”], Fuzhou wanbao (April 17, 1989).
85. Xie Wenqin, “Wanzhong—Zhongguo tansuo yingpian de ‘wanzhong’?”
[“Evening bell—Is it the ‘evening bell’ for Chinese films of exploration?”], Fuzhou
wanbao (April 2, 1989).
86. In the spring of 1989 in the North Fujian city of Ningde, police removed a
poster for the film, claiming that it was pornographic. Fujian television’s News
Half-hour covered the controversy, allowing the theater manager and vice director
of the provincial film bureau to defend the poster (April 21, 1989).
87. “State Council Directive to Control Flow of Information in China Sparks In
ternational Criticism,” China News Digest—Global (January 22, 1996).
88. See the fine essays in Timothy B. Weston and Lionel M. Jensen, China beyond
the Headlines (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
89. Chang Chuan, “Beida dangyuan yunniang jiti tuidang” [“Beijing Univer
sity Party members ferment to collectively quit the Party”], Zhengming 138 (April
1989), 9; He Shaoming, “Shouge qianming tuanti dansheng zhihou” [“After the
birth of the first petition-signing group”], Zhengming 138 (April 1989), 11.
90. “Su Shaozhi lun: ‘shuangguizhi’ yu ‘guandao’” [“Su Shaozhi on ‘the two-
track system’ and ‘official turnover’”], Fuzhou wanbao (April 20, 1989).
91. Human Rights in China and Index on Censorship offer continuing coverage of
censorship issues in China.
92. “Prints That Cross Cultures,” Chronicle of Higher Education (February 25,
2000), B112.
93. Mo Yan, The Garlic Ballads, Howard Goldblatt, trans. (London: Penguin
Books, 1996). The title might also be rendered “garlic shoots of wrath,” as the Chi
nese “fennu di xuantai” is a play on Steinbeck’s famous book (“fennu di putao”).
94. See Howard Goldblatt’s translator’s note in the Penguin edition.
95. The Penguin edition restored Stalin: “Novelists are forever trying to dis
tance themselves from politics, but the novel itself closes in on politics. Novelists
are so concerned with ‘man’s fate’ that they tend to lose sight of their own fate.
Therein lies their tragedy.”
96. On Mo Yan [“Guan moye”], see Bonnie S. McDougall and Kam Louie, The
Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press,
1997), 415–416; Michael S. Duke, “Past, Present, and Future in Mo Yan’s Fiction of
the 1980s,” in Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang, eds., From May Fourth to
June Fourth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 43–70; and Lu Tonglin,
Misogyny, Cultural Nihilism, and Oppositional Politics: Contemporary Chinese Experi
mental Fiction (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1995), 51–74. Mo Yan dis
cusses his gratitude to the army for sending him to the People’s Liberation Arts
Academy in 1984 in Mo Yan, Hui changge di qiang [“The wall that could sing”]
(Taipei: Maitian Chuban Gufen Youxiangongsi, 2000), 45–49.
97. The show, which was sponsored by Hong Kong’s Hanzart TZ Gallery and
the American Federation of Arts, was also seen in Vancouver, Fort Wayne, Mil
waukee, Kansas City, and Chicago. I was in China and unable to see the show, but
examined with interest the kit of press clippings provided by Larry Fong of the
University of Oregon Museum.
98. “In Art,” Eugene In Town (March 1996).
99. See the account in Ya Lan, “Qiangsheng xianghou: xiandai yishuzhan de
fengpo” [“The gunshot’s echo: The storm over the contemporary art exhibition”],
Jiushiniandai 231 (April 1989), 50–52.
100. Jayne Merkel, “Art on Trial,” Art in America (December 1990), 41–51.
101. Kevin Kwong, “Dramatic Demands for Freedom of Expression,” South
China Morning Post (July 1, 1997).
102. Reuters, “Lawsuit Filed over Rights on Internet,” South China Morning Post
(August 5, 1997).
103. For instance, see special China issue of Index on Censorship 26(1) (Janu-
ary–February 1997).
104. David Robb, “To the Shores of Hollywood: Marine Corps Fights to Polish
Image in ‘Windtalkers,’” Washington Post (June 15, 2002).
105. On Internet regulation, see Geremie R. Barmé and Sang Ye, “The Great
Firewall of China” Wired (June 1997), 138–150, 174–178. See also Helen Johnstone,
“Beijing Opts out of Plan for Censors on the Net,” South China Morning Post (De
cember 11, 1997).
106. Madison Middle School in Eugene, Oregon, banned the image of
Michelangelo’s “David” in 1991. The National Security Agency has long moni
tored international e-mail, fax, and telephone communication from the United
States. Civil liberties protections do not apply because the communications are
bugged outside of the borders of the United States. See Nicky Hager, “Exposing
the Global Surveillance System,” Covert Action Quarterly 59 (winter 1996–1997),
11–17; and James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America’s Most Se
cret Agency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982); and Duncan Campbell, “Inside
Echelon,” Telopolis, at www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/6929/1.html (July 25,
2000).
107. Catherine McEver, “West Oakland Serenade,” East Bay Express 12(30) (May
4, 1990), 21.
Artists as Professionals
T he Godzilla model of China’s arts sketched in chapter 1 is unsatisfy

ing because it imagines a Chinese state that is both consistent and om
nipotent, while the record shows a polity far more internally divided, er
ratic, and ineffectual. The Godzilla model is not much better when it
comes to artists, whom it romanticizes as heroes and rebel-dissidents. If
the Chinese state is unreservedly evil, then artists must wage war against
their oppressor, either openly daring its terrible punishments or covertly
resisting its malign grasp. The alternative is to sell out, to become a moral
weakling complicit in sustaining an intolerable system. Such a stark al
ternative is dramatic, but not very realistic.
Here I will sketch an alternative narrative: The story of artists in the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China may also be seen as a protracted struggle for profes
sional status and security. This is not to deny the history of individual op
pression and heavy-handed political control or the frustrations met by
aesthetic experimenters. These issues have been well documented, and we
are unlikely to forget them, especially as their relevance persists in China to
day. Instead, I focus on the search for personal security, as well as artistic free
dom, and treat the state not only as an adversary, but also as an occasional
ally (however unreliable) or a vehicle for the professional aspiration of artists
as a group. Students of the arts have tended to downplay the importance of
institutional arrangements as they follow their disciplinary quests to under
stand individual poets, painters, or genres. Institutions do not reveal much
about the fate of individual artists, but understanding them may discourage
us from mistaking the stereotyped pairing of the terrorizing state versus the
cowering aesthete for the more complex reality of China’s cultural politics.
143
144 Chapter 5
Many studies of the arts in the West look away from individual artists
toward structural and organizational factors. Sometimes fascination with
social structure can produce a seeming indifference to art’s quality and con
tent. But this problem is inherent in the dissident-hero school of interpreta
tion as well. There the key question about an artist is his or her stance to
ward the state, a query that sometimes produces odd results. For instance,
looking at the existing Western literature, one might think that the brave
and irrepressible (but mediocre) writer Bai Hua was a major literary figure.
The arts reflect the tension between two trends: after 1949 the arts be
came more political, but they also became more professional. The highly
visible politicization of the arts has received considerable attention in the
literature on modern Chinese culture. Art has been closely tied to the po
litical demands of the moment. Sinologists commonly understand that
the arts in China have long been enmeshed in politics, both from the her
itage of premodern cultural practices and from the introduction of Lenin
ist political organization into the arts world.
The slower process of professionalization has been less flamboyant and
examined far less. Patronage of the arts by the new Communist state con
tributed to the development of professionalism in the arts, if often indi
rectly and unevenly. Although Maoist practices harshly limited the per
sonal independence of artists, cultural reforms of the 1950s for the first
time assured steady employment and improved working conditions for
China’s artists. A second wave of cultural reforms in the 1980s, by loosen
ing the hand of state patrons, permitted greater authority to devolve onto
increasingly autonomous arts institutions. Even though some reforms
have worked against professionalism, the group consciousness of artists
has been formed in reaction to assaults upon their corporate privileges.
This is not a narrative of heroism, although it recognizes the bravery of
many individuals. The story has loose ends, although the long-term pattern
is clear enough. It is a tale of changing techniques of political control over the
arts and of artists’ shared responses. This chapter first takes up the implica
tions of considering the arts as a profession, then explores the Party’s succes
sive efforts to prevent professional autonomy, initially by appropriating the
arts’external forms as a kind of control mechanism, and then by trying to ex
tirpate their social basis. Neither of these responses worked very well; in the
reform period indications of professionalism emerged once more, along with
evidence that the Party now finds this professionalism more palatable.
IS ART A PROFESSION?
Professionals in any society share a corporate identity based upon their

training and expertise, a sense of social responsibility, and a widely rec
Artists as Professionals 145
ognized right to take part in setting their own standards. Professionals of
ten enjoy material benefits that flow from their jobs, but their motives are
usually not exclusively economic. They also have their own organizations
and enjoy considerable autonomy in their work.1 In Work and Integrity
William M. Sullivan designates the briefcase as the emblem of profession
alism because it signifies workplace autonomy, lack of supervision, and
work so important that it must be taken home.2 The concept of the pro
fession has proved valuable in discussing modern, knowledge-based so
cieties, where it has long been part of popular discourse.
Yet, “professional” is not a very tidy category. Western studies disagree
in naming the exemplary professional occupation, with American studies
focusing on physicians and lawyers, while German scholars are inclined
to look first at civil servants. Other occupations commonly regarded as
professional include accounting, teaching, and engineering, but there are
many examples of occupations where work is only partially professional
ized, such as journalism, advertising, cooking, and chiropractics. National
differences make it “unlikely that we will find one modal pattern of or
ganizing professional work in all modern societies,” as earlier work on
professions suggested.3 Sheldon Rothblatt contrasted profession to class,
another indispensable, yet frustrating social category, finding that
professional occupations did not easily merge with classes, although they
might in certain cases simulate several of the principal features of classes: a
style of life similar to upper income levels, but not quite; competitive like en
trepreneurs, but not quite; or oriented toward the market, but not quite;
joined in solidarity like the organized working classes, but not quite; offering
their labor or skill like workers, but not quite.4
In the West, professionalism grew alongside industrial capitalism in the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when early professional organ
izations displayed a deep ambivalence toward the market, which helped
inspire their new organizations.5 This early animus toward the market is
now often forgotten, but it provided the framework by which profession
als learned to distinguish their advanced training, credentials, technical
expertise, and regular work for income from the superficially similar ac
tivities of amateurs and “dabblers.” But if professionals were character
ized by work, they needed to show that this was the opposite of depen
dent and unskilled proletarian work.
The Arts Are Slow to Professionalize

The arts are not easily professionalized in any nation. Artists have spe
cialized technical expertise, but credentialed training is more extensive in
some arts (classical music and the fine arts) than in others (jazz, acting,
146 Chapter 5
poetry, folk music). A collective sense of social responsibility is relatively

unformed; there is no readily shared vision, such as creating or spreading
beauty, which might be comparable to physicians’ commitment to healing
or bureaucrats’ idealized goal of impartial administration. Artistic work
varies enormously in its autonomy. Architects may be the most clearly
professional, with self-determined codes of conduct and self-regulating
organizations (advanced by their work with big-ticket commodities) and
their need to deal bureaucratically with public health and building codes.
Yet, other arts are less in control of their own destinies.6 Finally, readers,
viewers, and listeners who consume art expect to react critically to it; au
dience engagement with art is fundamental to the aesthetic experience.
Artists are not professionals in the same sense as electrical engineers or
orthopedic surgeons, whose technical prowess is less commonly judged
by amateurs.
Material factors may be the greatest impediment to fuller professional
ization of artistic work. According to Steven C. Dubin,
Arts are an enigma; they challenge many of the accepted notions of what it
means to be members of a professional group in this society. On the one
hand, they tend to undertake an extended period of formal training, main
tain affiliations with professional organizations, and develop a strong sense
of identification with their chosen fields. On the other hand, they are subject
to a number of highly contrasting trends. Their rates of unemployment and
underemployment are marked, their income and the status they are accorded
is low, and the degree of control and predictability they have over career lines
is low relative to other professional groups.7
One thinks of poets, few of whom can support themselves through

their writing, or the large numbers of aspiring dancers, novelists, actors,
and singers who support themselves with “day” jobs in Western coun
tries. In the United States, even winners of Pulitzer Prizes and National
Book Awards cannot live on their literary earnings alone. Only 5 percent
of writers write full-time, while most “shuttle between full-time and part-
time writing, depending on the economic situation.”8 “Professional” mu
sicians have been relatively successful economically. But they have often
accomplished this by turning to labor unions—the symbol of proletarian,
not professional work—as a way of dealing with the market.9 Ultimately,
the material problem of the arts may well be an oversupply of young, tal
ented, and ambitious workers, which is probably good for a nation’s cul
ture, but not for professional organizations wishing to control entry into a
specialized type of work.
But the arts are not immune from professional drives, as the examples
of architects and conservatory-trained musicians show. And, of course,
other occupations are problematic, as well. Are business executives pro
fessionals? The rise of the M.B.A. asserts a professional status that is not
yet completely recognized by others.10 Occupations that talk a lot about
their professional status reveal that others may not yet accept their claims.
American journalists, for instance, give themselves more awards for “pro
fessional” achievement than members of any other occupation, suggest
ing the need to reinforce a point not widely accepted. The uneven profes
sionalism of journalists is partly structural, as they
must entrust their careers to the judgment of corporate managers. The man
agers are often called ‘editors,’ which makes them sound vaguely like fellow
professionals, and are often former journalists. But that is no more relevant
than the fact that the managers of universities are called ‘deans’ and are of
ten former scholars. A manager inevitably comes to identify with the organ
ization, not with a former craft.11
Artists are also often subject to editors, curators, managers, and agents
who are outside the profession.
Even when artistic work is relatively autonomous, we have a difficult
time recognizing artists’ authority to manipulate the raw materials of
beauty into new and inspired creations of innovative power. This would
require a technical understanding of what it is that artists actually do
when they work. Lacking such understanding, we often prefer to believe
in the magic of artistic creation. The situation musicologist Susan McClary
describes regarding music is perhaps equally true of literature and the
fine arts:
Thus, on the one hand, we have a priesthood of professionals who learn prin
ciples of musical order, who come to be able to call musical events by name
and even to manipulate them; and, on the other hand, we have a laity of lis
teners who respond strongly to music but have little conscious critical control
over it. Because nonprofessional listeners usually do not know how to ac
count intellectually for how music does what it does, they respond either by
mystifying it (ascribing its power to extra-human sources—natural or implic
itly supernatural) or by domesticating it, asserting that it does not really bear
meaning). . . . Neither priest nor consumer truly wants to break the spell: to
reveal the social grounding of that magic. Thus the priesthood prattles in its
jargon that adds a metaphysical component to the essence of music and abdi
cates responsibility for its power, and listeners react as though mystically—
not wanting to attribute to mere mortals the power to move them.12
Moreover, this “magic” is strengthened as the cultural marketplace rup

tures direct bonds between patrons and artists, thereby encouraging an
ideology of “autonomous art.” Here the artist is seen “as detached from
society, as working in total independence from external pressures, and as
expressing his or her own personality in the work of art.”13 The spiritual
148 Chapter 5
world of art seems to be magical, and the productive world of art seems
to be unconnected to the market; neither artist nor audience has a deep in
terest in breaking the spell of successful art by calling attention to the fact
that the work of making art is, in fact, a job.
Arts Professionalism and Political Control

In China, the Communist Party has shown widely varying attitudes to
ward professionalism, not just in the arts, but in all fields. The Party is
skeptical, not about specialized training or a commitment to public ser
vice, but about occupational autonomy. In the case of artistic work, the
Party has struggled to maintain control over the high ground of aesthet
ics. For the Party to allow artists to identify their area of autonomous pro
fessional expertise as beauty would be to abandon its own authority to set
China’s ideological course.
Party ambivalence toward professionalism arises from the notion that it
alters the power between patron and artist. “Put simply, the more ‘pro
fessional’ an artist, the greater his artistic authority over his clients and the
smaller his dependence in artistic matters on the clients’ needs and de-
mands.”14
Professionalism conveys a right to speak. Artists may speak about
beauty, which can spill over rather messily to related questions of truth
and justice. Political authorities can stop short of granting full professional
autonomy over artistic work and use professional forms as a technique for
political control. One can see this phenomenon in other Communist polit
ical systems. When Josef Brodsky received his first jail sentence in the So
viet Union, the judge demanded to know by what right Brodsky could call
himself a poet. Brodsky could not be recognized as a poet simply because
he wrote in verse; in the former Soviet Union, writers of verse were only
officially designated poets when they joined the Writers Union.
The observation that professionalism can function as a kind of political
control system is a mainstay of studies of military affairs, where profes
sionalism of the officer corps is recommended as a technique for avoiding
coups d’etat. Professionalization is not so much a depoliticization of the
soldiers as a narrowing of their interests so that they will concentrate on
developing their expertise instead of overthrowing parliaments and assas
sinating presidents and union leaders.15 Students of the military have paid
attention to professionalism in China, where the People’s Liberation Army
has followed a course similar to the one I trace for the artists: strong pro
fessional roots established in the 1950s were then weakened in the Cultural
Revolution, although against the wishes of professional officers, only to be
strengthened again in the post-Mao era.16 The Beijing Massacre demon
strated that the process was incomplete, as fully professional soldiers do
not intervene in civil political disputes. Yet, the model is etched in our
minds: neutral professionals who follow the demands of technical expert
ise and solve problems in a rational manner will win out in the end, but
only after struggles with state leaders who want to politicize their work.
Professionalism in culture has much to recommend it: autonomy from
political or economic interference, established standards of work-related
expertise, formal training to cultivate talent, and a sense of corporate
identity that sometimes becomes an exhilarating esprit de corps. Yet, it is
not a flawless way to organize culture: professionals are often isolated
from society, elitist toward those outside the corporate group, and conde
scending toward amateurs, however talented. Professionals also place
great value on seniority and are typically mistrustful of popular views,
which by definition are technically unsophisticated.
By becoming professional, artists can buffer themselves against the
heady waves of politics, and politicians can reduce the often unwelcome
involvement of artists in the political world by acknowledging for them
an honored, but specialized, place in the division of labor.
The logic of power dictates that the institutions of rule and the roles at the
top of these institutions be less specialized than subordinate units if the rela
tion of domination is to be secure. Specialization makes for good tools. Spe
cialists and specialized institutions are not only more effective instruments
for given purposes (set by decision-makers at the top), they also have (and
know) “their place.” “Cobbler, stick to your last” is the demobilizing injunc
tion par excellence.17
As an example of apolitical professionalism, consider the American

composer Milton Babbitt. A pioneer in electronic music in the 1950s and
1960s, Babbitt developed his esoteric skills without the need to pander to
a mass audience, as he had regular income as a professor at Princeton
University. Babbitt articulated an extreme, but telling, position on the re
lationship between the professional artist and the audience:
[T]he composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual
service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world
to one of the private performance and electronic media, with its very real
possibility of compete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical
composition.18
Another American abstractionist, the painter Adolf Gottlieb, when asked

for whom art is created, responded
It is for just a few special people who are educated in art and literature. I
would like to get rid of the idea that art is for everybody. It isn’t for every
body. People are always talking about art reaching more people. I don’t see
150 Chapter 5
why they should want to reach so many people. For the large mass of people
there are other things that can appeal to them. The average man can get along
without art.19
This inward looking quality of professionalism often results in a fasci

nation with the technical problems of art and a related detachment from
society, hallmarks of Gottlieb’s abstract expressionism. Professionalism
does not necessarily mean disinterest in politics, although those politics
will often be directed toward artistic, not social, ends. No Chinese artist is
likely to echo Milton Babbitt or Adolf Gottlieb, whose clear positions sug
gest a professional extreme that Chinese artists have not approached.
THE REVOLUTION WRESTLES WITH PROFESSIONALISM
Although artists tend to be individuals who lack enthusiasm for toting

professionalism’s emblematic briefcase, there has been a long-term trend
over the last century in China for Chinese work and social organization to
become more, not less, professional.20 The Communist revolution spurred
professionalism as it trained propaganda workers; at the same time, the
revolution attempted to control signs of professional autonomy among its
artists.
The Confucian Ideal of the Amateur

China’s dominant premodern ideology of Confucianism sternly depre
cated the exchange of art for money. An important theme in late Qing
Confucianism was the cult of the amateur, the gentleman who painted or
wrote poetry for personal cultivation rather than for his livelihood. Gen
tlemen were not supposed to be interested in money. Moreover, their art
(most often painting, calligraphy, or poetry) was regarded as a highly per
sonal expression, demonstrating their ethical superiority to ordinary peo
ple. Confucian literati claimed to a special moral voice in society, a stance
that would be undercut by turning their lofty artistic expressions into
mere goods.21 Even at the end of the twentieth century, memories of cen
turies of Confucian proscription against selling art linger in the memories
of educated and refined Chinese. Yet, we know that this tradition coex
isted with another in which painters depended upon their skills for their
living, albeit to the disdain of amateurs at the top of the social hierarchy.22
If even the gentleman’s art of painting could not keep its amateur purity,
it is obvious that China has long had full-time arts workers with the pre
professional status of craft workers: stone carvers, designers and decora
tors of temples, musicians, storytellers, and others supported themselves
through their artistic work. As long ago as the Qin Dynasty, the sculptors
of the terra cotta army buried with Emperor Qinshi Huangdi signed their
names in the armpits of the soldiers they crafted.23 The elite relied upon
such artists, yet sometimes punished them for not being gentlemen. Ac
tors were so lowly that they were not allowed to take the imperial civil
service examination.24 The more formal conceptions of modern profes
sionalism came to China with Western influence. For instance, the first
drama school to offer an alternative to master-disciple pedagogy opened
in 1903, and in 1930 the Chinese Theatrical Training Academy, a coeduca
tional school inspired by European models, opened in Beiping.25
Professionalism and Populism at Yan’an

Yan’an, the Communist base area during the war against Japan, is in re
mote and impoverished northern Shaanxi Province. After Mao Zedong
led the defeated Red Army in retreat to Yan’an in 1935 from the Guomin
dang conquest of the Jiangxi Soviet, the Communists used their new base
to extend their reach through North China in the course of war against
Japan. The Communists recruited thousands of young peasants to their
cause in Yan’an, where they were joined by a wave of patriotic young in
tellectuals from Eastern Chinese cities. Full of enthusiasm, but without
much personal experience coping with the harshness of rural life, these
intellectuals provided the Party with teachers, technical experts, and,
most famously, propagandists.
Writers and artists living in the border regions were, in practically every
sense, outsiders. They were of a different class from the masses of north
west China. They brought with them the culture of urban areas or other
regions that were vastly different from those of the rural people of the bor
der regions. And most importantly, even those who had not lived outside
China carried within themselves foreign and cosmopolitan beliefs and
ideas. This cosmopolitan culture, born in the New Culture and May
Fourth movements, had hardly touched the common people of northwest
China and, so, contributed to the remarkable alienation of the leftist intel-
lectuals.26
This alienation was problematic in the Party’s Lu Xun Arts Academy,
established to train still more revolutionary intellectuals. While the young
intellectuals at the academy were certainly not Confucian gentlemen or
ladies, they used Marxism, instead of Confucianism, to justify their dis
dain of commercial arts and their belief that art should be suffused with
(revolutionary) morality.
The mission of the Lu Xun Arts Academy and other Yan’an cultural or
ganizations was to heighten fervor for the war against Japan. There were
periodic disagreements about how this should best be accomplished. In
152 Chapter 5
his study of the arts at Yan’an, David Holm shows that the Lu Xun Arts
Academy was surprisingly professional in its outlook.27 Artists tended to
disregard Party demands for greater populism. Writers aspired to publish
their work in nationally influential Chongqing literary journals. Actors
staged Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, as well as Chekov, Golgol, and
Cao Yu. The drama curriculum included Stanislavsky’s techniques.
Singers learned to use Western vocal production, creating sounds that few
north Shaanxi peasants had ever heard.
Mao Zedong attempted to bind the young intellectuals to the increas
ingly urgent needs of the Party’s struggle through the 1942 rectification
movement. His “Talks at the Yan’an Arts Forum” established a Party arts
doctrine.28 Mao gave his 1942 talks in part to reconcile young, enthusias
tic, urban revolutionaries to the reality of peasant revolution: give up your
cosmopolitan sophistication in order to fashion a propagandistic art that
will mobilize peasant warriors in the cause of revolution. The formula is
familiar from subsequent repetition: art is not for its own sake, but rather
must serve the workers, peasants, and soldiers of the revolutionary
masses. Artists must abjure cosmopolitanism and international recogni
tion to develop “national” forms, the better to recruit people to the revo
lution. Ideological remolding is an important aspect of the Yan’an talks
and the broader rectification campaign of which they were a part. Mao ar
gued that class struggle was the only basis for forging a new popular
unity and that artists must contribute to that unity by giving it a voice.
The Yan’an rectification was a crisis over ideological control of Party
arts policy; the subject of dispute was ultimately whether Party or artists
would control the high ground of aesthetics. Mao claimed this terrain for
political leaders, thus denying the autonomy of professionalism to
China’s revolutionary arts workers.
Yet, in many other respects, Mao’s message supported greater profes
sionalism. The Yan’an artists were to remold themselves by learning
from the masses. But the Party still valued them precisely because they
possessed expertise, applied in support of the revolution. Mao did not
break up these quasi-professional clusters at the Lu Xun Arts Academy
and in other Yan’an cultural organizations; he demanded that they ap
ply their professional skills with greater doses of populism, so that the
art would inspire peasants, rather than delight one’s self and impress
fellow artists.
Professional artwork was not incompatible with populist content. The
Party provided Yan’an artists with materials to support their work, facili
ties, publications, and protection from the fickleness of the market.29 And
artists quickly backpedaled from populism, continuing to display rather
condescending attitudes toward folk artists with whom they worked, as
well as disdain for the artistic products of peasant culture.30
The Lu Xun Arts Academy came to play an important role in Chinese

cultural history. Between 1938 and 1945, the academy had over fifty fac
ulty, a hundred research and administrative staff members, and nearly
seven hundred graduates—new cadres in literature, music, fine arts,
drama.31 After the 1949 Communist victory, its faculty and alumni filled
leadership roles throughout China’s arts establishment. The influence of
Lu Xun Academy graduates continues, long after most have died or re
tired, through their students and colleagues. The revolution thus created
a professional cohort at its core that, with its esprit de corps, carried pro
fessionalizing values into the new regime.
The Yan’an rectification was a moment in which some artists were dis
ciplined by the Party and forced to give way on fundamental aesthetic is
sues. Many of these artists were bruised forever, such as the novelist Ding
Ling, who was taken to task for her feminist critique of life in the Com
munist capital. And Wang Shiwei was ultimately executed for his com
plaints about social inequalities at the heart of the revolution. Viewed not
as individuals, however, but as a group, the Yan’an artists were on a road
toward greater professionalism.
American art critic Harold Rosenberg argued that the New Deal federal
arts projects were ultimately less important for the art they generated
than for their struggle to make the work of fine arts more professional,
overcoming its traditional dependence upon the wealthy. “The effort dur
ing the Depression to establish art as a profession was the chief interest of
art in the thirties.”32 One might make a similar point about the Yan’an ex
perience.
APPARITIONS OF AUTONOMY: 1949–1966
With the victory of the Communist Party over the Guomindang, many of
the Yan’an artists returned enthusiastically to the sophisticated life of
cities, where they staffed new cultural institutions. Many Yan’an-based in
tellectuals had tired of the difficult work of mobilizing peasants. On the
night before the liberation of Beijing, as Communist troops camped out
side the city, Party fine arts official Jiang Feng remarked excitedly, “Now
we can paint oil paintings!”33 At the same time, Mao Zedong warned of
“sugar-coated bullets” that would seduce the victorious revolutionaries
into letting down their zeal for change. Because many Party leaders
viewed the cities as occupied terrain, they constructed there the machin
ery for a massive program of popular mobilization and cultural engineer
ing. They hoped to use modern means to extend to the entire population
techniques of ideological remolding learned in Yan’an. Throughout the
next decade and a half, both practicing artists and senior Party leaders
154 Chapter 5
had apparitions of greater professional autonomy: the artists saw this as

a blissful vision, the bureaucrats as a nightmare.
The New State Boosts Professionalism

Multiple factors increased the momentum for professionalism among
artists. State provision of steady employment was the most fundamental,
as the Party’s reorganization of the arts into new institutions created job
opportunities. New public schools to train painters, musicians, and opera
performers gave important public recognition to artistic work. Academies
and conservatories formalized educational processes that had often been
left to uncredentialed apprenticeships in the past. The identification of
artists as a distinctive community raised the professional consciousness
and self-regard of its members. Moreover, the historical association of
professionalism with progress and rationalism in the West was repeated
in China through the linking of the May Fourth movement’s heritage with
the Communist revolution.34 The regime’s new professional associations
for artists extended a warm embrace as they offered prestige, career con
nections with fellow practitioners, and access to artistic facilities. Mem
bership requirements varied, but typically included demonstration of
artistic prowess plus political vetting by recommendation by association
members. In the fine arts world, “for most members, the national artists
association served as a voluntary professional organization.”35
In the West, professionalism expanded when practitioners of expertise-
based occupations sought to mitigate the uncontrolled competition of the
marketplace. In China, artists had not been well served by commerce in
the first half of the twentieth century. Many agreed with the Party’s casti
gation of commercialized culture as decadent in values, soft on imperial
ism, and ignoring class virtue. Before private opera companies were col
lectivized, for instance, they were criticized for seeking customers by
turning to smutty art. Attacks on the commodification of culture echoed
older Confucian critiques, but in a new Marxist format.36
In the early years of the People’s Republic, many defended professional
standards. For instance, Beijing museums apparently turned town several
job applicants recommended by Mao as insufficiently qualified.37 As the
Hundred Flowers campaign accelerated in February 1956, the governing
council of the Writers Association heard demands for more writers to be
given opportunities to support themselves by their art alone.38 At another
meeting the following month, Mao Zedong suggested that the Writers As
sociation set up its own paper mill to help resolve a major shortage that
was delaying or preventing the publication of many books.39
Colin Mackerras has described the rise of professionalism in state mu
sic and drama ensembles, giving special attention to the arts troupes of
China’s ethnic minorities.40 He shows the improvement of performing

standards (spilling over to influence amateur standards, as well), the es
tablishment of arts schools to replace master-disciple bonds for instruc
tion, the introduction of full-time troupes of salaried performers, and the
creation of permanent theaters for performance in areas where art was
formerly itinerant and out of doors (permitting year-long employment
and more elaborate productions). Artists throughout the nation were
ranked according to a sixteen-grade scale and enjoyed a common welfare
scheme. These improvements are “most certainly the result of Han social-
ism.”41 This conclusion echoes Ted Huters’s assessment of literature: “Pro
fessional writers as an estate would not have come into existence but for
the victory of the Communist Party.”42
The New State Also Extends Political Controls

The Communist Party sowed the seeds of artistic professionalism for
many reasons. One was certainly the national pride felt by the victorious
revolutionaries, who wished to demonstrate their right to inherit the
splendor of past dynasties, reminding themselves as well as their new
subjects that they were no longer living in caves in Yan’an. Another was a
populist urge to spread culture more broadly throughout society. But
there was also a widespread expectation that it was important to control
the arts as an instrument of rule. This heritage of premodern Chinese po
litical theory and practice was reinforced by the experience of the Soviet
Union, which the young People’s Republic took as a model in so many
areas.
Rapid cultural expansion made the extension of Communist Party in
fluence relatively painless, at least until the 1956–1957 trauma of the Hun
dred Flowers and antirightist campaigns. As new units were created or
old ones reorganized and expanded, artists with Communist sympathies
could be put in positions of influence. Non-Communist artists could con
tribute to the greater cause, but safely under Party leadership. But new
organizations such as the Fine Arts Association could be used to disci
pline as well as to reward. Painter Li Kuchan was barred from joining and
dismissed from the faculty of the Central Fine Arts Academy after 1949.43
More broadly, the Soviet model of professional organization was a way of
influencing non-Party artists by creating an information network that dis
seminated Party policies throughout arts academies, conservatories, mag
azines, and performing-arts groups.
Chinese Communist use of these associations was learned from Soviet
precursors that originated in the 1930s. Sheila Fitzpatrick has shown that
these bodies were much more complex than mere Stalinist mechanisms
for bullying artists.44 The Union of Soviet Writers and its counterparts
156 Chapter 5
were born amid the 1932 destruction of the more radical Communist As
sociation of Proletarian Writers. The Union admitted non-Communists on
equal terms with Communists as part of Stalin’s patronage of the old cul
tural intelligentsia and of such prerevolutionary institutions as the Acad
emy of Sciences, Moscow University, Bolshoi Theatre, and the Moscow
Arts Theatre. Conformity was enforced to “professional norms estab
lished within each profession through a process of negotiation between
professionals, cultural bureaucrats, and party leadership. These norms
were often based on emulation of a nonparty cultural figure like Gorky,
Stanislavsky, or Makarenko.”45
China’s leaders were initially optimistic that they could also use the
self-disciplinary logic of professionalism to extend control over the arts
establishment, avoiding Stalinist-style repression. Rudolf Wagner has
characterized this professionalism as a metaphor to describe a new role
for the writer who was
committed to the great general goals of economic and social advance, but op
erating on his own responsibility. The basic commitment here is not to the
Party machinery, but to the “people,” who are as often and as much idealized
as the cadres . . . in a time of a well-organized, professional-led economic and
social policy guided by a more or less enlightened leadership, supported by
the common people, and obstructed by bureaucrats. The writers act as the
“trumpet” and spokesman of the “people,” trying to forge a link between
high and low through the outside channels of the public sphere, the press
and literature.46
“Engineers of the human soul,” a phrase introduced by Stalin’s hench

man, Zhdanov, was readily adopted by Chinese officials and artists alike.
Although most Western intellectuals find the phrase repellant, China’s
literati found its suggestion of professionally and scientifically improving
culture attractive. Its resonance with both the Confucian tradition of high-
art moralizing and the May Fourth tradition of using culture as a force for
reform assured that even today artists will happily identify themselves on
formal occasions as engineers of the human soul.
Professionalism Versus Political Control

Tensions between artists and their new employers were perhaps in
evitable, although there was nothing preordained about the magnitude of
the conflict. Just as the development of professional organization, corpo
rate self-interest, and a distinctive worldview in the arts was halting and
incomplete, so the evolution of political controls in the arts was erratic.
The new arts organizations were too Communist for many non-Party
artists (and for some Party members as well), but they also proved to be
too bourgeois (often a code word for professionally autonomous) for

many propaganda officials.
From the beginning, Party arts czar Zhou Yang was skeptical that the
professional associations were doing their job. In 1951, he complained,
“As matters are, these organizations are only working in a highly irregu
lar manner, leading a sort of haphazard life and existing in name only.”47
In the same year, Hu Qiaomu urged that cultural organizations that did
not meet their political obligations should be dissolved and that politi
cally passive arts workers should be expelled.48 When Mao initiated a
campaign against the movie The Life of Wu Xun, Guo Moruo, head of the
Arts Federation, was embarrassed to have written an inscription (“Study
Wu Xun”) to coincide with the release of the film.49
Yet, for writer Hu Feng, the Writers Association was insufficiently inde
pendent. He wanted to reduce its authority, to abolish its central publica
tions, and to found new magazines independent of Party control.50 The
1955 campaign against Hu Feng and others was the first after 1949 to tar
geted high intellectuals. While relatively few writers were directly af
fected, it clearly shook the entire cultural world. “Its main effect for high
intellectuals was a parallel, in the cultural sphere, to the simultaneous ef
fect on businessmen of increasing government control of markets. It fright
ened them into complying with further changes during the Transition.”51
The Hundred Flowers campaign included many attacks on the associa
tions much in the spirit of Hu Feng’s unsuccessful critique. Rumors cir
culated that Ai Qing, Chen Qixia, Feng Xuefeng, Xiao Qian, and Ding
Ling planned to withdraw from the Writers Association and start new
journals beyond the control of the associations and their Party overseers.52
Yet, at the same time, some in the Arts Federation of Zhejiang proposed
purging nonprofessionals—including some politicos in the leadership—
thereby making the organization a stronger voice for real artists.53
During the Hundred Flowers the associations all heard a diverse range
of complaints about the reorganization of culture, and the Party sharply
curtailed their influence during the antirightist campaign and afterwards.
The associations’ fortunes paralleled the so-called democratic parties.54
Their periods of prosperity and misfortune coincided quite directly. The
Shanghai Democratic League increased the artists in its ranks from 52 to
290 in 1956, the year before the end of the Hundred Flowers.55
Resistance to the new organization of culture was not limited to the
professional associations. A Hundred Flowers speech by Shi Ximin, direc
tor of the Shanghai Propaganda Department, called for restoring the cul
tural market and disbanding many of the professional organizations:
The state[-]owned dramatic troupes took over many workers of experience

and during the period from 1952 to 1956, 6.11 million yuan of the state funds
158 Chapter 5
were spent. What the state got in return consisted merely of the cultivation
among the theatrical workers, the habit to live under the system of government-
issue, reduced cultural and art activities, the maintenance of huge establish
ments, redundancy of personnel, and confusion in the professional system. He
pointed out that the art activities of the masses are the superstructure and not
the economic foundation. Art enterprises cannot be promoted effectively
through the system of ownership by the whole people. It is impractical to un
derwrite the entire theatrical industry. His suggestion was that the art troupes
should be changed to collective ownership, freely organized by the actors them-
selves.56
There was of course an aesthetic background to the issue of organiza

tion. The Party’s tasks for artists became less attractive precisely as con
ditions of employment improved. The revolution had demanded artists
skilled at exposure, satire, and mobilization. The new regime needed
artists who could celebrate its continuing victories and lighten up on so
cial criticism. For many artists, the web of Party controls that permeated
the Ministry of Culture and the professional associations was stifling be
cause it enforced an external criterion for judging their art, denying their
right to be autonomous in their field of expertise. When they demanded
either that the new institutions be made more fully professional or that
they be allowed to reorganize their activities outside Party domination,
Party leaders cut off the discussion.
The antirightist campaign of 1957, the Party’s fierce blow against criti
cal intellectuals, extended far beyond the arts. Of China’s five million in
tellectuals, 10 percent were labeled as “rightist elements.”57 The long-term
impact of such political criticism, which typically (but not always) in
cluded career setbacks of varying severity, discouraged any open dissent.
When this story is only told as a narrative of state suppression of artists,
an important outcome is ignored. While the artists as a group were cer
tainly punished, silenced, and terrified, the quasi-professionalism of their
organizations resumed, continuing until they were closed during the Cul
tural Revolution. Professional except in aesthetic autonomy, artists en
joyed an economically secure status, which meant that they could wait
out political campaigns, rather than succumb to pressure to produce
works for the moment.
Thus, the professional aspect continued to frustrate political control.
Mao complained in 1964:
In the past 15 years these associations and most of their publications (a few
are said to be good) by and large (this does not apply to every individual) have
not carried out the policies of the Party, have acted as high and mighty bu
reaucrats, have not gone to the workers, peasants and soldiers and have not
reflected the socialist revolution and construction. In recent years, they have
even slid to the verge of revisionism. Unless they make serious efforts to re
mould themselves, they are bound at some future date to become groups like
the Hungarian Petofi Club.58
Indeed, the professional associations could often protect their artists

against some of the harshness faced by most intellectuals. For instance,
artists, like top leaders and athletes, received special food rations during
the great famine of 1959–1962. Professional associations had to take part
in the wave of going down to the countryside to learn from poor and
lower-middle peasants in the early 1960s, but they could often shield their
members from anything too unpleasant. Guangdong novelist Ouyang
Shan “spent most of the time in his room writing” when sent down to
learn from the peasants in 1964.59 Sending artists to the factory and the
countryside was justified as either reeducation (learning from the masses)
or research (gathering materials for artistic inspiration). The latter was
more likely to turn into pleasant trips to famous beauty spots with good
accommodations.
Marshal Chen Yi, hero of the revolution and China’s foreign minister,
actively protected artists, using an old-fashioned paternalism to
strengthen aspects of professional organization against external influence.
As foreign minister, Chen Yi was responsible for the Oriental Song and
Dance Troupe, which specialized in cultural diplomacy. He protected
them in 1965, arguing, “Since dancing itself is physical labor, you need not
go to the countryside to take part in labor.”60 In a 1962 Guangzhou speech
very popular with artists, Chen Yi insisted on maintaining a professional
division of labor:
Workers should devote themselves to work, peasants to farming, and com

mercial departments to commerce. I just don’t understand why they should
establish contacts with writers. . . . In the past [the writers] looked down
upon the masses and sat over them; now they have turned around and wor
shiped the masses blindly. All this is anti-Marxist.61
THE CELEBRATION OF THE AMATEUR
Marshal Chen Yi was more supportive of artistic autonomy than most top
Party leaders. Yet, such powerful figures as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaop
ing were also content with a rather high degree of artistic professionalism,
which they saw as a mild and generally effective method of maintaining
Party guidance over the arts world. But this was insufficient for the
Party’s left, which advocated more egalitarian policies to prevent the
emergence of a specialized stratum of experts, whether in the arts, sci
ence, or medicine. Radical leaders such as Mao Zedong were suspicious
of the commitment of the formal cultural bureaucracy to serve ordinary
160 Chapter 5
citizens. An alternative to professionalism was to encourage the develop

ment of amateur artists, believing that peasants and workers can best pro
duce the culture that addresses their own needs.62
There were also practical political considerations. Some propaganda of
ficials believed that amateur arts were “the only way to reach” ordinary
workers, whose low incomes sometimes made it difficult to buy books or
attend the theater in China’s pretelevision age.63 Amateurs might also
provide a kind of counterweight to the highly professionalized arts estab
lishment that the Party had fostered. Amateur arts programs were a part
of the revolution, and had grown rapidly after 1949. For example, by 1960,
7 million peasants participated in a quarter of a million drama troupes,
compared to 3,513 professional drama troupes.64 Radicals promoted ama
teur arts with special ardor in the early 1960s, reflecting frustration with
persistent elitism in cultural organizations. At the same time, the breakup
of the Sino-Soviet alliance meant that visiting East European arts experts
left China, thereby weakening this external support for professionalism.
Mobilizing the Masses through Art

Radical cultivation of amateur arts was a prominent feature of China’s
cultural politics between the Great Leap Forward (1958–1959) and the end
of the Cultural Revolution (1976). The Party’s left sought to revive class-
based analyses of the problems China faced, hoping to revive its now-
faded revolutionary spirit. The Party’s more insistent glorification of
peasants and workers had as its corollary in the arts the cult of the ama
teur. The Great Leap slogan, “both red and expert,” denigrated technical
skills practiced without revolutionary politics. When this way of thinking
about the arts intensified in the early 1960s, the idea of artistic genius was
attacked as a bourgeois trick to deny the abilities of ordinary people.
Shanghai worker poets increased from 889 in 1957 to 200,000 in 1958, pro
ducing 5 million poems and songs.65
This renewed priority to the masses coincided with a traditionally Con
fucian disdain for professionalism, although China no longer had a class
of leisured amateurs. Far from being leisured, the masses were to be in
spired, cheered, agitated, and mobilized, both into greater production and
into activism for leftist politics.
An enthusiast for the cult of the amateur was Shanghai propaganda
chief Zhang Chunqiao, later famous for being one of the Gang of Four. In
1958 Zhang cut payments to writers by one-half for all publications con
trolled by his department, an initiative later followed by the whole nation.
Zhang’s Shanghai collaborator, Yao Wenyuan, believed strongly that the
living standards for intellectuals should not climb outrageously above
that for ordinary workers.66
The celebration of the amateur brought along a denial of any language

that might sustain professional inclinations. By the end of the Cultural
Revolution, intellectuals in general were often identified as the “stinking
ninth,” referring to their ranking as number nine in a list of politically dis
credited categories. One American visitor at the time was struck that writ
ers said they did not want to be known as professionals, but to have their
work published anonymously.67
Professional Amateurs
The celebration of the amateur employed passionately antielitist rhetoric,
yet accompanied some very professional practice. The best-documented
case is the once-famous peasant painting movement of Hu County,
Shaanxi.68 According to Ellen Laing, “almost every major Chinese profes
sional artist spent time in Huxian” in the late Cultural Revolution. “It was
really through the guidance, actual or indirect, of the disgraced specialists
that peasant painting attained any reasonable degree of artistic competence.
Although the professional was in official disfavor, his art was not abolished,
but submerged; it resurfaced in the guise of peasant amateur painting.”69
How are we to explain this apparent paradox? Cynicism by cultural bu
reaucrats is one factor. But another is the Cultural Revolution’s fear of the
spontaneity of true amateurs. The celebration of the amateur was
aborted—or at least seriously limited—by the Maoist elite’s realization
that political control mattered more than mobilization. We can see this by
examining the handbooks for amateur productions of the model Beijing
operas, such as Shajiabang or The Red Lantern, in which every hand mo
tion, every costume, every prop is specified with meticulous detail, so that
local productions of these centrally designed operas will be replicas of the
originals, not adaptations.70 We may also see the quick suppression of lo
cal arts that were apparently too spontaneous. In 1970 a “black drama
troupe” was banned for putting Cantonese opera tunes into the model
operas, as well as for using other traditional techniques.71
Ellen Judd studied a Shanghai food factory that was known for its am
ateur singers and dancers, who were given time off from making choco
late, dried fruit, and cookies for rehearsal and professional instruction.
She characterizes such programs as ultraleft in their intense and extreme
demands for social change, but rightist in their “exclusion of many po
tential participants” and dependence upon party hierarchy.72
Despite itself, the celebration of the amateur ended up encouraging
professional trends in the arts. The majority of old professionals were sel
dom heard from during the Cultural Revolution—it is impossible to gen
eralize on their fates, which ranged from suicide to beating, imprison
ment, forced work in the countryside, or just fearful oblivion. Yet, other
162 Chapter 5
arts professionals were held up as stars, such as the novelist Hao Ran, the
poet Zeng Kejia, the pianists Yin Chengzong and Liu Shikun, the dancer
Liu Qingtang, or the opera singer Hao Liang. Promising young perform
ers were sought out and cultivated as the next generation of profession-
als.73 Factories coddled their “amateur” singers. Former Red Guards prac
ticed the violin in order to join song-and-dance ensembles, a sure ticket
out of the countryside.
It was easier to recruit “amateur” artists when there was no commercial
economy to offer alternatives and when the arts might be an escape from
production. Novelist Wang Anyi conveys the status of those who had
managed to join song-and-dance troupes in her story of a provincial bal
let company performing in a small town late in the Cultural Revolution.
Its members were permitted to use the public bathhouse two hours before
the villagers. As the actresses leave, wet haired and carrying their dirty
clothes, “at the door of the public bathhouse the villagers are queuing,
their faces dirty, their eyes gluey and their bodies shivering. They look at
the girls in wonder and admiration, trying hard to imagine what a
blessed, royal life they lead.”74
But serious amateurs who showed too much independence were un
popular with most officials. One of the cultural incidents early in the re
form period was the Stars Fine Arts Exhibition of 1979. The young artists
were all workers in lowly factory and office jobs. They had no profes
sional standing and, thus, had to buy their own materials, plus give up for
their art opportunities to earn overtime and bonuses. Their show was
deemed too political and closed, despite support from Jiang Feng of the
Artists’ Association.75
I have argued elsewhere that the Cultural Revolution, despite its rhetoric
of opposing Western music, in fact intensified the modernization of China’s
traditional musical arts.76 In a similar process, an interruption of the out
ward manifestations of professionalism proved to be only superficially red,
ultimately damaging the amateur, as much as the professional, arts.
The Return of the Professionals

The return was, first, quite literally a return as formerly disgraced artists
came back to China’s cities from the countryside in the early 1970s. This
heralded a return to power, alongside the rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping.
Deng infuriated the Maoists and pleased many arts professionals by
mocking the pretensions of Xiaojinzhuang, Jiang Qing’s favorite village of
amateur poets, singers, and dancers: “You can hop and jump, but can you
jump across the Yangtze?”77
I do not want to give the impression that China has somehow sup
pressed amateur arts. Amateur activities continue to be an important part
of cultural life. But they are now mostly for the pleasure they provide the
participants. The state’s cultural centers continue to organize classes, per
formances, and exhibitions. China remains a nation where one can find
inexpensive musical instruments, low-cost paper and brushes, and mate
rials for seal carving, although these indirect state subsidies are declining,
as prices are gradually raised to market levels. Some amateur arts make a
public splash, as in Beijing in 1996 when two thousand yangko groups
with ten thousand members performed nearly every night. The noise of
the drums provoked a wave of angry calls to the city’s environmental pro
tection hotline; more people complained about drums than about pol
luted air.78 And of course one can find newer commercial amateur arts ac
tivities in karaoke bars across the country.
Some amateurs became professionals under the reforms. The increase
in disposable income in Fujian Province increased demand for local
opera in the countryside, and many troupes have become professional
without state support. Xianyou County’s Duni Opera Company was
probably the most successful of some two thousand newly private com
panies in the 1980s. It staged over six hundred performances per year,
with a repertory of over sixty operas, including eight to ten new produc
tions each year. Over a million people saw this company annually, al
lowing it to operate its own opera school for training new members of
the company.79
A RENEWED DRIVE FOR PROFESSIONALISM
Deng Xiaoping’s reform program may have included the arts only inad
vertently, but intellectuals quickly seized the opportunity to improve their
battered status. The renewal of a drive toward professionalism was part
of a broader push for power, fueled by a sense of unjust treatment during
the Cultural Revolution and a feeling of entitlement as China’s natural
elite. Radicals had urged professional artists to learn from amateurs, who
were imagined to embody a more reliable political purity, untarnished by
the elitism of the conservatory and academy of fine arts. However super
ficial this cult may have been in practice, as a symbol it weighed heavily
on arts professionals, who began the 1980s determined to show that they
were the real artists and that they should be able to run their own affairs
without overseeing worker and peasant amateurs.
Counterattack by Artists
In film actor Zhao Dan’s dramatic article written on his deathbed in 1980,
he railed against political leaders who treat professional artists “as if they
164 Chapter 5
were only a crowd of dim-sighted, insensitive people.” His words captured

the spirit of the new demands for professionalism:
The party can lead in formulating national economic plans and implement
ing agricultural and industrial policy. But why should the party tell us how
to farm, how to make a stool, how to cut trousers or how to fry vegetables?
Why should they instruct writers how to write, or actors how to act? . . . The
arts are the business of writers and artists. If the party controls the arts too
tightly, they will have no hope. They will be finished.80
Many artists were encouraged when the regime insisted that it would
now do things differently, especially after the 1979 National Arts Con
gress. Party discourse on the arts shifted from the militant jargon of class
struggle to a renewed emphasis upon the 1956 slogan “a Hundred Flow
ers,” supposedly denoting a new era of openness and tolerance. Yet, the
cultural vision of Deng Xiaoping’s entourage rarely moved beyond
restoring a supposedly purified pre–Cultural Revolution system of state
patronage and propaganda: a vision of a golden age, but without Mao.
There was little official encouragement to challenge the fundamental sys
tem by which the arts had been organized since the early 1950s. But some
bolder writers did not wait for the Party to lead. Wang Ruowang wrote in
Red Flag magazine that in the arts, the Party should adopt the Daoist pre
cept of “governing through inaction,” adroitly, but inaccurately, claiming
the popular Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi as models.81
Artists applied their talents to subverting the foundational myths of
Maoist cultural politics. Film, always the most closely supervised
medium, was the most controversial. A 1979 screenplay by Bai Hua, Un
requited Love, drew powerful reactions from threatened bureaucrats who
attacked his portrayal of a patriotic painter whose career had been ruined
by political campaigns.82 By 1985 the political balance had shifted so that
millions of Chinese watched Yellow Earth, a film about an idealistic young
art worker in Yan’an, showing his disillusionment as he discovered the
impoverished backwardness of the supposedly revolutionary peasant
masses.83
The reactivation of specialist organizations increased the momentum
for professionalism. Cultural Revolutionary policies had depressed pro
fessional consciousness by political command and by minimizing ties
among experts. The restoration of these ties was an occasion to share ex
periences of common pain in the antielitist 1960s and 1970s. It turned out
that recollection of such experiences of being sent to the countryside or
being criticized in mass rallies actually strengthened communities of in
tellectuals. Maoist administrators had wanted to mold a militant army of
revolutionary artists, but they often achieved something very different. In
a 1987 interview, the poet Gu Cheng revealed “how important it was for
him [in the 1979 Democracy Wall movement] to read poster texts by other
poets, which he had not heard about but which seemed to share his own
attitude to culture.”84 Such feeling were intensified by the state’s own ac
tions, as it encouraged artists to create works exposing Cultural Revolu
tionary mistreatment of intellectuals in the “scar” movement in fiction,
film, and painting, a corollary to political campaigns to purge radical of-
ficials.85 On a more formal level, the revival of professionalism was but
tressed by the reopening of arts academies and conservatories that had
been closed by the Cultural Revolution, and the following decade brought
a renewed emphasis on educational credentials in assessing young artists.
Surviving leftists in the leadership sometimes criticized what they saw
as an aggressive push by liberal artists who used their literary reputations
to defy Party discipline and who treated the new emphasis on the Hun
dred Flowers as a “new breakthrough” against the Party line.86 Others,
shifting with the times, curried favor with artists and other intellectuals
whose support was increasingly necessary for leadership in the arts
world. Former Party arts czar Zhou Yang (head of the Arts Federation,
vice president of the Academy of Social Sciences, and deputy director of
the Party Propaganda Department) celebrated the March 1983 centennial
of Marx’s death by joining a reinterpretation of Party views on alienation
and humanism. This step proved too bold for some comrades, who forced
Zhou’s self-criticism by November.87
Political maneuvers such as Zhou Yang’s, even when aborted, showed
that artists and bureaucrats had much in common as allies. Many of the
political campaigns that had harassed professional artists also swept up
arts administrators in their wake. Both shared an interest in purging left
ists. Moreover, the taming of the Propaganda Department meant that ad
ministrators were more likely to be artists themselves or drawn from the
ranks of those sympathetic to artists. Administrators and artists also
shared an interest in keeping money flowing to their units, and they both
tended to harbor suspicions of the new arts marketplace.
Renewed pressure in the arts for professionalism was of course a
broader trend throughout China. Physicians put aside Maoist policies that
urged combining Chinese and Western medicine, another effort to de
press elitism by forcing professionals to integrate themselves with folk
wisdom.88 Journalists began to discuss professional ethics and suggest
that their journalism had objective laws that must be respected.89 The le
gal profession was essentially re-created, as, first, contracts with foreign
firms and later domestic law reform created a massive demand for attor-
neys.90 In the army, Maoists had abolished the titles and insignia of mili
tary rank in 1965; the introduction of new uniforms in 1985 proclaimed
the new emphasis upon technical skills and professional values over po
litical spirit. Chinese scientists and engineers followed a pattern similar to
166 Chapter 5
that of the artists, although with a clearer professional heritage for their
fields.91 Managers of state factories organized into a professional associa
tion in 1985, although local Party leaders threatened by their autonomy
frustrated their success.92 Even diplomats, whose political autonomy is re
stricted in any society, are now usefully seen as a professional group.93 For
artists, as for other professional groups, the 1980s were a decade of steady
improvement in salaries, working conditions, and facilities, as the Party
attempted to win their support by making up for a decade and a half of
low investment.
The Language of Professionalism

As artists demanded higher status, Deng Xiaoping’s government declared
that intellectuals were “a part of the working class.” This was a reaffir
mation of their political position as equal to proletarians, intended as
compensation for Cultural Revolutionary abuse that treated intellectuals
as inferior to proletarians. But this was not good enough. Many intellec
tuals, and probably most artists, did not want to be counted as workers,
but as something better. Nor they did not want to have their social iden
tities defined through categories imposed by the Communist Party. The
favor of honorary proletarian status had been extended earlier in the
1950s. Bear in mind that proletarian status would be perceived as a down
ward move for writers and painters, but as upward mobility for tradi
tionally despised singers and actors. The Association of Chinese Writers
became the Union of Chinese Writers by 1954, indicating that its members
were actually members of the working class. During the first five-year
plan, artists, along with reporters and athletes, were classified as laborers
because they earned income by selling labor. But by the antirightist cam
paign of 1957, the protection of proletarian dignity was withdrawn and
they became bourgeois.94 Party actions carried artistic work further to
ward professionalization than any earlier Chinese regime. Yet, the Party
still withheld the name “professional,” both to deny the reality its policies
were evoking and to curb the emergence of a conscious corporate identity
among artists.
With increased self-confidence, many used the word “intellectual”
(zhishifenzi) as an emblem of honor, and it is often translated into English
as “professional.”95 With “professional,” it shares a certain genteel, white-
collar connotation, while remaining vague about what an intellectual ac
tually does for a living.96 But fields less securely recognized as profes
sional felt left behind. Faculty at the Central Academy of Crafts and
Design complained that “the average Chinese climbs up the social ladder
by acquiring professional titles one after the other,” yet there is still no
such professional ladder for designers, who are still called “design work
ers.” This lack of recognition of professional status, they argued, was re
sponsible for the poor quality of their students and the peripheral posi
tion of designers in society.97 The doggedness of Party resistance to the
proliferation of antiegalitarian titles was seen in its refusal until 1994 to
agree to restore the use of the title of “academician” in the Academy of
Sciences.98
Nonetheless, the Party conceded a point and adopted the discourse of
professionalism in its appeals to artists. By 1997, the Press and Publica
tions Administration appealed to professional ethics as it urged writers
and publishers to assist in stopping book piracy and suppressing pornog-
raphy.99
The Autonomy of the Aesthetic

The Party also conceded on the question of whether art can be an au
tonomous realm with rules of its own, or whether it is ultimately a reflec
tion of the economy and, thus, subject to political guidance. Some kind of
doctrine of artistic autonomy is essential if artists are to assert profes
sional status.100 If they are not experts on the laws of beauty, what then is
the basis of their claim? Critic Liu Zaifu put the claim strongly: such ideas
as science for science’s sake and art for art’s sake are “a kind of ‘return to
oneself’ [huifu zishen], that is a return by intellectuals to their professional
specialization and the creation of a ‘cultural autonomous region’ [wenhua
zizhiqu] through which they can actively contribute to society and the im
provement of social conditions.”101
Wendy Larson has identified the relationship between a theory of au
tonomy and the practical need for experts:
The autonomous aesthetic—literature as art, with its own rules, generative

power, and sphere of detached and profound meaning—was the modern
theory of literature. This theory demanded not only respect and awe from the
educated or those with pretensions to knowledge, but also its own group of
academic specialists to teach and interpret it.102
According to Larson, this modern theory of literature replaces older ideas

of literature (and other arts) as the embodiment of morality. The choice of a
less politicized conception of art bears the risk to artists of a loss of poten
tial political influence. Is greater peace and creative autonomy worth this
price? Yet, it is difficult to sustain a purely aesthetic discourse, even when
all participants want to do so. To some extent, claims to professionalism
based upon the special nature of aesthetics are opportunistic. Aggressive
and aggrieved intellectuals were quick to carve out their own universal jus
tification for autonomy when they perceived that the state was entering a
period of ideological weakness. But artists have not easily abandoned the
168 Chapter 5
Confucian heritage that entitles, if not requires, them to comment on pub

lic affairs. Liu Zaifu illustrates this well, in his 1996 book Farewell to the Rev
olution, a stimulating dialog with aesthetician Li Zehou on a broad range of
cultural and political topics, but written without conveying any sense that
either may have strayed beyond his professional license.103
Yet, it would be mistaken to dismiss claims of aesthetic autonomy as
merely self-serving. In the early 1980s, as the Party began to loosen un
evenly its political controls over art, propaganda officials withdrew from
the job of refereeing aesthetic questions. Even Deng Xiaoping spoke of the
“laws of their development,”as if it were apparent that aesthetics fol
lowed some inexorable internal process for change.104 Initial claims for a
separate sphere of aesthetic judgment emerged along with new discord
about such fundamental issues as what is beauty.105 A debate over so-
called obscure poetry pushed the discussion of aesthetic autonomy even
further. Obscure poetry was highly personal and, thus, an innovative re
action to the tradition of versified propaganda. When critic Sun Shaozhen
argued that the declining dominance of the state gave rise to fuller ex
pressions of the self, he elicited a hostile assault from propaganda offi-
cials.106 A national aesthetics rage fueled growth in journals of art and lit
erary criticism, all needing more professionals to fill their pages and
apply their expertise to artistic judgment.
One account of how these thoughts about the high principles of aesthet
ics were stimulated by the daily work of an artist is provided by Liang Xiao-
sheng’s memoir of a young litterateur’s introduction to Beijing.107 This
young graduate of Shanghai’s Fudan University (in the first class admitted
after the restoration of entrance examinations in 1977) was assigned to
work at the Beijing Film Studio as a script editor, reading fifty scripts per
month. He encountered problems when a leading comrade pressed a bad
script on the studio as a favor to a friend. When Liang rejected the script,
the big shot denounced him and the studio in a letter, which accused them
of slighting the works of amateur writers, operating an “independent
kingdom,” and behaving as in the days of the Gang of Four. The studio
manager and his colleagues saved Liang from a self-criticism, but got no
help from the Party secretary. Liang expressed his anger at frequent inter
ference in the form of suggestions and recommendations from political
leaders about promising scripts.
If you are the mayor, and I am a citizen, I should listen to you because citi
zens ought to fulfill their civic obligations. If I am an editor and you are the
mayor, and you write a film script, novel, poem, or play, excuse me, but you
should listen to me. This is only as it should be. To do otherwise is not fitting.
This is called “a difference in the social division of labor,” and we should re
spect each other’s place in this division of labor. Moreover this is one of the
principles of our ancestor Marx’s Communist society.108
In the end, the Propaganda Department recognized this “difference in

the social division of labor” by retreating to the high-sounding concept of
“socialist spiritual civilization.” The Party has bandied this phrase about
for nearly two decades; with almost limitless ambiguity, the phrase can re
fer to the loftiest of ideals (how young people can grow up to be patriotic,
scientific, and honest in a rapidly changing world); yet, it can also em
brace the most mundane of tasks (campaigns against public spitting or
swearing). It is easy to smirk at socialist spiritual civilization as a lame
product of a now exhausted Propaganda Department. But the concept is
also that department’s recognition of a special realm that should be re
garded as above the world of economics and the confusion of the market.
This, of course, echoes, without quite admitting, the professional artists’
claim to the autonomous laws of art.109
Even former propagandists may support greater aesthetic autonomy. In
late 1989, as I walked across a park with the head of the Xiamen Munici
pal Arts Association, this former propaganda official and amateur callig
rapher stopped before a row of flowers that had been arranged to spell
out a current political slogan. There he remarked that things of beauty
should not be subordinated to politics in this manner. He waited for two
junior officials to catch up with us and repeated his observation, just to be
sure that I (and they) got the point.
More Organization, Less Supervision

The professional associations grew quickly. The Writers Association, for
example, with eight hundred members upon its restoration in 1979,
nearly doubled to fifteen hundred members in 1981. By 1985 there were
2,525 members, by 1988 there were 3,324 members, and by 1996 there
were 5,382 members.110 The reactivation of professional arts associations
was followed by the creation of new organizations for groups who had
previously lacked their own institutional base, such as associations for
calligraphers or for those working in publishing, television, or folk litera
ture, under the broad umbrella of the Arts Federation.111 At the local level,
there are new grassroots organizations for amateurs that copy the more
prestigious professional modes of organization. Seal carvers, calligra
phers, photographers, musicians, and others were not incorporated into a
national control system and are pretty much ignored by the Propaganda
Department. Over eighty new informal arts groups appeared by 1986.112
Vivienne Shue describes the activity in the small city of Xinji, Hebei,
with a population of one hundred fifty thousand. There are new volun
tary groups of people “to paint, to make papercuts, to collect and edit
folk legends, stories, ballads, and songs. They organize performances
and exhibitions. There are community drum troupes, dance troupes,
170 Chapter 5
stilt-walkers, acrobats, kite-makers, embroidery circles, and folk paint

ing associations.” The state plays a facilitating role, instead of “provid
ing models and dictating restrictions.”
And people are permitted to gather regularly—like the one hundred (out of
three hundred or so) amateur (fine arts) painters in Xinji who attend monthly
meetings of their association—to talk about their art without being subject to
heavy political or other guidance of these activities by the party-state.113
This is not to suggest that there have not been ferocious battles over po
litical control of the national- and provincial-level professional organiza
tions. Unhappy leftist artists demonstrated their alienation from perhaps
excessively professional associations by setting up their own counteror
ganizations. The Xian Xinghai–Nie Erh Musicians Association rivaled
the Chinese Musicians Association.114 In 1985, the National Writers Asso
ciation was permitted to elect its own officers. In a secret ballot, reformer
Liu Binyan came in second to veteran novelist Ba Jin, even though Liu
had not been included on the Party’s list of candidates. Some Party can
didates who had backed the campaigns against spiritual pollution and
bourgeois liberalization lost.115 Burned by the experience, the Propaganda
Department did not allow elections when the National Arts Federation
convened in 1988.116 Yet, if the autonomy of electing officers was denied,
the Party continued to permit the expansion of professionalism by press
ing for the use of legal contracts when appointing executives for arts or
ganizations.
The Party was unable to reestablish complete control over the associa
tions even in the aftermath of the Beijing Massacre. The National Arts
Federation openly supported the student movement, even proclaiming in
Wenyi bao on the initial day of martial law (May 20, 1989), “We represent
the whole nation’s arts world in expressing respect for the recent patriotic
activities of the students. . . . We truly hope and call upon the major lead
ers of Party and government in all speed to meet directly with the stu-
dents.”117
After the massacre, Deng Xiaoping’s victorious supporters threatened a
thorough purge, but proved unable to bear its heavy political costs. Many
individuals did lose their positions on editorial boards. Association jour
nals such as Fine Arts (Meishu) were reorganized in order to silence out
spoken reformers.118 The 1989 crisis caused the Party to avoid calling a
meeting of the Writers Association National Congress between December
1984 and December 1996.119 The Party perhaps feared first that many writ
ers would not attend and, later, that their words might bring embarrass
ment. The reelection of ninety-two-year-old Ba Jin as head of the Writers
Association in 1996 assured that the organization would not have unruly
leadership.
When Wang Meng lost his post as minister of culture, he retained his
position as a deputy head of the Writers Association and suffered no loss
of prestige.120 The association’s leadership, divided among reformers and
their opponents, was apparently seen as an appropriate base for a reform-
minded novelist and cultural official. While reformers have expressed
frustration with the associations, it is striking that the associations never
seem to have been held in the kind of open contempt that was often ex
pressed toward their Soviet counterparts.121 The Soviet Writers Union was
typically more hard-line than the Communist Party, dragging its feet on
publishing provocative literature and demanding stern discipline for lib
eral intellectuals.122 In contrast, Chinese artists who were outraged by the
1989 massacre expressed their anger by resigning (or threatening to re
sign) from the Communist Party, instead of the professional associations.
The growth of professional autonomy through the 1980s was tem
porarily reined in by the 1989 crisis. But, by 1992 the Party had given up
trying to purge all dissident voices and opted instead for the strategy of
urging all arts organizations to strive to earn more money, an approach
that ultimately feeds professional autonomy. Although the Party judged
that arts professionalism posed no imminent threat to its authority and its
intellectual appeal increased, professionalism remains inhibited organiza-
tionally.123 The corporate status of artists may be better respected, yet in
dividual artists remain vulnerable, with little power to protect them
selves.
THE UNSETTLED COMFORTS OF PROFESSIONALISM
The professionalization of the arts in any country will always encounter

limits, and in China there are serious political barriers to autonomy for
any social organization.124 Yet, fostered by Party efforts at ideological con
trol over the nation, arts professionalism has sometimes assumed a life of
its own, given new energy by the relaxation of political supervision. Yet,
the impact of this development is clouded.
Professionalism Can Be Illiberal

We would like to believe that professional ethics will make a better world,
but professional organizations can participate in the worst kinds of polit
ical mischief as the example of the highly trained and ostensibly profes
sional judges of Nazi Germany demonstrate.125 It is important to remem
ber that professionalism is delimited not by political liberalism, but by
shared work-based interests. These interests can be quite narrowly
drawn, as in the resistance of U.S. professors to regulations against sexual
172 Chapter 5
relations with their students or the successful lobbying by the U.S. med
ical establishment for federal funds to pay medical schools to train fewer
physicians. The rhetoric of professionalism asserts benevolent public ser
vice, but this language can cloak a much more self-seeking reality. We
should anticipate comparable phenomena from Chinese professionals.
For instance, Judy Polumbaum found that many journalists had no objec
tion to propaganda work, but felt control of it should rest in their hands
as technical experts, rather in the hands of outside officials.126
Professionalism, by building shared structures of experience among
coworkers, also works to exclude the claims of others. This is typically ac
complished through raising technical standards, although the evaluation
of such standards often bears biases favoring already established groups.
In the course of professionalizing its medical school education, the United
States closed down two-thirds of the schools that trained black physi
cians. The professionalization of science similarly excluded women as
new academic societies banned their participation.127 A similar pattern
may be seen in China, where professionalism has brought a sharp decline
in the numbers of women and ethnic minorities in the Writers Associa
tion. In 1981 there were 115 women and 130 minority members, but by
1988 there were only 41 women and 39 minorities. Given the overall in
crease in members, this is a change from one woman for thirteen men (6
percent) to one woman for eighty-one men. The drop in minority mem
bers was from one for eleven Han members to one for sixty-eight.128
Selling Out?
Do the emergence of professional structures in socialist societies lead to
a kind of pact with Satan, in which artists receive improved material
comfort in exchange for not challenging the political order? This view
was developed most forcefully in Miklos Haraszti’s The Velvet Prison, a
polemic against the condition of the arts in Hungary before the end of
Communist rule.129 Haraszti argues that after the end of the harshest
Stalinist oppression, professional artists recognized that capitalism is not
especially hospitable to state subsidies for art and managed to find cozy
places for themselves as (often passive) supporters of the socialist status
quo. The art world became relatively soft, tolerant of limited experimen
tation, and ever more conscious of its ties to the educated middle class,
rather than falsely claiming to serve workers and peasants. The profes
sional values of the artists became one of their strongest bonds to the
state. “Under Stalinism, our plight was like that of the fish whose owner
foolishly locked the aquarium in fear of its escape. Since Stalinism, the
owner has become wiser and the fish happier. The aquarium remains the
same.”130
Is Haraszti’s prison metaphor applicable to China? Geremie Barmé dis

cusses the cultural politics of the post-Mao period as an East Asian “vel
vet prison.”131 Yes, Barmé says, conditions have certainly improved for
artists over the harsh days of the Cultural Revolution. Yet, many artists
are still content to be captives, never pushing their freedom to the limit.
He identifies former minister of culture Wang Meng as an exemplary
post-Mao arts official, eager to encourage experimentation, yet equally
concerned to define the parameters of acceptable aesthetic novelty. Barmé
identifies a political dynamic in which state officials seek to co-opt artists.
They typically isolate a small number of maverick and possibly socially
marginal artists who decline to covet the privileges accorded members of
the official organizations for writers, fine artists, musicians, dramatists,
dancers, filmmakers, and the like.
But Paul Pickowicz points out a logical flaw in the velvet prison hy
pothesis: it assumes a perpetual motion machine that can never change,
yet the Hungarian Communist state’s hegemony was broken, and it very
quickly ceased to exist.132
There is an ideological bias in the velvet prison argument, as well. Al
though the velvet prison concept points to important, dark sides of pro
fessionalism, these seem to be problems around the world, wherever pro
fessional artists are employed. It requires world-class ideological blinders
to imagine that professional American intellectuals have never sold their
integrity for material reward. An evening of U.S. television quickly shows
which questions are not posed, which viewpoints are voluntarily ex
cluded by highly paid professionals. The issue may not be a special form
of entrapment for artists in socialist nations, but the pervasiveness of vel
vet prisons as gentle forms of control.
A far better book than Haraszti’s is the study of professional writers in
the former German Democratic Republic by Robert von Hallberg.133 He
found that professional structures
effectively instituted conformity, as professional structures programmati

cally do. My point here is not that the relevant conformity was exactly of be
lief . . . but rather of dissent: intellectuals knew very well where the limits of
tolerance would be enforced, first by the relevant professional organization,
which might expel any member who crossed the line, and only later by
other nonliterary sections of the state apparatus. The constant contact with
one’s colleagues at meetings and through memoranda helped to hold these
boundaries in sight. One surprising lesson that I quickly absorbed from my
conversations is that fear of professional difficulties, not of the Stasi, was
what enforced conformity. With elaborate professional organizations in
place, it just does not take much to control the ideological activity of literary
intellectuals. That is a sad truth that deserves consideration by American in-
tellectuals.134
174 Chapter 5
Like their counterparts in other nations, Chinese professionals some

times find it difficult to maintain their ideals against material blandish
ments from the powerful.135 They must often cautiously keep their heads
low, doing little better to act boldly against authority than professionals
anywhere.
NOTES
1. Important works on professionalism include Eliot Freidson, Professional

Powers. A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1986); Thomas L. Haskell, ed., The Authority of Experts: Studies
in History and Theory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Konrad
Hugo Jarausch, The Unfree Professions: German Lawyers, Teachers, and Engineers,
1900–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Magali Sarfatti Larson, The
Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Power and the Division of Labor (Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press, 1986); Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American
Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982); William M. Sullivan, Work and Integrity:
The Crisis and Promise of Professionalism in America (New York: Harper Business,
1995).
2. Sullivan, Work and Integrity, 1–2.
3. Rueschemeyer, Power and the Division of Labor, 119.
4. Sheldon Rothblatt, “How ‘Professional’ Are the Professions? A Review Arti
cle,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37(1) (January 1995), 196.
5. For instance, see Thomas L. Haskell, “Professionalism versus Capitalism:
R. H. Tawney, Emile Durkheim, and C. S. Pierce on the Disinterestedness of Pro
fessional Communities,” in Haskell, ed., Authority of Experts, 180–225.
6. On professionalism in the arts, see Emanuel Levy, “The Choice of Acting as
a Profession,” in Arnold W. Foster and Judith R. Blau, eds., Art and Society: Read
ings in the Sociology of the Arts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989),
111–131; David Earl Sutherland, “Ballet as a Career,” in Foster and Blau, eds., Art
and Society, 97–110; and Judith R. Blau, The Shape of Culture: A Study of Contempo
rary Cultural Patterns in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), 81–82.
7. Steven C. Dubin, Bureaucratizing the Muse: Public Funds and the Cultural
Worker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 25.
8. Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals. American Culture in the Age of Academe
(New York: Basic Books, 1987), 225–226. It is the need for alternate employment
that makes Pierre Bourdieu assert, “The ‘profession’ of writer or artist is one of the
least professionalized there is, despite all the efforts of ‘writers’ associations,’ ‘Pen
Clubs,’ etc.” See Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (New York: Co
lumbia University Press, 1993), 43.
9. On the difficulty of professionalizing music in the West, see Walter Salmen,
ed., The Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the 19th Cen
tury (New York: Pendragon Press, 1983).
10. An airline flight magazine, Hemispheres (December 1997), carried an ad for

Certified Marketing Services, Inc., which offers professional certification for sales
personnel. “Sales Professionals . . . It’s Time to Show the World You’re at the Top.
GET CERTIFIED!” “Certification means quality, integrity, and continuous im
provement.” Zig Ziglar, a “business motivation speaker” endorsed the product:
“This system furthers the cause of professional selling around the world. Top sales
people have high moral character and sound professional training, a requirement
of the CMSI program.”
11. Christopher Jencks, “Should the News Be Sold for Profit?” in Paul DiMag
gio, ed., Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 281–282.
12. Susan McClary, “The Blasphemy of Talking Politics during Bach Year,” in
Richard Leppert and Susan McClary, eds., Music and Society: The Politics of Composi
tion, Performance and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 17.
13. Janet Wolff, “Forward: The Ideology of Autonomous Art,” in Leppert and
McClary, eds., Music and Society, 3.
14. Jap van der Tas, “Dilettantism and Academies of Art: The Netherlands Ex
ample,” in Judith Huggins Balfe, ed., Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of
Art Patronage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 32.
15. The classic study is Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The The
ory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard
16. For example, see Harlan Jencks, From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Profes
sionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945–1981 (Boulder: Westview, 1981); Ellis Joffe,
Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps,
1949–1964 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965); Ellis Joffe, The Chinese
Army after Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); Ellis Joffe, “Party-
Army Relations in China: Retrospect and Prospect,” China Quarterly 146 (June
1996), 299–314.
17. Rueschemeyer, Power and the Division of Labor, 162–163.
18. Quoted in Richard Norton, Tonality in Western Culture. A Critical and Histor
ical Perspective (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984), 249.
19. Quoted in Diana Crane, The Transformation of the Avant-Garde. The New York
Art World, 1940–1985 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 48.
20. Xiaoqun Xu, Chinese Professionals and the Republican State: The Rise of Profes
sional Associations in Shanghai, 1912–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), analyzes the changes in more conventionally professional occupa
tions during the republican period. Xu concludes that physicians and attorneys
had an ambivalent relationship to the state, which ultimately fostered their pro
fessionalization.
21. On the moral voice of artists, see Ralph Crozier, “Qu Yuan and the Artists:
Ancient Symbols and Modern Politics in the Post-Mao Era,” Australian Journal of
Chinese Affairs 24 (July 1990), 25–50. I discuss the disdain for money among callig
raphers in Brushes with Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
22. See Richard Barnhart, “The ‘Wilde and Heterodox School’ of Ming Painting,”
in Theories of the Arts in China, Susan Bush and Christian Murck, eds. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), 365–396; the essays in Chu-tsing Li, ed., Artists
176 Chapter 5
and Patrons: Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Painting (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1989); and James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists
Lived and Worked in Traditional China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
23. China News Digest—Global (July 29, 1994).
24. On the social status of actors, see Colin P. Mackerras, The Rise of the Peking
Opera, 1770—1870: Social Aspects of the Theatre in Manchu China (London: Oxford
University Press, 1972); Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theatre in Modern Times
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1975); and Barbara E. Ward, “Not Merely Players:
Drama, Art, and Ritual in Traditional China,” Man 14(1) (March 1979), 18–39.
25. A. C. Scott, Actors Are Madmen: Notebook of a Theatregoer in China (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 8.
26. Ellen R. Judd, “Prelude to the ‘Yan’an Talks’: Problems in Transforming a
Literary Intelligentsia,” Modern China 11(3) (July 1985), 377–408.
27. David Holm, Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China (Oxford: Oxford Uni
versity Press, 1991).
28. See Bonnie S. McDougall, Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Lit
erature and Art”: A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary (Ann Arbor: Uni
versity of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1980).
29. Judd, “Prelude to the ‘Yan’an Talks,’” 398.
30. See Chang-tai Hung, “Reeducating a Blind Storyteller: Han Qixiang and the
Chinese Communist Storytelling Campaign,” Modern China 19(4) (October 1993),
395–426.
31. Judd, “Prelude to the ‘Yan’an Talks,’” 394.
32. Harold Rosenberg, “The Profession of Art: The W.P.A. Art Project,” in Art on
the Edge: Creators and Situations (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 197.
33. Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China (Berke
ley: University of California Press, 1994), 44.
34. For professional trends in other occupations, see Gordon White, Party and
Professionals: The Political Role of Teachers in Contemporary China (Armonk, N.Y.: M.
E. Sharpe, 1981); David M. Lampton, Health, Conflict, and the Chinese Political Sys
tem (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1974); and
Richard P. Suttmeier, Research and Revolution: Science Policy and Societal Change in
China (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1974).
35. Andrews, Painters and Politics, 227. See also Maria Galikowski, Art and Poli
tics in China, 1949–1984 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1998), 11–16.
36. “Ba yishu dangzuo shangpin shi kechi de xingwei” [“It is shameful to treat
art as a commodity”], Jiangxi ribao (December 11, 1954).
37. This was Mao’s excuse in 1955 when he declined to use his influence to find
a position for an old friend of his first wife, Yang Kaihui. Michael Y. M. Kau and
John K. Leung, eds., The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949–1976 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E.
Sharpe, 1986), 448.
38. Lars Ragvald, “Professionalism and Amateur Tendencies in Post-Revolu-
tionary Chinese Literature,” in Goren Malmqvist, ed., “Modern Chinese Litera
ture and Its Social Context,” Nobel Symposium 32 (Stockholm 1977), 159.
39. Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, and Eugene Wu, eds., The Secret
Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward (Cam
bridge: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1989), 237–238.
40. Colin Mackerras, “Traditional Mongolian Performing Arts in Inner Mongo

lia,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 10 (July 1983), 17–38; Colin Mackerras,
“Folksongs and Dances of China’s Minority Nationalities: Policy, Tradition, and
Professionalism,” Modern China 10(2) (April 1984), 187–226; Colin Mackerras,
“Uygur Performing Arts in Contemporary China,” China Quarterly 101 (March
1985), 58–77; Colin Mackerras, “Modernization and Contemporary Chinese The
atre: Commercialization and Professionalization,” in Constantine Tung and Colin
Mackerras, eds., Drama in the People’s Republic of China (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1987), 183–212.
41. Mackerras, “Uygur Performing Arts,” 76.
42. T. D. Huters, “Critical Ground: The Transformation of the May Fourth Era,” in
Bonnie McDougall, ed., Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s
Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 79–80.
43. Roderick MacFarquhar, The Hundred Flowers (London: Stevens & Sons,
1960), 191.
44. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Culture and Politics under Stalin: A Reappraisal,” Slavic
Review 35(2) (June 1976), 211–231.
45. Fitzpatrick, “Culture and Politics under Stalin,” 231.
46. Rudolf G. Wagner, “The Chinese Writer in His Own Mirror: Writers, State,
and Society—The Literary Evidence,” in Merle Goldman, Timothy Cheek, and
Carol Hamrin, eds., China’s Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship
(Cambridge: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1987), 225. Also
see Rudolf G. Wagner, Inside a Service Trade: Studies in Contemporary Chinese Prose
(Cambridge: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1992).
47. Chou Yang, “Reform the Ideology of Literature and Art, Improve the Work
of Leadership,” Peking NCNA (December 5, 1951), in Current Background 156 (Feb
ruary 5, 1952), 34.
48. Hu Qiaomu, “Why Must Literary and Arts Workers Carry Out Ideological
Reform?” Peking NCNA (December 5, 1951), in Current Background 156 (February
5, 1952), 23.
49. Fang Xing, “Ping Zhou Yang zai wendaihui shang de baogao” [“A critique
of Zhou Yang’s speech at the congress of literature and art”], Dongxiang 15 (De
cember 16, 1979), 20. See the indirect criticism by Hu Qiaomu, “Literary and Arts
Workers,” 20.
50. Lars Ragvald, Yao Wenyuan and Literary Critic and Theorist. The Emergence of
Chinese Zhdanovism (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, 1978), 6.
51. Lynn T. White III, Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in
China’s Cultural Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 137.
52. Douwe Fokkema, Literary Doctrine in China and Soviet Influence 1956–1960
(The Hague: Mouton, 1965), 140, 156.
53. Fokkema, Literary Doctrine, 172–173.
54. On China’s little-known multiparty system, see James D. Seymour, China’s
Satellite Parties (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1987), 72. In fact, one of the mi
nor parties, the Democratic League, recruited heavily among artists, increasing in
Shanghai from 52 to 290 in year before end of the Hundred Flowers. “Large-Scale
Anti-Rightist Struggle Launched by Art Circle in Shanghai,” NCNA (August 10,
1957), in Survey of the China Mainland Press 1601 (August 29, 1957), 11.
178 Chapter 5
55. “Large-Scale Anti-Rightist Struggle,” 11.

56. NCNA, “Propaganda Work Conference of CCP Shanghai Committee Closed”
(May 20, 1957), in Survey of the China Mainland Press 1539 (May 28, 1957), 18.
57. Hong Yung Lee, From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist
China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 61.
58. June 1964, quoted in “Comrade Chen Po-ta’s Speech,” Chinese Literature 8
(1967), 92. For Chinese discussion of the Hungarian poet Petofi Sandor
(1823–1849) and his eponymous club in 1956, see my “Eastern Europe as an Al
ternate West for China’s Middle Class,” Studies in Comparative Communism 22(4)
(Winter 1989), 323–336.
59. Merle Goldman, China’s Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent (Cambridge: Har
vard University Press, 1981), 106.
60. “Chen Yi’s Black Words (in respect to literature and art),” Beijing waishi
hongqi [“Foreign affairs red flag”] (May 26, 1967), in Survey of the China Mainland
Press 4002 (August 16, 1967), 2.
61. “Chen Yi’s Black Words,” 2.
62. See Ragvald, “Professionalism and Amateur Tendencies,” 152–179.
63. Lars Ragvald, “The Emergence of Worker-Writers in Shanghai,” in Christo
pher Howe, ed., Shanghai: Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 315.
64. Colin Mackerras, Amateur Theatre in China 1949–1966 (Canberra: Australian
National University Press, 1973), 8–10.
65. S. H. Chen, “Multiplicity in Uniformity: Poetry and the Great Leap For
ward,” in Roderick MacFarquhar, ed., China under Mao: Politics Takes Command
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966), 396.
66. Ragvald, Yao Wenyuan, 127–129.
67. Kai-yu Hsu, The Chinese Literary Scene. A Writer’s Visit to the People’s Repub
lic (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 6–9.
68. I rely on Ellen Johnston Laing, “Chinese Peasant Painting, 1958–1976: Am
ateur and Professional,” Art International 27(1) (January–March 1984), 2–12, 40.
69. Laing, “Chinese Peasant Painting,” 2.
70. On control of amateur drama through script, see Hua-yuan Li Mowry,
“Yang-pan Hsi—New Theatre in China,” in Studies in Chinese Communist Termi
nology 15 (Berkeley: University of California Center for Chinese Studies, 1973).
71. “Shunte Hsien Revolutionary Committee Bans the Black Drama Troupe and
Protects Model Revolutionary Theatrical Works,” Nan-fang jih-pao (February 16,
1970), in Survey of the China Mainland Press 269(Supplement) (April 9, 1970), 5–7.
72. Ellen Judd, “China’s Amateur Drama: The Movement to Popularize the
Revolutionary Model Operas,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 15(1) (Janu-
ary–February 1983), 26–35.
73. See the rather chilling account of cultural officials visiting her rural school
by Anchee Min, Red Azalea (New York: Pantheon Book, 1994).
74. Wang Anyi, Love in a Small Town (Hong Kong: Renditions, 1988), 11. A sim
ilar rise to royalty is conveyed in Anchee Min’s Red Azalea.
75. See Andrews, Painters and Politics, 396–400; “‘Xingxing meizhan’ fangwen
ji,” [“Interview with the artists of the ‘Stars fine arts exhibition’”], Guanchajia 37
(November 20, 1980), 39–42.
76. Richard Curt Kraus, Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and
the Struggle over Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). .
77. Judd, “China’s Amateur Drama,” 34, quoting Guangming ribao (February 27,
1976).
78. Agence France Presse, “Twilight Dancing Hotline Buzzes,” South China
Morning Post (May 28, 1996).
79. The school selected only fifty of five hundred applicants. See Chen Weimin,
“Minjian jutuan—xiqu wutai de shenglijun” [“Private opera companies—a main
force on the opera stage”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (February 11, 1990). See Macker
ras, “Modernization and Contemporary Chinese Theatre,” 191–194.
80. Zhao Dan, “Guande tai juti, wenyi mei xiwang” [“If controlled too tightly,
the arts have no hope”], Renmin ribao (October 8, 1980).
81. Wang Ruowang, “Tan wenyi de ‘wuwei er zhi’” [“On ‘rule through inac
tion’ for the arts”], Hongqi [“Red flag”] 9 (1979), 47–49. Discussed in Kyna Rubin,
“Keeper of the Flame: Wang Ruowang as Moral Critic of the State,” in Goldman,
Cheek, and Hamrin, eds., China’s Intellectuals, 233–250. Wang was retired in 1981
after his involvement with screenwriter Bai Hua, although Rubin reports he re
ceived a higher salary writing at home than working for Shanghai wenxue.
82. I discuss this episode in “Bai Hua: The Political Authority of a Writer,” in
Timothy Cheek and Carol Hamrin, eds., China’s Establishment Intellectuals (Ar-
monk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1986), 185–211.
83. Chen Kaige, dir., Huang tudi, 1985.
84. Goran Leijonhufvud, Going against the Tide: On Dissent and Big-Character
Posters in China (London: Curzon Press, 1990), 89–90.
85. The “scar” art was only critical of the leftist predecessors of Deng Xiaoping,
much like artists of the early 1950s were critical only of the Guomindang.
86. “On Party-Member Literature and Art Workers,” Xi’an shaanxi ribao (July 24,
1982), in FBIS (August 11, 1982), T3–4.
87. For background on Zhou Yang and alienation, see Bill Brugger, “Alienation
Revisited,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 12 (July 1984), 143–151.
88. On the professionalization of medicine, see Gail Henderson, “Increased In
equality in Health Care,” in Deborah Davis and Ezra F. Vogel, eds., Chinese Society
on the Eve of Tiananmen: The Impact of Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University
Council on East Asian Studies, 1990), 263–282.
89. Judy Polumbaum, “The Tribulations of China’s Journalists after a Decade of
Reform,” in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed. Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Jour
nalism (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 36, 41; and Judy Polumbaum, “‘Profes
sionalism’ in China’s Press Corps,” in Roger V. Des Forges, Luo Ning, and Wu
Yen-bo, eds., Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 1989: Chinese and American Reflec
tions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 295–311.
90. James V. Feinerman, “Law and Legal Professionalism in the People’s Re
public of China,” in Goldman, Cheek, and Hamrin, eds., China’s Intellectuals,
107–127.
91. See James Reardon-Anderson, The Study of Change: Chemistry in China,
1840–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
92. Yves Chevrier, “Micropolitics and the Factory Responsibility System,
1984–1987,” in Davis and Vogel, eds., Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen, 109–134.
180 Chapter 5
93. See Xiaohong Liu, Chinese Ambassadors: The Rise of Diplomatic Professional
ism since 1949 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).
94. Hong Yung Lee, From Revolutionary Cadres, 54, 61.
95. For example: “Although in China the term intellectual is used casually for
anyone with a college diploma, I use it here to refer to a range of educated, urban
professionals, including writers, architects, filmmakers, artists, critics, and pub
lishers.” Jianying Zha, China Pop (New York: The New Press, 1994), 5–6. American
sociologist Eliot Freidson argues that “professional” should replace “intelli
gentsia” and “intellectual” as the term describing “the carriers of formal knowl
edge.” See Freidson, Professional Powers, 20.
96. In reaction, journalist Dai Qing complained of the “promiscuous use of
the word ‘intellectual.’” See Geremie Barmé, “Traveling Heavy: The Intellectual
Baggage of the Chinese Diaspora,” Problems of Communism (January–April 1991),
108.
97. She Ji, “Great Designs Reflect the Times,” China Daily (November 14, 1995).
98. Cong Cao and Richard P. Suttmeier, “China’s ‘Brain Bank’?: The Chinese
Academician System and Elite Formation in Science and Engineering,” unpub
lished paper, 1998.
99. “Beijing Tightens Control over Books and Media” China News Digest—
Global (February 3, 1997).
100. For a history of the ideology of autonomous aesthetics in the West, see
Gene H. Bell-Villada, Art for Art’s Sake & Literary Life (Lincoln: University of Ne
braska Press, 1996).
101. Liu Zaifu, “Lishi jiaose de bianxing: Zhongguo xiandai zhishifenzi de ziwo
mishi” [“Chinese intellectuals’ loss of self and their changing historical role”],
Zhishi fenzi [“The Chinese intellectual”], 25:7(1) (autumn 1991), 43. Quoted in Vi
vian Catharina Harris, The Confluence of Politics and Culture: Intellectuals and Dis
course on Culture in China, University of Melbourne M.A. Thesis, 1994, 44.
102. Wendy Larson, Women and Writing in Modern China (Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press, 1998), 8.
103. Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, Gaobie geming [“Farewell to revolution”] (Hong
Kong: Tiandi Tushu, 1996).
104. Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (1975–1982) (Beijing: Foreign Languages
Press, 1984), 206.
105. Yi Jun, “Sixiang fenxi buneng daiti yishu fenxi” [“Ideological analysis can
not replace aesthetic analysis”], Renmin ribao (October 22, 1980).
106. Sun Shaozhen, “Xinshi meishu yuanze zi jueqi” [“New aesthetic principles
age are rising”], Shikan (3) (1981), 55–58. The episode is analyzed by William Tay,
“‘Obscure Poetry’: A Controversy in Post-Mao China,” in Jeffrey C. Kinkley, ed.,
After Mao: Chinese Literature and Society 1978–1981 (Cambridge: Harvard Univer
sity Council on East Asian Studies, 1985), 133–157.
107. Liang Xiaosheng, “Jinghua wenjianlu” [“What I have seen in Beijing”], in
Yang Yang, ed., Tianliang [“Conscience”] (Beijing: Dadi Chubanshe, 1988),
164–210.
108. Liang Xiaosheng, “Jinghua wenjianlu,” 189.
109. A quasi-official effort to place the movement for spiritual civilization in a
larger historical context is Ni Jianzhong, ed., Wenming zhongguo [“Civilized
China”] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Chubanshe, 1996).
110. Figures from Beijing Xinhua in English (April 20, 1981), in FBIS (April 23,
1981), K5; Wen Xue, “The Fourth Congress of Chinese Writers,” Chinese Literature
(autumn 1985), 178; Bi Sheng, “Zhongguo zuoxie rencai jiji huiyuan zongshu yiyu
sanqian” [“Chinese Writers’ Association personnel abundant, membership total
passes three thousand”], Renmin ribao (haiwaiban, “overseas edition”) (October 6,
1988); “Zhongguo zuoxie huiyuan yu wuqian” [“Over five thousand members in
Chinese Writers’ Association”], Mingbao yuekan 368 (August, 1996), 105.
111. Zhongguo chuban nianjian 1987 [“China publishing yearbook 1987”] (Beijing:
Zhongguo Shuji Chubanshe, 1988), 109–115; Xue Dong, “Shi yingshi, xiju, minjian
wenxue xiehui fenbie chengli” [“Separate municipal associations for television,
opera, and popular literature established”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 15, 1989).
112. Wu Hung, Transcience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth
Century (Chicago: University of Chicago David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art,
1999), 19.
113. Vivienne Shue, “State Sprawl: The Regulatory State and Social Life in a
Small Chinese City,” in Deborah S. Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces in Contemporary
China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 95–96.
114. Mao Yurun, Professor of Composition, Shanghai Conservatory of Music
(October 27, 1987), interviewed in Eugene, Oregon.
115. Merle Goldman and Timothy Cheek, “Introduction: Uncertain Change,” in
Goldman, Cheek, and Hamrin, eds., China’s Intellectuals, 17.
116. Perry Link, Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1992), 226.
117. Quoted in Wang Xiyu, “Beijing dang’an” [“Beijing file”], Jiushi niandai 235
(August 1989), 72.
118. See John Clark, “Official Reactions to Modern Art in China since the Bei
jing Massacre,” Pacific Affairs 65(3) (fall 1992), 334–352.
119. Helmut Martin, “‘Cultural China’: Irritation and Expectations at the End of
an Era,” in Maurice Brouseau, Kuan Hsin-chi, and Y. Y. Kueh, eds., China Review
1997 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1997), 295–297.
120. Su Yong, “Zhongguo zuoxie ‘wuda’ neiqing” [“The inside story of the fifth
congress of the chinese writers”], Jing bao 227 (June 1996), 41.
121. See Andrew Solomon, The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). One article for an internal publication of a
provincial branch of China’s Writers Association coolly compared the Chinese and
Soviet organizations, with envious comments on the higher incomes of Soviet au
thors. Jin He, “Sulian de zuojia tizhi” [“The organization of Soviet writers”], Fujian
zuoxie bao [“Fujian Writers Association news”] (restricted) 12 (May 15, 1987), 4.
122. John and Carol Garrard, Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union (New York: The
Free Press, 1990).
123. Looking beyond the arts toward the broader professionalization of intel
lectual life in the 1990s, see Ben Xu, Disenchanted Democracy: Chinese Cultural Crit
icism after 1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 57–87; and
Xudong Zhang, “The Making of the Post-Tiananmen Intellectual Field: A Critical
Overview,” in Xudong Zhang, ed., Whither China? Intellectual Politics in Contempo
rary China (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 19–24.
124. For the view that dependence upon patronage by political leaders restricts
182 Chapter 5
professional autonomy, see Hans Hendriscke, “Expertocracy and Professional

ism,” in David S. G. Goodman and Beverly Hooper, eds., China’s Quiet Revolution:
New Interactions between State and Society (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1994),
144–161.
125. See Ingo Müller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1991).
126. Polumbaum, “The Tribulations of China’s Journalists,” 47–48.
127. Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Making Science Masculine,” The Women’s Review of
Books 7(7) (April 1990), 13.
128. Calculations are based on figures cited in note 110 above.
129. Miklos Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism (New York:
Basic Books, 1987).
130. Haraszti, The Velvet Prison, 101.
131. Geremie Barmé, “The Chinese Velvet Prison: Culture in the ‘New Age,’
1976–89,” Issues and Studies 25(8) (August 1989), 54–79.
132. Paul Pickowicz, “Velvet Prisons and the Political Economy of Chinese
Filmmaking,” in Deborah Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces: Autonomy and Commu
nity in Contemporary China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
193–220.
133. Robert von Hallberg, ed., Literary Intellectuals and the Dissolution of the State:
Professionalism and Conformity in the G.D.R. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996).
134. von Hallberg, Literary Intellectuals, 13–14.
135. Consider Gao Xingjian’s remark in his 2000 Nobel prize acceptance
speech: “When writing is not a livelihood or when one is so engrossed in writing
that one forgets why one is writing and for whom one is writing it becomes a ne
cessity and one will write compulsively and give birth to literature. It is this non-
utilitarian aspect of literature that is fundamental to literature. That the writing of
literature has become a profession is an ugly outcome of the division of labour in
modern society and a very bitter fruit for the writer.” Gao Xingjian, “The Case for
Literature,” at www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/2000/gao-lecture.html (De
cember 7, 2000).
6
The Price of Beauty
A rtists and their audiences often believe that beauty is priceless, but
markets set prices on all commodities, including works of art. The
sense of entitlement found among many Chinese intellectuals has fueled re
sentment at the commodification of culture, as their accustomed terrain has
been transformed into an aesthetic marketplace. Talk of the laws of art may
help reclaim the intellectual autonomy of the arts, but the laws of the econ
omy have a very different impact, including uncertain rewards for artistic
work. China’s artists are often frustrated by the new marketplace, even as
they are annoyed with the old state patronage for abandoning them.
Few artists would want to abandon the reforms in cultural life. The
great majority surely enjoys the lightened hand of the state, with its
greater range of self-expression and the vastly increased availability of
cultural goods. Yet, the reform period has been an anxious time for artists.
Of course, anxiety is one of the main themes running throughout the en
tire cultural history of the People’s Republic of China; what is different
about the reform period is its focus. Artists now work without daily fear
that their work might evoke unwanted political controversy. Nor need
they worry that their family lives will be disrupted by periods of forced
reeducation in the countryside. The new anxieties are about financial se
curity, the quality of personal life, and the meaning of artistic work.
The arts market is now securely established in China. It is likely that the
worst of the economic crisis that I describe below has passed. Younger
artists are learning to operate effectively within a cultural marketplace,
reshaping, although not completely abandoning, the state-oriented as
sumptions of Chinese intellectuals. The weathering of China’s aesthetic
183
184 Chapter 6
crisis is of course a more subjective matter. In contrast to writing on Chi

nese culture, which has centered on the relationship between the arts and
the state, writings on Western arts have focused upon the connections be
tween art and the market. Some of the themes of this Western literature
may help make sense of the new politics of culture that is taking shape
alongside China’s arts marketplace.
THE ANXIETIES OF ARTISTS
The film Strangers in Beijing (Hun zai Beijing) captures the daily problems
of artists in the reform period.1 The movie deals with life in a Beijing pub
lishing house. The film begins not with problems of art, but with the
artists’ really bad housing. Like most socialist work units, the publishing
house provides low-cost, but unpleasant, housing for its employees and
their families. These arty people wear stylish clothes, but have to walk
through a hallway overflowing with sewer water. Private life and work
life have little separation; the neighbors with whom one quarrels over the
use of a communal kitchen are the colleagues with whom one must coop
erate in producing books. The atmosphere breeds nosiness and gossip
even among the most noble minded.
Three characters exemplify the personal dilemmas of the market. Zhe
Yili is a bad poet whom the market has inexplicably enriched as he turns
out vulgar lyrics for popular songs. He spends his money on his cellular
phone, nightclubs, and his songstress mistress. His prosperity earns him
the contemptuous envy of his fellow workers; family pressures compel
one scholarly neighbor to translate Zhe Yili’s absurd verses into English
for foreign publication, but he hates himself for swapping his artistic in
tegrity for money. Fine arts editor Ji Zi is an ambitious, but refined, single
woman. Colleagues presume unfairly that she is sleeping with the boss to
get ahead; their gossip wounds her deeply. Ji Zi is frustrated profession
ally; when she includes nude figures in her designs for a new book cover,
her old-fashioned and censorious supervisor rejects them as wanton. Fi
nally, Sha Xin is an idealistic and upright mandarin, a writer disgusted by
recent developments in the literary world—he wants to write for art, not
for money. When Sha Xin vents his disillusionment on the street by lec
turing a band of young toughs about the declining standards of civiliza
tion, they prove his point by beating and kicking him. A literary person in
old China would not encounter such treatment, which is eerily reminis
cent of Red Guard beatings of intellectuals at the outset of the Cultural
Revolution.
Not only is the housing bad, there is not enough of it. Sha Xin’s preg
nant wife comes from Sichuan to be with him for the birth of their child.
The Price of Beauty 185
Because she lacks a Beijing residence permit, she is not entitled to live in
the apartment. When a housing official is tipped off by a jealous neighbor
and tries to evict her, Sha Xin explodes in fury. His neighbors hold him
back from violence, but openly support his cause.
The publishing house is under great pressure to earn profits, but the ten
sion generated by debating countless marketing schemes sometimes evokes
harsh judgments about the book-buying public. One employee mutters
darkly, “What does the public know?” This vague public lurks in the back
ground throughout the film, as the artists constantly struggle to honor an ap
parently fickle new master who so unexpectedly dominates their lives.
At the end, one couple is cooking up plans to get rich with a series of
calendars: 365 days of makeup tips for women, a daily guide to blood
pressure, and so forth. Zhe Yili’s wife discovers his mistress, but the an
gry confrontation seems not to dampen his enthusiasms for the market’s
new opportunities. Ji Zi, rather than taking advantage of a chance to
travel abroad through the publishing house, resigns her job and heads
south for new opportunities in far away Hainan, where the market is even
more developed. Sha Xin and his wife return to Chengdu in Sichuan, un
happy to be leaving the nation’s cultural capital, but at least they will be
able to live together without challenge.
The overall mood of the Strangers in Beijing is pessimistic, but then it is
essentially a soap opera propagandizing the cause of professional artists:
In the early 1990s, China is not treating its artists well. They are being left
behind materially by the reforms, which reward the most dishonest and
punish the most pure. This film was not made early in the reform period,
but nearly two decades after the death of Mao; the expression of artists’
discontent has become a permanent feature of public life. Artists are ar
ticulate and have access to the mass media and, thus, are more effective
than many groups at expressing their discontent. These views should be
taken seriously. In the section that follows, I will explore the material and
aesthetic worries raised by Strangers in Beijing.
MATERIAL CONCERNS
With the notable exception of members of state-run performing ensem

bles, only a small number of artists work as full-time professionals for
state arts organizations; among writers, for instance, only two hundred fit
this category in 1989.2 Most professional artists earned their livings as bu
reaucrats in cultural organizations, editors for state-supported publica
tions, teachers, or in other such jobs. Many worked in cultural settings,
but only some of their time was given to the actual practice of art.3 With
the reforms, salaries for state jobs did not rise rapidly.
186 Chapter 6
A Widening Range of Economic Inequalities

Artists have felt the growing differentiation of wealth and income that the
reforms have encouraged throughout Chinese society. Before the reforms
there was only a narrow income differential among artists, who as state
employees earned similarly low wages whether they were poets or popu
lar singers. Moreover there were relatively few ways of supplementing
state salaries. Writers could earn royalties on their works, but Chinese
manuscript payments are set according to the number of words printed,
instead of the numbers of copies sold.
Initial state efforts to increase salaries for artists could not keep pace
with the top set by the more rapidly developing market for artistic work.
For instance a professional tenor for a state troupe had earned 52.5 yuan
per month until 1978, when his pay went up to over 90 yuan, plus a small
supplement for each performance.4 Yet, the famous painter, Huang Zhou,
could circumvent the limits of the state salary system by trading his paint
ings for “gifts” of imported electronic goods.5 A decade later, the cele
brated Guangzhou painter Guan Shanyue could sell a painting in Hong
Kong for U.S. $40,000.6
Rumors of market riches discouraged the great majority of artists who
saw their lives improving, but who were not becoming rich. As anxieties
increased, practitioners of different genres were quick to tell me how
other artists were enriching themselves under the reforms. Oil painters
presumed that calligraphers were doing better because they could pro
duce a work more quickly; calligraphers imagined that oil painters were
prospering because their individual works bore higher prices; both were
certain that musicians were the ones really raking it in. Their tone was not
bitter, but their anxieties were real. In fact, some celebrity artists within
each genre had opportunities to earn high incomes, but their lesser-
known colleagues continued to worry about how to keep up with infla
tion. For writers, publication in Hong Kong could produce extraordinary
income, but again, this was only open to well-known figures. Other writ
ers in Guangdong and Fujian sometimes fought inflation by writing
scripts for Hong Kong television, typically working under pseudonyms.
The market privileges stars in all genres, but ordinary artists in none.
Association with a well-established institution bore indirect, but im
portant, material benefits. By 1994 the China Academy of Fine Arts in
Hangzhou had three studios in Paris for the use of its staff.7 Painters at
tached to less glorious institutions were unlikely to get to Paris, much less
paint there.
Arts organizations in the booming coastal provinces enjoyed opportu
nities for sponsorship by overseas Chinese, by private business, and by
vigorous state enterprises. The Fujian Writers Association was able to set
up a small foundation to finance activities outside state support. These in

cluded twenty scholarships for young writers, an annual two-week re
treat for ten writers, subventions to publishers for Fujian writers, and
subsidies to employers to free writers to devote more time to their art.
Through such measures, the foundation helped the association compen
sate for the erosions of inflation in the state budget. It also enabled Fujian
to host a delegation of Italian writers, whose trip was otherwise restricted
by a national budget that allocated an unrealistic twenty-five yuan per
night for lodging. This income was in addition to relatively generous al
lotments to state-run cultural institutions. In contrast, the drive toward
self-sufficiency meant greater poverty for cultural organizations in inte
rior provinces. Twelve county libraries in Hunan in 1988 could not afford
to purchase any books; one canceled all periodical subscriptions except
Hunan Radio and Television News.8
The climate is one in which all artists feel they must hustle in ways that
are often demeaning and corrosive of their artistic integrity. The bad poet
satirized in the movie as a buffoon is one example, but on a deeper level,
no one wants to face the stark choice of playing the clown or being left
behind.
Inflation
Inflation has varied during the reform period, but has several times
reached 20 percent in the coastal cities where most artists work.9 Before
the reforms, when state patronage and state controls were both much
clearer, there was at least the consolation of low inflation, so that state jobs
were good ones. Salary increases have usually been slower than increases
in the cost of living, and income from state pay has lagged considerably
behind the incomes for the most successful of those artists who have
turned to the market. Artists and urban intellectuals feel strong peer and
family pressure to join China’s emerging consumer society, acquiring
such commodities as cellular phones, automobiles, and air conditioning,
thus putting considerable strain on their wages.10
The impact of inflation is insidious, going beyond eroding once-adequate
salaries to menacing whole categories of livelihood. Writers were especially
hit by inflation, which raised prices for newsprint and, thus, raised the costs
of all publications. This in turn intensified pressure on publication sub
scriptions, which increased in price, but often losing many readers as a
result—especially as state work units canceled subscriptions to official
magazines and newspapers to trim their own expenses. The state tried to
help by raising royalty rates, always welcome by writers, but with the risk
that it might make it more difficult to get one’s work published.11
188 Chapter 6
As the state chipped away at cultural subsidies, artists found their

livelihoods threatened. Cultural officials argued that they could save
money by cutting back on the massive number of “internal” publications.
These magazines and newspapers are published by bureaucratic units
(see chapter 4). At their best, they contain information, fiction, and art. At
their worst they are internal propaganda organs, similar to the in-house
newsletters familiar to workers in the West. What they have in common is
that they cannot be purchased, but are distributed to qualified members
of an organization. In 1993, there were five thousand internally published
newspapers and ten thousand magazines.12 The Ministry of Culture
pointed with horror to the negative example of Nanxian in Hunan, which
had seventy-one internal publications. By cutting this number to twenty-
five, local officials reduced their printing budget by one-half to ten thou
sand yuan.13 The years 1996 and 1997 brought a campaign to close more
internal publications. Yet, these publications provided artists an easy way
of supplementing their incomes. In fact, their semisecret nature meant
that a clever writer could publish variants of the same article or story in
multiple organs, without anyone being the wiser.14
Housing
The old system of state employment assured steady, but low, wages; it
also guaranteed housing, usually of rather low quality. When the range of
housing quality was narrow, housing was less of an issue; during the re
form period, however, China’s housing stock is being improved unevenly
and not rapidly enough to satisfy artists and other intellectuals.
The nicest apartment I visited in two years in Nanjing belonged to a
sculptor. He had torn out several walls of a flat located within an
anonymous-looking block of faculty apartments at the Nanjing Arts
College, so that the apartment seemed spacious, even though it was not
large by American standards. Wood paneled walls and a spare, modern
display of a very few works of art distinguished this place from the
cramped and not-too-pleasant quarters of his neighbors. A musician in
the same complex enjoyed the same amount of space in his rented apart
ment, but it was cut up into smaller and less well-appointed rooms.
Nanjing is a leader in implementing housing reform, a program by
which the state is trying to persuade residents of unit-provided housing
to purchase their apartments as condos. The sculptor’s apartment is quite
literally his, and the walls he ripped out are his own walls. But most Nan
jing intellectuals cannot afford to buy their apartments, and they are not
too sure that it is a good deal. But the state will eliminate the system of
highly subsidized rents to press people into buying their housing. The
anxieties on individuals are much like those pressing Americans who are
not quite able to come up with a down payment big enough to buy their
first house and fear that they will never be able to afford one.
Artists need space to work, which increases housing envy. Novelists
may lack suitable writing space, and painters may not have access to ad
equate studios. One well-established older painter assured me that he had
abandoned oils for watercolors not out of aesthetic preference, but be
cause the oils required too much space. Administrators make housing as
signments and often use them to reward supporters or punish those who
have been recalcitrant.15
Housing has another feature unfamiliar to most Westerners: because
apartments are controlled by work units, artists, like other urban workers,
end up spending their nonwork time surrounded by the same people
with whom they deal at the office. Thus, the strangers in Beijing fought
out their job-related disputes in their shared kitchens at home.
Corruption
Corruption has been one of the hallmarks of the reform period. Pent-up
desires, the shortages of a rapidly growing economy, and old-fashioned
greed have combined in a long-running festival of scheming dishonesty
that has touched the art world as it has all others. Young artists have had
to bribe officials in order to find jobs and housing or gain permission to
study and travel abroad. A common form of corruption has been for state
employees to use their positions to obtain goods at fixed prices, then sell
them at market prices. Artists are not often in a position to do this, but
have been exposed using their positions for petty acts of corruption.
When a Chaozhou opera troupe returned from performing in Hong Kong
in 1980, two-thirds of its sixty members were caught by customs agents as
they attempted to smuggle in 2 televisions, 3 boom boxes, 16 watches, 7
tape recorders, 3 electric fans, 418 calculators, 1 sewing machine, 315 au
dio cassettes, 8 antelope horns, more than 3,000 units of ginseng, 300
yards of cloth, more than 600 items of clothing, plus cameras, mahjong
tiles, liquor, candy, cigarettes, umbrellas, rice cookers, books, and pornog
raphy. Watches were concealed in the folds of opera costumes, smutty
magazines among the scores.16
On a grander level, valuable art has long been used as a discrete and
tasteful medium for bribery; laundering bribes through gifts of paintings
has increased with the reforms, tarnishing the self-image of purity enter
tained by many artists. The corruption of Deng Xiaoping’s family is well
known. His sons, Deng Pufang and Deng Zhifang, led the way in estab
lishing dishonest bonds between trading companies and China’s senior
leaders. Less notorious is Deng Xiaoping’s daughter, Deng Lin, a perfectly
respectable painter, who attracted much criticism when she sold a painting
190 Chapter 6
in Hong Kong for more than U.S. $10,000 in 1987. Even People’s Daily men
tioned this extravagant price, revealing that her works were in the collec
tions of such people as shipping magnate Y. K. Bao, and Jacques Chirac, as
well as in the Great Hall of the People. The presumption that Deng Lin was
selling influence along with her art was strengthened by her 1988 exhibi
tion at New York’s Hefner Gallery, the toy of Oklahoma natural-gas baron
and China trader Robert Hefner III, who claimed merely to be interested
in Chinese painting, not purchasing influence with China’s boss.17
AESTHETIC CONCERNS
Vulgarity
Some artists used sensationalism to attract consumers in the new cultural
market. Poets and serious novelists especially resented the difficulty of
competing with translations of Sidney Sheldon and homegrown novels of
sex and violence.
In wealthy rural Fujian, funeral musicians escalated their competition
by adding dancing girls to their ensembles. A teacher was shocked at his
aunt’s 1989 funeral to discover that the band included two dancing girls.
The band’s leader initially refused to exclude them, arguing that if they
did not dance in the funeral procession, his reputation would be ruined
when word spread that his band had no dancing girls. The teacher ulti
mately prevailed by threatening to have no musicians at all.18 The Fujian
musicians were emulating some Taiwanese funerals that include strip
pers.
Sensationalism also appeared in urban culture, sometimes unpleas
antly. The hot nightspot in Fuzhou in 1989 was a bar staffed by singing
dwarves, launching a debate over whether the owner was helping the dis
abled or appealing to the cruelest instincts of his audience. The singing
and dancing waiters were well paid, at three hundred yuan per day, and
for three months the place was packed with people attracted by the nov-
elty.19
But signs of vulgarity were not limited to peasant musicians and urban
bars. One of the oldest and most respected forms of Chinese opera is
kunqu. Its audiences have never matched its reputation, which led the
Shanghai Kunqu Company to hire a stage director from the film indus
try early in the reform period and to introduce acrobatics and dance
spectacles that had no traditional role in this staid operatic form.20 Tradi
tionalist fans were not pleased to see their art go Hollywood. Similar
trends can be seen in many arts, as Chinese have begun to reconsider aes
thetic departures that the cultural elite would formerly have disdained as
coarse.
Most intellectuals share the sense of market-driven coarseness spread

ing over the nation. Chinese who return home after years abroad are of
ten shocked by the new mood:
We went back to Sichuan in the summer of 1996. Things changed so much

that I could barely recognize anything or anybody. In terms of material life
it’s for the better. But otherwise it’s a mess and there lacked a sense of clarity
and groundedness. I didn’t feel like at home. Even the food wasn’t as good
as I remembered. And the pollution was at a dangerous level (tho nobody
seemed to pay attention to that). People were energetic, excited about mak
ing money, karaoke bars, cosmetics, etc. It felt rather primitive and culture-
less. We also spent two weeks in Beijing where my brother works. There the
same kind of wild, primitive passions dominate. On the once-stately Tianan
men Square walked ugly-looking nouveaux riches and their vulgar women.
I nearly fainted at the sight. People were crazy about McDonalds, the Hard
Rock Café, etc., all the garbage stuff. Somehow it seemed that people sud
denly lost all their taste for the healthy and the beautiful. I could hardly
imagine this was the country that produced such people like Lao Zi and
Zhuang Zi, and poetry like those from the Tang dynasty. I wish this first stage
of capitalism would be over soon and people would recover their finer
senses and build a life that is more worth living.21
The Destruction of Cultural Infrastructure

Although China made impressive progress against illiteracy in the first
three decades after 1949, the reform era eroded many of these gains. Many
became alarmed at the closing of rural schools. Rural women have been
the hardest hit; 70 percent of the 220 million Chinese adults who cannot
read are female, as is the case in most developing nations.22 In some cases
their parents refuse to spend the money on the heavy fees now required
by public schools; in others local schools have been closed. The rapid
spread of child labor has further exacerbated the educational gap among
the classes. Many rural families want their children to drop out and work
after graduating from elementary school, leaving them with insufficient
education to comprehend China’s increasingly sophisticated culture.
Of China’s 2,500 public libraries, nearly 1,000 purchased fewer than 100
new books in 1993, while 342 purchased none at all.23 In Henan, Xinyang
city proudly installed karaoke in the public library as part of the cam
paign to break through the traditional concept of “literature does not re
spect commerce.”24 Some rural state stores in Hunan Province closed their
book departments, turning the books over to their hardware depart-
ments.25 The state celebrated occasional oddments, such as the Hubei
mountain village that had eighty households and thirty-one thousand
books, yet the impact of these stories was perhaps less to inspire than to
remind everyone how exceptional they were.26
192 Chapter 6
The Ministry of Culture’s massive network of cultural centers was

forced to find ways to support itself; most of these units introduced pool
halls and video games as a way of earning money. When managed well,
these entertainments can subsidize libraries and painting classes. When
managed badly, the cultural centers are left with nothing except pool and
video games. Even worse, many poor localities have closed their cultural
facilities or (more commonly) only support them in a minimal way, some
times not even paying wages to the single person on the staff. This has
elicited appeals for several villages to combine their forces into one cen
tral cultural station.27
But there are still other aesthetic issues beyond loss of support for the
arts and a sense of encroaching vulgarity. Harder to pin down is a gnaw
ing sense that aesthetic standards are all up for reconsideration, that judg
ing beauty is no longer as simple a matter as it may once have seemed,
when artists could only dream of the state lightening its supervision of
their work.28
LEARNING THE MARKET
Most Chinese artists had little experience with markets; people with
strong business instincts are no doubt underrepresented among the artist
population in any country. But as early as 1979, the state provided clues
to young artists about the future.29 An early endorsement of capitalist ad
vertising defended billboards in aesthetic terms: “advertising is an art in
volving a wide section of the people. Good advertising can make our
cities beautiful, lift our spirits and make us feel proud of a thriving so
cialist economy or culture in a cheerful artistic atmosphere.”30 By 1982
there were academic collections of articles on the problems of commer
cializing the arts.31 Yet, it is one thing to be curious about the market, an
other to work it successfully.
Some arts, such as film, novels, and drama, have been sold to con
sumers for so long that nothing seems odd about their distribution as
commodities, although few artists were prepared for the changes that
took place, as these goods were increasingly outside the planned econ
omy. For instance, painters were shocked to find their works could be
priced by size.32 Yet, the rapid spread of the market transformed into com
modities some art products that had not previously been sold at all. Many
calligraphers were unhappy to see their artwork turned into price-bearing
products. Traditionally, calligraphy is an expression of a writer’s inner
personality, as well as an emblem of elite status, but at the end of the 1980s
some calligraphers were earning several hundred yuan (that is, as much
as U.S. $100) per character. The commodification of art could disconcert
consumers as well. In one incident, Tibetan patrons of a Sichuan dance

hall refused to pay the manager for the right to dance. They agreed to pur
chase food and beer, but believed that no one could turn their dancing
into a thing to be sold.33 Neither popular dance nor calligraphy had pre
viously been part of the commercial economy, and their transformation
into commodities was a profound challenge to conventional assumptions
about the relationship of art to society.
The effort to master the market was filled with sometimes unhappy sur
prises. A lack of financial experience hurt some artists, and their sometimes
tragic stories spread concern throughout the arts community. Cao Hua, a
Jiangxi student of art theory with no business experience, borrowed money
from Taiwanese investors to set up a Jiangxi folk music troupe of thirty
members in 1988. Cao killed himself when he was unable to repay his back
ers. Another suicide was Li Pei, a thirty-three-year-old graduate student at
Beijing’s Central Conservatory; Li was despondent after being swindled
out of money she was going to trade on the black market for hard currency
to help Chinese orchestra members on a tour of Eastern Europe.34
Many efforts by young artists to take advantage of the market initially
aroused controversy. Violinists played salon music in the lobbies of fine
hotels, and performers of traditional Chinese instruments entertained
shoppers in department stores. Writers and painters applied their skills to
advertising, as art schools eventually incorporated design into their cur
ricula. Established artists scorned each of these developments as exam
ples of going commercial, leaving younger experimenters with the mar
ket doubly confused.
It is difficult to convey how clueless many young artists were about
markets, especially in the first decade of the reforms. One of the most
awkward and painful conversations I have had with a Chinese artist took
place in Fujian shortly after the Beijing Massacre, when political anxieties
about China’s future were at their highest. Many artists were fearful that
the door between China and the West was about to shut, before they
could taste the opportunities imagined to lie on the other side. An oil
painter visited me with photos of his work; we had met only casually on
a bus two months earlier. This was more than an ordinary painter’s hus
tle, as he was obviously fearful. Accompanied to my apartment by his
wife, he forcefully asked me to take the photos to the United States and
“show them to millionaires you know.” My repeated protests that I knew
no millionaires struck him as deceitful. One of his art academy classmates
had in fact struck it rich in the United States by selling oil paintings to mil
lionaires, and nothing I could say would disabuse the painter of his dream
of somehow making the right connection.35
The painter was merely attempting a strategy followed by many Chi
nese to cope with the uncertainties of the market, that of applying
194 Chapter 6
whatever social capital one can command to master the market. Despite
our superficial relationship, he sought to use me, as the only Chinese-
speaking American he knew, to expand his market contacts. In this in
stance, the strategy failed, but for others it was successful.
China lacked the commercial infrastructure that manages interactions
between artists and consumers in long-established capitalist societies.
These include agents to negotiate favorable terms for artist clients, unions
to represent groups of performers, gallery owners to show paintings, im
presarios to arrange concert tours, and attorneys to protect the legal in
terests of artists.36 Their absence left artists to discover for themselves how
to operate in the new commercial environment. More sophisticated artists
realized that they were being exploited, for instance, when a foreign citi
zen would buy a batch of paintings at low prices for resale abroad. Al
though agents and private galleries became more prominent in the 1990s,
the immaturity of the cultural market prompted officials to encourage the
development of a fuller set of market-oriented bodies to bring art to cus
tomers. In Shanghai, the Cultural Administration Bureau initiated a pro
gram to train professional promoters to be sufficiently market savvy to
keep the city’s forty theaters busy, and a Shanghai Propaganda Depart
ment official published a collection of essays on art galleries.37
As in the economy at large, some artists got rich first. The interface be
tween private and public arts was the site of many enterprising deals.
Singers of popular music had better opportunities than most other
artists, because they were able to take advantage of their status as em
ployees of state song-and-dance troupes; some moonlighted for enor
mous fees, going underground without authorization from their work
units.38 In 1988 at least seventeen singers earned over six hundred yuan
for a single performance. Yet, they could have the state subsidize their
market ventures by relying upon housing, insurance, and other benefits
provided by their official work units.39 Of course, artists are not alone in
relying upon state employment as a buffer against the market; stock
speculators and other entrepreneurial types also use government offices
as bases for market activities.40 Resentment against commercially suc
cessful artists who take advantage of their state work units is mitigated
by the realization that they cannot simply quit and move to new jobs eas-
ily.41 Sometimes whole private companies have built their fortunes on
state property. An opera company begun in Sanming, Fujian, included
some of the performers from a state-run company and used the state’s
costumes and equipment. This made entry into the entertainment market
easier, but gave unfair advantage to those with good connections.42 The
situation was no different from that of a local official who enriched his
family by using publicly owned vehicles to start a private trucking com
pany.
Fans and rival artists were less forgiving on the subject of tax evasion.
With new tax regulations in 1987, the state sought to raise revenues, while
diminishing the gap between commercially successful stars and less glam
orous artists still heavily dependent upon government employment. Tax
evasion has been a chronic issue ever since. Mao Amin, who earned two
thousand yuan for a single performance as China’s biggest pop star in the
late 1980s, was fined thirty-four thousand yuan for tax evasion, after lying
to the Beijing Evening News about under-the-table payments from a luxury
hotel.43 Tax evasion by stars continued through the 1990s, with an increas
ingly frustrated state threatening to ban performances for six months by
those convicted of tax evasion for a third time.44 Some successful elite
artists also evaded tax payments; a Henan Daily reporter was arrested for
blackmailing the noted calligrapher Pang Zhonghua, threatening to pub
lish his tax records unless he paid twenty thousand yuan in hush money.45
By the late 1990s, the younger generation of artists no longer expected
state support as the norm. Especially after Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 southern
inspection inspired millions to take a plunge into the market, artists have
joined other Chinese in becoming more market savvy. Zhang Xianliang,
author of several popular novels based on his prison-camp experiences,
was something of a model to younger writers, setting up two companies
as an entrepreneur, swearing that the “market is merely a temporary
lover,” while literature is his “partner to accompany him forever.”46 And
Wang Shuo, Beijing’s bad boy novelist, was almost as well known for his
business deals as he was for his writing.
Some abandoned art altogether, seeking their fortunes in other fields.
How does one calculate the benefit or loss to China and to art that a talented
Nanjing painter has made a fortune manufacturing machines to read credit
cards? The artist seems not to have many regrets about his career change,
but the cumulative impact of such cases on the nation as a whole is per
ceptible. After the first decade of reform, for instance, the Fujian Writers As-
sociation’s annual intake of new members declined from fifteen to only one
or two new members. Fujian’s booming commercial economy leads many
young people to turn to business instead of culture, although contributions
to literary magazines have not declined so drastically in most provinces as
they have along the coast. The irony is that Fujian’s prosperity leaves its arts
associations in better shape to help young artists than ever before.
Julian Yu Jing-jun is a successful Australian composer who emigrated
from China in 1985. Returning to Beijing, he found his friends were unin
terested in his expatriate musical career.
I told them what I am doing in Australia, but everybody is talking about
money and how to make money in China now. One of my friends said: “You
seem like you come from another planet, you are talking so purely about the
arts. If you were like that in China you would starve.”47
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Despite growling from many artists about the market’s perils, the fact
is that China’s market for culture has been transformed over the past two
decades. As the nation has prospered, the amount of disposable income
spent on culture by urban Chinese increased from 10 percent in 1993 to
18.5 percent in 1995.48 While intellectuals often disdain the entrepreneurs
who profit most dramatically from economic growth, even these suppos
edly crude people seek the refinements of culture as they enjoy upward
mobility in good bourgeois fashion.
Deborah Davis found a sharply rising trend among Shanghai urban
household income devoted to pleasure, which grew from 4 percent in
1982 to 8 percent in 1994 and 10 percent in 1995.49 On May 1, 1995, China
shortened the workweek to five days, primarily to fight unemployment,
traffic congestion, and energy shortages. However, a secondary conse
quence has been to stimulate demand for culture and entertainment as
urban citizens have more leisure.50
Family cultural expenditures quadrupled in the mid-1980s in prosper
ous Jinzhou, where by 1988 97 percent of homes had television.51 One-
third of these Jinzhou families consisted of two parents and a single
child, who became the cultural target for the new marketplace eager to
sell magazines and educational toys, as well as musical instruments. The
parents also put pressure on local authorities to improve such public cul
tural amenities as libraries and parks. These demographic changes in
tensified the greater cultural shift away from now old-fashioned tastes
for Chinese opera, storytelling in the parks, realist fiction, and Western
classical music.
The rage for classical music that opened the reform period declined by
the late 1980s, as the high-culture boom failed to sustain itself. In 1985 the
Association of Shanghai Symphony Lovers attracted one thousand sup
porters, only to lose half its members by 1989. Similar trends hit other elite
forms of music, with many blaming video games and pop music for the
decline, in addition to tired programming of indifferent quality.52
Novelist Liu Heng suggested an alternative explanation in his novel of
alienated Beijing life, Black Snow. The novel describes Li Huiquan, an ex-
convict who sells clothing from a market stall. Li tries to participate in the
fad for classical music by attending a program at the Beijing Concert Hall:
“When the music began he thought he was the only one who pretended
to enjoy it, until he realized that practically everyone else was doing the
same thing. It was unendurable. He never went again.” Visits to an art
museum did not fare much better; Li became depressed and spent more
time smoking cigarettes than looking at paintings.53
The market for high art turned out to be more limited than intellectuals
had hoped. As prosperity spread to people without education or West
ernized tastes, demand for more popular forms of culture predictably ex
panded more rapidly than for the supposedly more ennobling high art.
For artists who had grown to maturity without considering the market a
legitimate way of distributing cultural products, such changes were diffi
cult to accept. One critic describes how the sudden boom in popular liter
ature shocked many writers who were accustomed to writing by assign
ment: “All of a sudden, the reading public was to be entertained rather
than educated; it took on the role of a choosy customer rather than a faith
ful, only less cultivated fellow comrade.”54
Still, others adapted, as is shown in the rise of the new genre of theatri
cal “little pieces (xiaopin).”55 One way spoken drama troupes coped with
competition from the commercial economy was to develop satirical
sketches as a kind of artistic fast food. These sketches typically criticize
the commercialism that is enriching their creators. The popularity of these
sketches on television has made stars of some actors and solved the fi
nancial worries of some writers. An actor can earn ten thousand yuan per
performance on television, in contrast to a few yuan for an opera per
formance. The sketches especially mock the way in which social rankings
have been turned upside-down by the new economy, where money out
weighs bureaucratic rank. Television is the medium by which China has
produced a group of millionaire writers; more will follow, it was said at
the 2002 Congress of the Writers Association. 56
Professionals Negotiating the Cultural Marketplace

Just as artists were realizing some progress in asserting their autonomous
realm of expertise from state authority, along came the market, which of
course recognizes no such claim. It is no small accomplishment to per
suade propaganda officials to acquiesce in talk of the laws of art, but the
new cultural market only cares about economics, and is not subject to per
suasion. Nonetheless, professionalism helped artists to cope with the in
securities and anxieties introduced by the erosion of state sinecures.
As early as 1980, Gu Yuan, vice president of the Central Fine Arts Acad
emy, argued that application of economic laws would distort art.57 He
complained that the search for foreign exchange led to a focus on ex
portable works, so that their value in trade became, in effect, a measure of
their aesthetic worth. Lack of private customers for oil portraits meant
that these could only be warehoused. But the newly marketized cost of
storage hurt large-scale oils and sculptures especially hard. The profit mo
tive in fine arts publishing stalled publication of a periodical for wood
block prints, which would not earn much money as compared with some
other commercial junk. The China Art Gallery had to rent out its space to
nonart functions. Such problems, Gu said, could only be addressed by re
specting the laws of art.
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Assertions of professional standards aided state-employed artists when

the state imposed licensing procedures that effectively discouraged pri
vate competition. Private actors and singers in Anhui were forced to pass
an examination on politics and culture before receiving licenses to per
form during the 1983 spiritual pollution campaign.58 Similar trends
emerged as the purge following the Beijing Massacre was accompanied
by a more general crackdown on lawlessness and disorder. A Ministry of
Culture newspaper publicized a letter from Hunan demanding that pri
vate sellers of arts lessons (music, dance, photography, painting, writing,
acting, acrobatics) be licensed by local cultural departments.59 A similar
spirit of professionalism allowed Xiamen physicians to rid themselves of
competition from fifty quacks who had flourished in the market econ-
omy.60 Similarly, a 1996 regulation by the Ministry of Culture reinforced
the clannish aspect of professionalism by requiring that local cultural of
ficials license actors. Ostensibly a way to assure payment of taxes, it
sounded like a device to limit entry to new performers, who must first
pass an examination in their art. The subsequent announcement of new
fines for unlicensed commercial stage performers was justified as a re
striction against sex and superstition, but it also placed obstacles in the
path of private rivals to state-run ensembles.61
Chinese artists support state reinforcement of their professionalism
when it helps regulate the market in their interests, as in the prohibition
of fraudulent works or the enforcement of their copyrights.62 The fact that
the associations themselves have rarely initiated such regulation shows
the limits of arts professionalism. It was a notable departure for the All-
China Association of Journalists to establish a committee to help journal
ists protect their rights against a rash of lawsuits by unhappy subjects of
their reporting.63
Yet, the more the market grows, the less the professional associations
are able to aid in negotiating its mysterious ways. Early in the reform pe
riod, membership in the associations was the obvious course for any am
bitious young artist. The hopeful, yet depressed, poet Gu Cheng included
the following in an “Autobiographical Montage:” “1982. I showed my
prize and the catalogue of my published works to a comrade at the Bei
jing Writers Union. ‘More than three hundred pieces—nearly enough’ I
opened the membership card and wrote three words in the space marked
Occupation: ‘Waiting for Work.’”64
Yet, already in 1979 the notorious “Stars” fine arts exhibition was or
ganized by amateurs, painters, and sculptors who were not members of
the Artists Association. Although they received some encouragement
from association officials, one of the messages of the event was that one
could make art outside the professional establishment. With the expan
sion of the market, this became much easier to accomplish. At the same
time, the professional associations no longer have as much money to

mount exhibitions, help with publications, or otherwise ease the careers
of their members.65 Many still seek membership, but as a badge of status,
often achieved after commercial success.
One must put artists’ complaints in perspective. Most professional
artists would be happiest if the reform era had ended all political super
vision while increasing state subsidies. Yet, their lives have eased enor
mously. The material conditions under which artists work seem inade
quate by Western standards, but it is quite clear within China that artists
continue to be privileged over ordinary workers and peasants in their bu
reaucratic benefits, their urban apartments, and now their access to mar
ket opportunities. The Party has not simply tossed artists back into the
chaos of the pre-1949 market. Instead, decades of education and rising in
comes have created the conditions for commercial market activity. More
over, where some rail against the coarseness of commercial culture, others
find in it vitality and inspiration.
Nor should one lose sight of the extent to which the state has subsi
dized culture, even of a critical sort. For instance, Reading (Dushu) is re
spected as a leading liberal free-thinking journal, but it is also a state pub-
lication.66 One of the great works of the reform era was Xu Bing’s Book of
the Sky (Tianshu). This vast series of pages present Chinese characters that
resemble the real thing, but are in fact nonsense, invented, carved, and
printed while the artist worked for the state. Xu Bing playfully, yet seri
ously (given the scale of the work), suggests a subversive vision of Chi
nese literary culture, all form and devoid of content.
ART AGAINST COMMERCE: THE TAINT OF MONEY
It is of course absurd to imagine that artists who grumble about the mar
ket are all somehow nostalgic for Maoism. China’s artists are certainly not
alone in decrying the impact of commerce upon their work. Artists in the
capitalist West have long made their own long march between two con
tradictory values: the practical necessity of making money from the
masses as customers and a sophisticated disdain for popular aesthetic
standards. With the rapid commodification of China’s culture, artists are
encountering a similar dynamic, with all of its nervous mixture of cyni
cism and anxiety.
Pierre Bourdieu’s writings on the cultural field offer a helpful perspec
tive on the often discussed tension between art and economics.67 We com
monly treat this relationship as a regrettable contradiction between lofty
ideals and vulgar greed, between dreamy visions and hardheaded practi
cality, between timeless civilization and fickle market trends. From this
200 Chapter 6
romantic perspective, the problem for the artist is how to maintain artis
tic integrity while earning a livelihood. But Bourdieu does not treat the
tension between art and commerce as a problem to be solved in order to
make the arts world right. Instead, he sees the interplay of art and com
merce as a defining characteristic of cultural work.68 Bourdieu’s approach
has three basic features.
First, Bourdieu sees society as a series of fields (education, culture, sci
ence, the military, sports, medicine, farming, etc.), each hierarchically or
ganized and “each defined as a structured space with its own laws of
functioning and its own relations of force independent of those of politics
and the economy, except, obviously, in the cases of the economic and po
litical fields.”69 The structure of a field is rather simply constituted by the
relations among positions occupied by its participants, at any given mo
ment. A field is thus dynamic because its structure shifts as participants
change their positions through professional successes and frustrations, as
well as the inevitable mobility of age and death.
Second, the cultural field is uniquely driven by a logic that values artis
tic above commercial success. While high income is well regarded in most
areas of modern life, cultural work reverses the conventional economic
world so that prosperity can easily be taken as proof that one has pan
dered to the unsophisticated. Among artists, notable financial reward can
become a measure of aesthetic failure, of a lack of taste. Bourdieu identi
fies the “winner loses” logic by which true artists disdain their fellow
workers who make lots of money or aspire too obviously to do so. “The
literary and artistic world is so ordered that those who enter it have an in
terest in disinterestedness.”70 Or rather, they have an interest in the ap
pearance of disinterest in money. Nonmonetary rewards such as recogni
tion by one’s peers have enormous influence in the cultural field.
The taint of money was nortoriously powerful in China’s Artistic Tra
dition:
Chinese writers, old and modern, with very few exceptions, scrupulously
avoid discussing such matters, feeling that even to acknowledge them as se
rious concerns of the artist would demean that artist. Economic factors are
thus excluded from accounts of artists, like sex was excluded from Victorian
novels by people who were familiar enough with it in their everyday lives
but felt it improper to allude to it in their books.71
Illustrations of the tension between artistic reputation and commercial

success are commonplace in recent American culture. Novelist Paul
Auster devoted a memoir to rueful descriptions of his youthful pursuit of
money at the expense of his art.72 Gore Vidal recalled that after commer
cial success as a writer for television, he “was also being written off as any
sort of novelist. There might have been a certain sad prestige had I failed
in television, but to have been successful was a sign of fundamental

flaw.”73 Or at the height of painter Jackson Pollack’s success, he is said to
have needed the validation of the less famous, but professionally re
spected Earl Kerkam, who thrilled Pollack by judging his recent work as
“not bad.” “Pollack, despite his public fame, hungered for a kind of ap
proval that only the artists’ art world could give him.”74
Bourdieu’s third feature is that the key participants in the cultural field
are those whose reputations and institutional positions authorize them to
say who should be rewarded with the sacred name of artist, thus defining
the field’s limits. Such a leader has “the power to consecrate and to win
assent when he or she consecrates an author or a work—with a preface, a
favourable review, a prize, etc.”75 Other artists may deal with these fig
ures either by honoring them (demonstrating their allegiance) or by con
testing their authority (often thereby challenging their definition of the
cultural field and its established aesthetics).
Bourdieu develops these concepts through a discussion of French liter
ary and dramatic controversies of the nineteenth and early-twentieth cen
turies, including an elaborate discussion of Flaubert’s A Sentimental Edu
cation. This may seem to be rather distant from contemporary Chinese
politics, but in fact suggests ways to understand how China’s artists are
responding to the changes in their political economy.
Conflict within the cultural field assumes two major forms. In the first axis,
the consecrated elite sneer at their commercially successful comrades for sell
ing out to the vulgar marketplace. For instance, when critics remark cattily
that novelist Su Tong was enriched when his story was made into the film
Raise the Red Lantern by director Zhang Yimou, they suggest that he should
be valued less highly because he committed the offense of making money.76
Going commercial means forgoing the most prestigious form of
profit—being able to earn money while appearing to be indifferent. It is
not that the consecrated figures who dominate the field are impoverished.
In fact,
they are not only the most expensive or the most profitable but also the most
readable and the most acceptable because they have become part of “general
culture” through a process of familiarization which may or may not have
been accompanied by specific teaching. What distinguishes them from com
mercial writers and artists is that they do not appear to aim at profit. They
possess “symbolic capital,” a kind of “credit” which, under certain condi
tions, and always in the long run, guarantees “economic” profits.77
The case of novelist Wang Shuo illustrates this principle in contempo

rary China. Although in the late 1980s and early 1990s Wang Shuo was
enormously popular with younger urban readers for his tough and cyni
cal tales of Beijing lowlife, old-fashioned writers and readers rejected him
202 Chapter 6
as a literary version of the hooligans he depicted and complained that

anyone who sold so many books couldn’t possibly be good. A consecrated
figure was Wang Meng, a reform-minded modernist whose social-realist
fiction criticized social trends, but not so bitterly that he could not serve
as minister of culture in the late 1980s. In contrast, Wang Shuo rejected
such politics and aspired to a career of influence in such overtly commer
cial institutions as television and film.78 Wang Shuo recognized that artists
were upset as economic change threatened their formerly reliable liveli
hoods. “I think their sense of crisis following the great wave of commod
ification is more intense than any other social stratum.” Yet, Wang, who
has flourished with the market, spoke of the cleansing impact of com
modification, which allowed the character of the Chinese people to
emerge.79
In the second major axis of conflict, the cultural elite tries to protect its
orthodoxy against heretical challenges from (often marginally) younger
generations for new standards of aesthetic evaluation. Changes in estab
lished taste reconfigure hierarchies within the cultural field by abandon
ing standards that privileged former elites.
Specifically, aesthetic conflicts about the legitimate vision of the
world—in the last resort, about what deserves to be represented and the
right way to represent it—are political conflicts (appearing in their most
euphemized form) for the power to impose the dominant definition of re
ality in general, and social reality in particular.80
In this conflict, artists often turn to tests of technique. A “dialectic of cul
tural distinction” values form more highly than content, respecting the
mode of representation over the object of representation. Technical issues
predominate in a quest for purity and abstraction.81 In battles between old
and new avant-gardes, the former tries to conserve its cultural capital
through routinization, while the latter seeks to subvert it, often by ap
pealing to a lost original purity.82 For instance, the rebels of nineteenth-
century French painting refused to give their paintings a narrative con
tent; the impressionists opened up a road that led to painting being about
painting itself. Judith Huggins Balfe argues that even commercially suc
cessful artists often turn to the development of the “formal aesthetic qual
ities in their work” precisely to allow “them to disassociate themselves
from their original sponsors.”83
Here the Chinese counterpart is the threatened place of the old-line so
cial realists—not such Maoist writers of the Cultural Revolution as Hao
Ran, but the generation that includes Wang Meng, Liu Xinwu, or Lu
Wenfu. Members of this cohort first made their mark during the 1950s,
were disgraced as rightists, then restored to prominence soon after Mao’s
death. They presumed that their moment to set China’s aesthetic mood
had come, that China would benefit from their progressive, yet socially
critical, art. In many respects this group looked back before the revolution
to the traditions of May Fourth art. Yet, by the latter part of the 1980s,
younger writers (and readers) were no longer interested in social realism
and challenged the elite through their highly individualistic, asocial, and
bleakly alienated fiction. One anthology of new fiction includes Lu Rui’s
“The Brake-Stone” (the protagonist shares a wife with a cart driver), Wen
Yuhong’s “The Mad City” (dog butchers lead a town into a frenzy of self
destruction), Yu Hua’s “One Kind of Reality” (family loyalties and mur
der are topped off by a postexecution harvesting of organs).84 These bitter,
nihilistic stories contrast with the politically reforming impulse of the
older generation’s realism.
Costs of entry are relatively low in literature and fine arts (in contrast to
the much more expensive film or television); thus, it is difficult for arts
elites to bar challengers from entering into the cultural field.
There is no other criterion for membership in a field than the objective
fact of producing effects within it. One of the difficulties of orthodox de
fense against heretical transformation of the field by a redefinition of the
tacit or explicit terms of entry is the fact that polemics imply a form of
recognition; adversaries whom one would prefer to destroy by ignoring
them cannot be combated without consecrating them.85
When Chinese critics discussed Wang Xiaobo, author of the racily contro
versial novel Golden Years, he was often identified as a “talent from outside
the world of letters,” as they sought to distance him from the literary estab
lishment. But a Guangzhou critic observed that as soon as people identified
him as a talent, “in practice he has already entered the world of letters.”86
Professionalism offers artists a way of negotiating the confusion of mar
ket reform, sometimes by claiming that their work is so advanced that the
masses cannot grasp its significance. This is the course followed by po
etry, which has shrunk from a once proud pastime for China’s educated
elite into an ever more refined and technical activity among a tiny group
of professional poets.87 According to Henry Y. H. Zhao, popular writing in
the early 1980s
severely reduced the readership of [serious] Chinese fiction. This caused a fi
nancial crisis but it also enabled Chinese fiction to eschew all the non-literary
functions it had previously been forced to take on, and to free itself from so
cial and ideological pressures. The shrunken readership also became more
elitist, consisting mainly of students. By distancing itself from the immediate
social need of entertainment and edification, Chinese fiction had won the
right to develop in its own direction.88
Longing for a reputation for creative refinement among fellow artists is

so great that even those working in so commercial a medium as film seek
it. Members of the post-Mao fifth generation of moviemakers were alleged
204 Chapter 6
to say, in the years before they accepted commercial moviemaking, “My

films belong to the next century. The audience who can understand my
film haven’t [sic] yet been born.”89 Bourdieu would treat such a claim as
one of the myths of romanticism:
The representation of culture as a kind of superior reality, irreducible to the

vulgar demands of economics, and the ideology of free, disinterested “cre
ation” founded on the spontaneity of innate inspiration—appear to be just so
many reactions to the pressures of an anonymous market.90
ART AGAINST POWER: THE BITTERSWEET LOSS OF POLITICS
Bourdieu reminds us that communities of artists will often be torn be

tween evaluation criteria determined by the artists themselves and their
aesthetic technique and standards from outside the arts world, typically
financial success. We should recall, however, that China’s artists have also
long had an additional external criterion for evaluation: the measure of
politics.
In its most immediate and simplest form, political standards were used
by the Communist Party to reward and punish artists, especially during
the Maoist period, though the practice continues in attenuated form. As
artists differ on the weight they attach to the polarity of purely aesthetic
standards versus monetary success, so do they vary in their assessments
of pure aesthetic versus political success. For instance, novelist Hao Ran,
the only writer paid royalties during the Cultural Revolution, probably
regrets the shift from political judgment.91 Similarly, artists of propaganda
paintings, recognized as a distinct genre during the Maoist period, may
also regret the reform era’s disinterest in their work. Most artists are
happy to be rid of political surveillance and to have careers somewhat re
moved from the state.92
Yet, there is a second way in which political and purely aesthetic stan
dards have coexisted. In contrast to the Maoists’ often clumsy use of art as
a weapon for waging political conflict, most educated people have shared
a commitment to the subtler mandarin tradition. Here intellectuals, in
cluding artists, have an obligation to become teachers to society, to use
their skills to rectify social and political ills. This tradition never died in
twentieth-century China. Artists who emerged in the early reform period
eagerly anticipated a renewal of the May Fourth agenda, with pride of
place given to the artist who could articulate progressive visions for the na-
tion’s future. Artists who might scorn art created to meet political de
mands of the moment might well still esteem work that bears a high moral
tone. The mission of moral tutelage thus offers a commercial-political po
larity parallel to the commercial-aesthetic dualism described by Bourdieu.
Through the reforms, artists gained the right to produce depoliticized

art, addressing their personal visions, be they imbued with a moral con
tent or empty of social concern. What they have begun to lose is the priv
ileged status of the literati tradition and its moralizing art. Few antici
pated the need to compete with video games, imported pornography,
Walt Disney, or canto-pop singers, all of which came headlong into China
along with the lightening of political controls over the arts.
Art for art’s sake has limited appeal in China, where it seems to lack the
moral commitment of China’s humanist tradition. Even in the United
States, this battle cry of the pure aesthete is most commonly encountered
at the movies, when the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion disingenuously roars
ars gratia artis from beneath its enclosing Latin banner. In China, “art for
the Party’s sake” is an unappealing slogan these days, but “art for the na-
tion’s sake” would still sound right to many intellectuals.
The growing commercial economy sent the message that art should en
tertain instead of uplift. Some state leaders appealed to professional
artists to counter the market’s ideological confusion and antisocial values
with the high-minded purity of socialist spiritual civilization. Mixed sig
nals confused many artists. By the end of the 1980s, however, one promi
nent reformist writer observed that
fewer and fewer Chinese writers think they should use their writing to help
the Chinese people to reorganize society. One common view is that it would
destroy the artistic purity of their work and cause it to lose the value of time
lessness. Some writers were also growing indifferent to popular sentiments
and to the country’s fate.93
Chinese intellectuals were of course not alone in these sentiments,

which echo the deepening crisis of the cultural market in Latin America,
another region with a tradition of politically engaged intellectuals.94
The more routine the professionalization of art, the more artists will re
semble other professionals. China’s artists have a long tradition in which
their art endows them with a special moral position. The Maoist ideal of
the politically engaged artist struggling for revolution was a close cousin
to this mandarin ideal. In reality most artists are not engaged in struggles
over public ethics; as the arts profession comes to look more and more like
accounting, civil engineering, or dentistry, the less all artists will feel that
they are somehow, if indirectly, participating in something that is more
heroic than the prosaic routine of their day-to-day lives.95
But the historical domination of the humanist literati has ended, and the
new model for artists is the technical expert of science and engineering.96
Few at the top of the political system care passionately about the arts any
more. The state is willing to provide important new arts facilities (the
Shanghai Museum, the Beijing Opera House), but pays much less attention
206 Chapter 6
to art’s content. Probably this is good for the arts, and it certainly makes
life easy for the artists who generally find being marginalized preferable to
being suppressed. Today their political interest is likely to focus on skillful
maneuvering for larger budgets for their fine arts academies or song-and-
dance troupes.
The fact that art mixes with politics is not a major issue for most Chi
nese. Instead, the question is how to combine the two adroitly and pow
erfully and in a more humane manner than in the recent past. Failure to
grasp this point and instead blaming bad officials who oppress freedom-
seeking artists assures a minimum of understanding of what the Chinese
are trying to attain.
NOTES
1. Directed by He Cun, Fujian film studio, 1996. Other ethnographically inter

esting films exploring rapid change in the arts world are “Bei kao bai, mian dui
mian” [“Back to back, face to face”], directed by Huang Jianxin (1994), and “Zhan
tai” [“Platform”], directed by Jia Zhangke (2000).
2. Wang Meng in “Wenyijia buyinggai beiyangqilai” [“Artists should not be
supported”], Fuzhou wanbao (June 1, 1989).
3. On the material problems of intellectuals see Perry Link, Evening Chats in
Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), especially
chapter 2; Lynn T. White III and Li Cheng, “Diversification among Mainland Chi
nese Intellectuals,” Issues & Studies 24(9) (September 1988), 50–77; Chen Yong
sheng, “The Income of Intellectuals in Mainland China,” Issues & Studies 28(3)
(March 1992), 76–91. For information on the incomes of Beijing painters in 1984,
see Joan Lebold Cohen, The New Chinese Painting: 1949–1986 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1987), 27.
4. Xian Jie, “Zaqi Wuhan fan nangaoyin Wu Yanze” [“An interview with Tenor
Wu Yanze in Wuhan”], Guanchajia 38 (December 20, 1980), 47–49.
5. See “State Monopoly of Chinese Art Impairs Market,” New York Times (July
6, 1980).
6. Picture caption, Renmin ribao (haiwaiban, “overseas editon”) (July 31, 1991),
4. In this instance the money was donated to aid flood victims.
7. Interview with painter Wang Gongyi (December 10, 1994).
8. “Ren chi shu” [“People eat books”], Fuzhou wanbao (April 13, 1989); see also
Luo Rujia, “Gongchandangren de ‘renge fenlie’” [“The ‘split in the moral quality’
of Communist Party members”], Dongxiang 56 (September 1989), 36.
9. For a review of inflation issues, see Benedict Stavis, “The Political Economy
of Inflation in China,” Studies in Comparative Communism 22(2–3) (summer/
autumn 1989), 235–250.
10. See Deborah Davis, ed., The Consumer Revolution in Urban China (Berkeley:
11. “Gaochou biaojun digao wucheng” [“Standards for manuscript fees in
creased fifty percent”], Fuzhou wanbao (April 13, 1989).
12. Daniel C. Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and “Thought
Work” in Reformed China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999), 137.
13. “Wa ‘wenshan’ shengkaixiao” [“Dig away the ‘mountain of documents’ and
save expenses”], Zhongguo baokan bao (June 3, 1987).
14. The drive against internal publications continued into 2000, when four
hundred local publications were closed. “China Consolidates State Publications,”
China News Digest (September 8, 2000).
15. See Jerome Silbergeld, Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the
Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 134,
227, n. 54.
16. Huang Gongzhi, “Chaojutuan zousi’an di yubo” [“Implications of the
Chaozhou Opera Company Smuggling Case”], Zhengming 41 (March 1981), 17.
17. See Luo Bing, “Dao Hu jihua daweiji” [“The big crisis of overthrowing Hu
going to extremes”], Zhengming 113 (March 1987), 7; Wang Lihong, “Huayuan
congzhong shi Deng Lin” (“Recognizing Deng Lin in painting’s dense garden”),
Renmin ribao (haiwaiban, “overseas edition”) (October 6, 1988); Ling Yuan, “Chi
nese Artists’ New York Debut,” Beijing Review 31(45) (November 7–13, 1988),
33–37; Grace Glueck, “Artists Bring Their Vision from China to SoHo,” New York
Times (October 10, 1988); Irene So, “Agency Portrait of Deng Lin Omits Pedigree,”
South China Morning Post (October 6, 1995). Jiang Zemin’s nephew, Xu Jiang, heads
the oil painting department at the China Art Academy in Hangzhou, where he en
joys a flourishing career, but without the taint of scandal that dogs his colleague
Deng Lin.
18. Yu Zhongli, “Songzang qiyao nulang tiaowu” [“Why should a funeral in
clude dancing girls?”], Fuzhou wanbao (May 20, 1989).
19. Huang Yihua, “Youren xiang ban ‘zhuru jiuba’” [“Someone plans to open a
‘dwarf bar’”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 10, 1989); Chen Cao, “Lin Dachun he tade
qige xiaoairen” [“Lin Dachun and his seven little people”], Fuzhou wanbao (June
23, 1989).
20. Isabel K. F. Wong, “The Second Spring for the Hundred Flowers: Diversity
and Change in Traditional Chinese Music Drama, 1980s,” paper for the Annual
Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Los Angeles, California, 1984.
21. Personal communication from a Chinese social scientist who had been
away from China for over a dozen years (November 17, 1998).
22. Wu Mei, “Women’s Education Urged,” China Daily (March 8, 1989).
23. Yi Ming, “Shenzhou baijinchao xia de qiwen” [“Strange news from China in
the money-worshiping tide”], Dongxiang 106 (June 1994), 40–41.
24. See “Xinyangshi wenhuaju ‘yi wen pu wen’ xiaoguo xianzhu” [“The results
of the Xinyang city culture bureau’s policy of ‘subsidizing art through art’ shine
through clearly”], in 1995 Henan wenhua yishu nianjian [“1995 Henan arts year
book”] (Zhengzhou, Henansheng Wenhuating, 1966), 263–264.
25. “Xinhuaxian gongxiaoshe yu xian xinhua shudian lianying” [“Xinhua
County supply and marketing cooperatives join up with New China Bookstores”],
Zhongguo wenhua bao (February 11, 1990).
26. “Hubeisheng Xingshanxian chuxian ‘cangshucun’” [“Hubei’s Xiangshan
county produces a ‘book-collecting village’”], Renmin ribao (haiwaiban, “overseas
edition”)(March 9, 1988).
208 Chapter 6
27. Zhao Xiangdong, “Gonggu wenhuazhan xiaoyi” [“An opinion on consoli

dating cultural stations”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (June 13, 1990).
28. For a sensitive discussion, see Jing Wang, High Culture Fever: Politics, Aes
thetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
29. On the beginning of arts markets, see John Fitzgerald, “A New Cultural
Revolution: The Commercialization of Culture in China,” Australian Journal of Chi
nese Affairs 11 (January 1984), 105–120.
30. Ding Yunpeng, “Put Advertising in Its Proper Perspective,” Shanghai Wen
huibao (January 14, 1979), in FBIS (January 24, 1979), E18. See also Randall Stross,
“The Return of Advertising in China: A Survey of the Ideological Reversal,” China
Quarterly 123 (September 1990), 499–500.
31. Zhang Xizeng and Li Shuliang, eds., Yishu jingjixue cankao ziliao huiben [“An
thology of reference materials in the economics of the arts”] (Shenyang: Liaoning
Shehuikexueyuan Wenxue Yanjiusuo, 1982).
32. Silbergeld, Contradictions, 189.
33. Personal communication with Hill Gates (1989).
34. See “Studying the Causes of Increasing Suicide,” China Daily (March 16,
1989).
35. The painter would be frustrated to know of his fellow artist Ting
Shaoguang, who bought the biggest house built in Beverly Hills, outbidding
Michael Jackson. Angelica Cheung, “Mainland Artist Who Made a Mint,” South
China Morning Post (January 4, 1996).
36. See Howard Becker, Artworlds (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1982), for an analysis of such intermediaries.
37. Agence France Press, “Curtain up on Drive to Aid Struggling Theaters,”
South China Morning Post (April 7, 1997); Fang Quanlin, ed., Zou xiang shichang
di yishu [“Fine arts on the road to the market”] (Shanghai: Xuelin Chubanshe,
1997).
38. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: The Art of Social Relation
ships in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 303–304. See also Lu Shi,
“‘Zouxue’ taoshui de wenyi chongjipo” [“The arts shockwave of ‘going under
ground’ and evading taxes”], Dongxiang 48 (March 1988), 39–41.
39. “Mao Amin touloushui beifakuan sanwanduo yuan” [“Mao Amin fined
over thirty thousand yuan for tax evasion”], Fujian ribao (May 31, 1989); Lu Shi,
“‘Zouxue’ taoshui de wenyi chongjipo”; “Qunian gexing ‘zouxue’ de
chuchangfei” [“Underground performance fees earned last year by singing
stars”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 16, 1989).
40. Jocelyn E. Gamble, “Stir-Fried Stocks: Share Dealers, Trading Places, and
New Options in Contemporary Shanghai,” Modern China 23(2) (April 1997),
199–200.
41. For discussion of complex loans and deals among work units over their
artists, see Silbergeld, Contradictions, 134, 170.
42. Xiang Feng, “Sanmingshi mingyiren Lin Keqing zuban minjian jutuan”
[“Famous Sanming City artist Li Keqing organizes private opera company”],
Zhongguo wenhua bao (October 5, 1988).
43. “Mao Amin touloushui beifakuan sanwanduo yuan” [“Mao Amin fined
over thirty thousand yuan for tax evasion”], Fujian ribao (May 31, 1989).
44. China News Digest (February 14, 1996).

45. “Reporter Arrested for Blackmail,” China Daily (November 6, 1989).
46. Beijing Xinhua in English (March 9, 1993), in FBIS-CHI-93-054 (March 23,
1993), 65.
47. Sue Green, “Hunt for Political Harmony,” South China Morning Post (Janu
ary 3, 1998).
48. Food was steady in these years at 52 percent. “Search Is on for All Beijing
Book-Lovers,”China Daily (June 10, 1997).
49. Deborah Davis, personal communication (1997).
50. On leisure, see Shaoguang Wang, “The Politics of Private Time: Changing
Leisure Patterns in Urban China,” in Deborah Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces: Au
tonomy and Community in Contemporary China (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 149–172.
51. “Jinzhoushi jumin wenhua xiaofei fasheng sida bianhua” [“Jinzhou resi
dents have four big changes in cultural consumption”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (Jan
uary 3, 1988).
52. Ou Rongchang, “Qingyinyue yanchushang zuolu weihe xijiang” [“Why is
the attendance at light music performances in decline?”], Zhongguo wenhua bao
(February 12, 1989); “Music Fans Lose Love for Symphony,” China Daily (April 29,
1989).
53. Liu Heng, Black Snow (Beijing: Panda Books, 1991), 71. Black Snow was made
into a movie under the title Benmingnian [“Fateful year”], Xie Fei, dir., 1990.
54. Xiaobing Tang, “The Function of New Theory: What Does It Mean to Talk
about Postmodernism in China?” Working Papers in Asian/Pacific Studies (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University, N.D.), 12.
55. Wenwi Du, “Xiaopin: Chinese Theatrical Skits as Both Creatures and Critics
of Commercialism,” China Quarterly 154 (June 1998), 382–399.
56. “Writers Bank a Million for Novel Lives,” China Daily (January7, 2002).
57. Gu Yuan, “Zhi qiangdiao jingji guilu lai lingdao wenyi xingma?” [“Will it
do to advocate only using economic laws for leading the arts?”], Renmin ribao (Oc
tober 4, 1980).
58. Colin Mackerras, “Modernization and Contemporary Chinese Theatre:
Commercialization and Professionalization,” in Constantine Tung and Colin
Mackerras, eds., Drama in the People’s Republic of China (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1987), 183.
59. Wang Xun’an, “Shoufei wenyi peixun ying naru shichang guanli” [“Com
mercial arts training should be subject to market management”], Zhonguo wenhua
bao (November 1, 1990).
60. “Woshi qudi jianghu youyi weifa xingyi jigou” [“Our city suppresses itin
erant physicians and illegal medical organizations”], Xiamen ribao (November 8,
1989). The crackdown seems to have responded to previously expressed demands
for higher standards. For example, see the indignant letter from a staff member at
a rural hospital in Fujian, Chu Yan, “Ying dui geti xingyizhe jinxing kaoge” [“We
must check the qualifications of independent travelling doctors”], Fujian ribao
(February 13, 1989). Chu was unhappy about an itinerant physician who charged
one hundred fifty yuan (U.S. $40) for three worthless injections for a sixty-three-
year-old woman with rectal cancer.
210 Chapter 6
61. Liu Yinglang, “Ministry of Culture to Licence Performers,” China Daily

(June 15, 1996); Vivien Pic-Kwan Chan, “Clamps on Performers Broadened,” South
China Morning Post (August 22, 1997).
62. Here the sociological model of professionalism predicts such behavior to re
sist market pressures for competition with their peers, or pursue profits against
their better judgment. William M. Sullivan, Work and Integrity: The Crisis and
Promise of Professionalism in America (New York: Harper Business, 1995), 6.
63. China News Digest—Global (August 21, 1998).
64. Gu Cheng, Selected Poems (Hong Kong: Renditions, 1990), xxii.
65. Other nonstate “mass organizations,” such as the Women’s Federation, en
countered similar financial difficulties. See Stanley Rosen, “Women and Political
Participation in China,” Pacific Affairs 68(3) (fall 1995), 324–325.
66. Suzanne Ogden, Inklings of Democracy in China (Cambridge: Harvard Uni
versity Asia Center, 2002), 327.
67. Bourdieu’s essays on the field of culture are reprinted in Pierre Bourdieu,
The Field of Cultural Production, Randal Johnson, ed. (New York: Columbia Uni
versity Press, 1993), with a useful introduction by the editor, Randal Johnson. See
also Helmut K. Anheier, Jürgen Gerhards, and Frank P. Romo, “Forms of Capital
and Social Structure in Cultural Fields: Examining Bourdieu’s Social Topogra
phy,” American Journal of Sociology 100(4) (January 1995), 859–903; and Michel
Hockx, “The Literary Association (Wenxue yanjiu hui, 1920–1947) and the Liter
ary Field of Early Republican China,” China Quarterly 153 (March 1998), 49–81.
68. Michel Hockx applies Bourdieu to Chinese literary politics in “The Literary
Association,” 49–81. See also Michel Hockx, ed., The Literary Field of Twentieth-Cen-
tury China (Richmond, U.K.: Curzon, 1999).
69. Johnson, ed., Field, 6.
70. Bourdieu, Field, 40.
71. James Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Tradi
tional China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 5.
72. Paul Auster, Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1997).
73. Gore Vidal, Palimpsest: A Memoir (New York: Penguin, 1996), 276.
74. Jed Perl, “The Art Nobody Knows,” The New Republic (October 19, 1992),
35–36.
76. Su Tong is a professional writer for the Jiangsu Writers Association. See Lu
Min, “Su Tong di ‘Mi’ hui bu hui langfei?” [“Will Su Tong’s ‘rice’ be wasted?”],
Dongxiang 125 (January 1996), 74–76. Ying Wen, “Wenhua duanxun” [“Cultural
notes”], Dongxiang 125 (January 1996), 72.
77. Bourdieu, Field, 75, 108.
78. For a recent translation of Wang’s fiction into English, see Wang Shuo, Playing
for Thrills, Howard Goldblatt, trans. (London: No Exit Press, 1997), containing light
mockery of Wang Meng on p. 162. See Geremie Barmé, “Wang Shuo and Liumang
(‘Hooligan’) Culture,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 28 (July 1992), 23–66.
79. Liu Xiaobo, “Wang Shuo fangtan lu” [“Transcript of interview with Wang
Shuo”], Zhengming 183 (January 1993), 72–74.
80. Bourdieu, Field, 101–102.

83. Judith Huggins Balfe, “Art Patronage: Perennial Problems, Current Impli
cations,” in Judith Huggins Balfe, ed., Paying the Piper: Causes and Consequences of
Art Patronage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 306.
84. Henry Y. H. Zhao, ed., The Lost Boat: Avant-Garde Fiction from China (London:
Wellsweep, 1993). See also Howard Goldblatt, ed., Chairman Mao Would Not Be
Amused: Fiction from Today’s China (New York: Grove Press, 1995), and Jing Wang,
ed., China’s Avant-Garde Fiction: An Anthology (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1998).
86. Chen Wenchao, “Wentan wai gaoshou faxian dute wenben” [“The discov
ery of a special text by a talent from beyond the world of letters”], Mingbao yuekan
360 (December, 1995), 103.
87. See Su Wei and Wendy Larson, “The Disintegration of the Poetic ‘Berlin
Wall,’” in Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces, 279–293.
88. Henry Y. H. Zhao, “The New Waves in Recent Chinese Fiction,” in Zhao,
ed., The Lost Boat, 9–10.
89. Xiao Gong, “Lights, Action, Camera! Filmmaking Discussed,” China Daily
(October 11, 1995). Director Tian Zhuangzhuang says, “I shot Horse Thief for audi
ences of the next century to watch.” Interview with Yang Ping, “A Director Who is
Trying to Change the Audience,” originally published in Popular Cinema, 9 (1986),
translated in Chris Berry, ed., Perspectives on Chinese Cinema (London: British Film
Institute, 1991), 127. According to Chris Berry the disinterest of film’s avant-garde
in making money frustrates studio heads. Chris Berry, “Market Forces: China’s
‘Fifth Generation’ Faces the Bottom Line,” in Berry, ed., Perspectives, 114–140.
91. Hao Ran’s The Broad Road in Golden Light sold four million copies in 1972, its
year of publication. Kai-yu Hsu, The Chinese Literary Scene. A Writer’s Visit to the
People’s Republic (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 86–99.
92. Yet it is still regarded as noteworthy if a writer is without official ties. See
Shi Pin, “Wanquan tuoli guanfang di duli zuojia Wang Lixiong” [“Wang Lixiong,
a writer completely independent of officialdom”], in Liu Dawen, ed., Dalu yijian
zuojia zhun [“Exceptional writers of the mainland”] (Hong Kong: Xiafeier Guoji
Chubanshe, 2001), 230–240.
93. Liu Binyan, “Tell the World”: What Happened in China and Why (New York:
Pantheon, 1989), 27.
94. “Everywhere in contemporary Latin America, there is a sense of the literary
intelligentsia’s diminishing importance and displacement from public discourse.
This displacement is exacerbated by the growing privatization of culture. Increas
ingly, cultural institutions—galleries, music, and television channels—are man
aged by private enterprise. Even national universities, traditionally the focus of
political activism, now compete with thousands of private universities, many of
which are geared to business rather than culture. The shift in patronage is partic
ularly striking in Mexico because of a tradition of cultural nationalism that dates
back to the revolution.” Jean Franco, “What’s Left of the Intelligentsia?” NACLA
Report on the Americas 27(2) (September–October 1994), 17.
212 Chapter 6
95. For a more optimistic view, see Richard Madsen, “The Spiritual Crisis of
China’s Intellectuals,” in Deborah Davis and Ezra F. Vogel, eds., Chinese Society on
the Eve of Tiananmen: The Impact of Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Coun
cil on East Asian Studies, 1990), 257; for a more melancholy treatment of the loss
of the generalist intellectual, see Timothy Cheek, Propaganda and Culture in Mao’s
China: Deng Tuo and the Intelligentsia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), esp.
306–318.
96. On the increase of higher education and technical skills among the political
elite, see White and Cheng, “Diversification,” 54. See also Hong Yung Lee, From
Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991).
7
The Hands That Feed Them
W ho makes up the shortfall in public support for the arts and with
what political consequences? In this concluding chapter I will ex
amine the issue of arts sponsorship and ideological control. Much public
discussion in China focuses on artists’ need to master the market, to find
new audiences, and to earn money from the sale of their products. Many
have in fact learned to do so. But contributions from both private and
state firms have assumed a new place in China’s cultural politics. Arts an
gels have mixed motives, ranging from a generous desire to support cul
ture to vulgar self-promotion. Artists respond to this new opportunity for
support with both relief and resentment. The artists may not actually bite
the hands that feed them, but they certainly do snap at them from time to
time.
If paying the piper entitles one to call the tune, what do these new pa
tronage relationships imply for the continued rule of the Communist
Party? For more than three decades, the Party’s claim to rule rested in part
upon wide acceptance of a revolutionary ideology, continuously rein
forced by the output of the arts establishment. In the new century, the
Party can no longer enforce its increasingly empty claims to ideological
hegemony. Will the new hands that help feed the nation’s artists use their
patronage to challenge Party hegemony?
213
214 Chapter 7
BUDGET SHORTFALLS AND ARTS ANGELS
Declining State Support

For all the public discussion of cutting subsidies and requiring self-
sufficiency, the actual pace of the reforms in state cultural organs has
been rather deliberate, much like the tempo of economic reform at
large. Incomplete national data is available for state-subsidized per-
forming-arts troupes, which receive a disproportionate amount of press
attention.1 These troupes include a broad range of arts genres: Chinese
opera companies, symphony orchestras, spoken drama companies,
song-and-dance troupes, and companies of ballad singers, puppeteers,
and acrobats. Prior to the mid-1980s, statistical reports indicated annual
increases in the numbers of such companies, reflecting the still widely
held presumption that more subsidized art was a good thing. This atti
tude changed mid-decade, when the numbers began to decline. In 1985
there were 3,175 subsidized arts troupes; by 1994, 20 percent had been
cut. For the remaining 2,561 troupes, state subsidies constituted 56 per
cent of total expenditures, a reduction from 65 percent in 1985.
The top-ranked troupes, under direct state management, were more
likely to be sheltered, while local collective troupes were hit harder. Only
12 percent of state units lost state subsidies, but 34 percent of collective
units did. Collective units were also required to earn a much larger pro
portion of their own budgets in 1994 (55 percent instead of 36 percent).
Variations emerge among genres. A quarter of the 253 companies spe
cializing in ballad singing, acrobatics, puppetry, and shadow puppetry
were cut. A quarter of 2,101 local opera companies were cut. More than
one-third of 181 Beijing opera companies (mostly local companies that
stage Beijing opera around the nation) were cut, leaving only a slight im
provement in the ratio of revenues to expenses. In contrast, the number of
subsidized symphonies and choruses, a form favored by the Western-
looking intelligentsia, increased from fifteen to nineteen. And the 200
state-subsidized song-and-dance troupes, which perform pop music, ac
tually grew by 31 percent to 293.
State subsidies, far from being cut in absolute terms, actually increased
by 2.5 times in this decade to 756 million yuan (U.S. $91 million). They de
clined of course as a relative proportion of arts budgets, as companies
learned to raise more of their own funds. Pressures to increase the non-
state income of all of these ensembles were successful, including a dou
bling of revenues from performances (mostly ticket sales).
The decline was not so precipitous as one might imagine from conver
sations with frustrated artists and intellectuals. Cuts have been severe, but
surviving companies have enjoyed substantial budget increases. Well-
placed units have been able to raise more of their own funds, to pare ex
The Hands That Feed Them 215
penses, and to survive. Yet, the fact that 20 percent of units disappeared
explains why so many artists have been anxious about the reforms. The
situation for local cultural centers under the Ministry of Culture is simi
lar; in 1994 they spent 462 million yuan (U.S. $56 million), but the state
budget only covered two-thirds, with the shortfall to be made up by video
games, movie tickets, and discos.2
Thus, arts budgets increased, but not enough to keep pace with inflation
and new expenses, forcing official companies to find alternative financing
or be cut completely. Even more important than the pattern within the
budget was the rapid growth of the market in the economy at large. State
firms produced 77 percent of China’s industrial goods in 1978, but only 53
percent in 1991. Collective producers (locally owned, often a state-private
mix) increased from 23 percent in 1978 to 36 percent in 1991; private and
foreign-related producers increased from 0 percent to 11 percent in the
same period. The state controlled a smaller percentage of a much larger
economy, in which industrial output increased sevenfold.3 By 2002, two-
thirds of China’s gross domestic product was in the private sector.
Long-Term Demand for External Support

The wave of reform in arts financing will certainly wring some new effi
ciencies out of bloated aesthetic institutions, even as it forces arts groups to
turn to other patrons to compensate for lost state subsidies. Yet, there are
also longer-term pressures at work that may not be felt in the short term,
but that may well strengthen the need for alternative patrons in the new
cultural politics. Arts markets face distinctive limits to capital-intensive ef
ficiencies available to other types of production.4
The arts are typically labor intensive, and their history, like the history
of any capitalist production, can be read as a process of substituting new
technologies in order to reduce rising labor costs. For example, as middle-
class markets for music emerged in the nineteenth-century West, per
formers and their managers sought to increase the sizes of audiences by
strengthening their instruments so that they might be heard in larger con
cert halls or even by altering vocal techniques so that singers could pro
ject their voices more forcefully.5 More recently, the mechanical reproduc
tion of visual art and music intensified the quest for productive efficiency,
as corporations built sales through broadcasting and recording, reducing
labor costs with massive capital investment.
Yet, the labor intensity that makes the arts unique renders efficiencies
difficult to attain without destroying the art. For instance, one cannot
produce more art by reducing a string quartet to three musicians or in
struct them to perform more music by playing faster. This dilemma has
confronted Western performing-arts institutions for decades, as they lag
216 Chapter 7
behind other producers in applying technological efficiencies.6 In the

United States this dynamic has led to disputes over the use of synthesiz
ers to replace studio orchestras in Hollywood, “colorization” of classic
films to earn greater profits for their owners, or the introduction of drum
machines to replace human percussionists in bands. In general, live art,
which must be consumed immediately at the point of production, gives
way (amidst controversy about standards) to reproduced art as cultural
entrepreneurs deal with the arts’ productivity lag in a market economy.
Many Chinese arts units are so amply staffed that short-run savings are
easy, but long-term economies will be more difficult to achieve. If China
follows Western experience, rising wage levels in society will create social
pressures to keep artists from falling too far behind, especially as the arts
assume a more professional aspect (underscoring common social origins
with other, better-paid elites).
For China, the situations faced by overstaffed steel mills and bloated per-
forming-arts ensembles are similar, at least for the moment. But the imme
diate economic benefits to managers of trimming personnel will give way
eventually to Western-style demands for new subsidies in the name of pre
serving whole artistic genres whose labor costs cannot be met by ticket sales.
Chinese opera already makes this appeal, but it seems likely to spread.
Given the persistence of the Chinese state in pressing for market re
forms in the arts, it seems unlikely that the policies of the past two
decades will be reversed in favor of reestablishing sole state patronage.
Even so poor a province as Hebei found by 1988 that cultural departments
on their own raised amounts equal to one quarter of their state alloca-
tions.7 But marginal policy adjustments might ease the demands on se
lected institutions. For instance, in 1996, karaoke bars, dance halls, adver
tising agencies, bowling alleys, and golf courses were assessed a 3 percent
culture tax. The tax only applied to licensed businesses, and individuals
donating 3 percent of their income to cultural organizations could take
this amount off their taxes.8 The Communist regime in Hungary used a
similar tax to transfer resources from popular to high culture.
Looking for Arts Angels

How do artists find new patrons to make up for rising costs and a declin
ing percentage of state support? Chen Guokai was the chairman of the
Guangdong Writers Association in 1995, when he published a short story
about the frustrations of artists in search of financial support.9 The hero, a
writer named Xiao, is pained to realize that “Prices are always going up,
but royalties aren’t. Half a day’s work won’t buy a pack of cigarettes. You
bury yourself in work for years, then find it’s tough getting your book
published, and even then 20 percent tax doesn’t leave very much.”
Xiao decides to change careers. Uninterested in business, he finds a

government post through family connections. This is no ordinary state
job; Xiao is made vice mayor with no responsibilities beyond eating and
drinking—which is what many citizens believe officials do anyway.
Xiao finds the job pleasant, especially because his office is equipped
with an imported massage chair to ease the hangovers from all his ban
quets. One day the secretary general of the local Writers Association calls.
Being a dinner-eating official had kept me so busy that not only had I for
gotten that I was a writer, I had also forgotten that the writers’ association ex
isted. It seemed that if you occupied such a post for very long you might very
well even forget the Ministry of Culture.
Because the Writers Association lacks medical funds for its members,
Secretary General Ah Qiang has come to seek help for a respected elderly
writer who cannot afford some urgently needed, but expensive, medicine.
The Party Propaganda Department, overburdened with requests, has al
ready said no. The business world has refused to contribute—it hasn’t
been a good year. Companies need to earn money to give money, and lit
erature doesn’t help business: “Literature is neither a roadside billboard,
nor land for a building, nor karaoke, much less a mistress.”
Xiao turns in desperation to a prosperous peasant, Iron Nail Li, head of
a nearby village. Li only had three years of schooling and is famous for his
ability to drink.
I have noticed an odd phenomenon in recent years: the ones who are truly
concerned for culture are poorly educated. Some cultured people, as soon as
they get rich, become even more devoted to making money than the greedi
est of merchants.
Iron Nail Li listens to Xiao’s appeal, then closes off the conversation by
saying that he would rather drink than talk about disease. But he offers a
bargain: counting from glass number eight, he will give Xiao ten thou
sand yuan for each additional glass of liquor consumed. Xiao valiantly
drinks eighteen glasses until he collapses. An ambulance rushes him to a
hospital, where he endures three enemas and two stomach pumpings.
When the municipal Party chief comes to visit in the hospital, Xiao re
signs his official post, despite the Party secretary’s protest: “Weary from
head to foot, I only had one thing to say: ‘with literature so impoverished,
I’m afraid of more enemas.’”
The moral of the story is grim. Unable to rely on state support and with
out assets of its own, the Writers Association must shop the private world
even for so vital a mission as medicine for its elderly members. Aid usu
ally comes with strings attached, even if they are only humoring an angel
218 Chapter 7
with a big heart, but rough manners. Private patrons are appreciated, but
rarely with the fulsome gratitude that they may imagine or desire.
ALTERNATIVE PATRONS IN THE CULTURAL MARKETPLACE
The phrase “cultural market” evokes an image of millions of citizens, each

championing his or her sovereign consumer preferences. Rapidly rising
personal income allows consumers more cultural choices. For some arts,
such as writing, individual consumer choices are obviously critical. In
others, the market’s impact is less direct; purchases of televisions, for in
stance, drastically reduced demand for movies. Chinese artists work hard
to attract purchasers for their paintings, novels, and performances. Yet, in
the eyes of most novelists, the real patron is likely to be a publishing
house or a magazine editor. The new patrons are less likely to be anony
mous participants in a mass cultural marketplace than individuals or or
ganizations with concentrated economic power.
Private investment in culture has been easiest not in the labor-intensive
arts of fiction or painting, but in the already capital-intensive (and prof
itable) television and film industry. One-third of Chinese films and 80 per
cent of television dramas were made with private investment by 2003.10
Wealthy Individuals
A new class of wealthy individuals is beginning to play the role of arts an
gel. The revolution’s destruction of private fortunes is being reversed by
the growth of new wealth with the reforms. Yet, the new rich include few
big fortunes; entrepreneurs have more often flourished in retail trade than
in industry. They are weak and dependent upon the state. “Members usu
ally lack their own means of production, independent capital, material
supplies, and modes of operation.”11 Some entrepreneurs support the arts,
both for personal enjoyment and prestige as the new bourgeoisie relearns
old forms of connoisseurship. A 1989 report from Fujian’s Zhangzhou re
ported that a third of the homes that hired tutors for their children were
business families. Liu Tangtang, who operated a general store, studied
English on her own. Many laughed at her, but she learned to read The Mer
chant of Venice and recite Portia’s soliloquy. “You see that I am an entrepre
neur and am also a woman. I will not allow anyone to look down at me.”12
But for many entrepreneurs, other forms of conspicuous consumption
are more attractive, such as banqueting, limousines, and female compan
ionship. Still others seem too naive to be sophisticated patrons. I attended
the 1989 New Year’s party given by the Fujian Entrepreneurs Association,
held at one of the better Fuzhou hotels. After short speeches referring to
the struggles of entrepreneurs who fight their way to respectability, the

evening featured very simple entertainment: tycoons competed for prizes
of shampoo and toothpaste by bouncing a balloon over a net with their
heads; a young woman acrobat dressed in a Tang Dynasty costume
danced (to Liebestraum), ending up with her feet on her shoulders; the fast
crowd of Fuzhou sipped orange drink and ate White Rabbit candy.13
Nonetheless, the sophistication and wealth of the business community is
growing rapidly; by 1996 an entrepreneurial acquaintance in Nanjing en
tertained at his private horse farm and track.14
This growing consumer society will lead to a Chinese class of million
aire collectors; Western auction houses believe that the yuan will become
a convertible currency, and that Chinese collectors will bid for Western
oils. “We aren’t going to be selling impressionists in China in the near fu
ture,” said a Sotheby’s executive in 1996. “In 10 years time maybe but not
now.”15 The prediction may have been on target. By the turn of the cen
tury, China had three thousand art galleries and shops; two years later,
Shanghai alone claimed to have a thousand. While many of these sell
tourist art to foreigners, domestic collectors are beginning to become a
market force in the fine arts.16 Further illustrating the new world of non-
state culture, China’s first private art museum, the Guanfu Classic Art
Museum, opened in Beijing in 1997, built around a thousand items col
lected by a former editor, who says that the museum is “a symbol of so
cial advancement and stability.”17
Corporate Angels
More visible than individual patrons are corporate arts sponsors. China’s
new political economy is not capitalism as Westerners know it, but is built
upon vaguely delineated and highly fluid new corporate entities. Some
are renovated state firms or new enterprises set up as subsidiaries of older
state companies. Others belong to the vast number of township and vil
lage industries, rural firms that are nominally part of the collective econ
omy, but in practice operate with often surprising autonomy under the
control of powerful executives (such as Iron Nail Li).18
Corporate contributors began to play a role early in the reforms. When
the Shandong Song and Dance Theatre underwent a painful rectification
in 1986, it dismissed more than a hundred members.19 Reforms included
professionalizing the staff through annual examinations, while trying to
raise morale by improvements to the cafeteria and providing cakes for
members’ birthdays. Provincial officials arranged a deal by which the lo
cal power company agreed to provide an annual subsidy and to repair the
company’s electrical equipment in exchange for eight to twelve perform
ances at the company each year.
220 Chapter 7
Why should businesses give money to artists? Sometimes an executive

is simply a fan. In 1998 the Assets News Industrial Company donated five
million yuan (approximately U.S. $60,000) to the Association of Chinese
Writers to support a new Lu Xun literary prize. The company had earlier
promoted modern literature by posting portraits of writers Lu Xun and
Mao Dun in downtown Beijing.20
In other cases there are strings attached, often a demand for high-toned
publicity. One Chengde wine company sponsored a local spoken drama
troupe when it made a television play glorifying the history of its wine.
An engineering-supplies company in Zhejiang provided travel expenses
to enable an amateur playwright to accept a prize, then publicized its phi-
lanthropy.21 The Yangzi River Power Company funds tours by the Beijing
Opera Company of Hubei, which considered changing its name to the
China Yangzi River Power Company Beijing Opera Troupe.22 In Guang
dong, the popular Jianlibao health tonic sponsored a Jianlibao Cantonese
Opera Troupe and a Jianlibao Light Orchestra, providing a fairly light-
handed bit of advertising, somewhat like the old Texaco sponsorship of
the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.23 The Kunming Cigarette Factory,
China’s largest, donated fifteen million yuan in 1993 and 1994 for cultural
affairs in poor regions, much as the U.S. Philip Morris Company cloaks its
sales of cigarettes and beer with uplifting arts philanthropy.24
Many of China’s new class of entrepreneurs are able to purchase both
public attention and praise. Selections from Fiction (Xiaoshuo xuankan), a
major journal that reprints new fiction from China’s legion of literary
magazines, includes advertising of a most flattering sort. Its May 1987
back cover featured the Liaodong County Paper Factory. Manager
Wang Qingfu appears in four of the five color photos. On the inside
back cover are still more photos of Wang Qingfu under the caption,
“The Labor and Life of an Entrepreneur.” The photos show Wang talk
ing to a reporter, offering a toast to the president of Liaoning Univer
sity, watching a former provincial governor write a poem while visiting
his paper factory, and making a speech to the mayor of Shenyang. The
photos are accompanied by a lickspittle text: “He has tread roads never
walked by others.” A few months later, the same spot featured photos
showing the manager of a refrigerator factory on his travels to Venice
and Japan, accompanied by a suitably inspirational quotation from
Balzac.25
More formal commercial links have developed between companies and
cultural organizations. In 1987 the Xiamen Arts Association gave partial
control of Xiamen Literature (Xiamen wenxue) magazine to the Xiamen Chi
nese Medicine Factory. In exchange for financial support, the factory ap
pointed two members to the editorial board, including a deputy editor to
take charge of the magazine’s finances. The magazine promised to pub
lish articles that
penetrate deeply the life of the Xiamen Chinese Medicine Factory; through
their poetry, essays, and reportage they will reflect this factory’s new people,
new things, and new style. Moreover, the back cover of each issue will print
an advertisement of the factory’s outstanding products.26
Foundations
Foundations to support cultural activities work even better than corpo
rate contributors for arts organizations as they set fewer preconditions.
Many of the first foundations were set up in Guangdong and Fujian,
which prospered early in the reforms and have strong commercial tradi
tions. Foshan, a prosperous old city near Guangzhou, established its own
Cultural Enterprises Foundation early in 1989. Both overseas Chinese and
local enterprises have contributed to Foshan’s cultural activities through
arts prizes, training courses, and new facilities.27 Guan Shanyue, an enor
mously successful Cantonese painter, donates funds to the Fine Arts As
sociation to set up a fund to aid talented artists.28 A Fujian Literature
Foundation exploited connections with the celebrated veteran writer,
Bing Xin, herself a Fujian native long resident in Beijing, who graced the
foundation’s bulletin with its title in her calligraphy. Hong Kong busi
nessmen, mostly of Fujian origin, also support the foundation and pre
sumably enjoy the reflected glory of literary association.29
Foreigners
Several forms of support from outside China offer a new and growing
source of patronage. Early in the reform period, the state recognized that
foreign tourists would attend exhibitions and performances; several arts or
ganizations successfully aim a part of their work at Western or Japanese
tourists.30 More complex is the distinctive role of foreign (including overseas
Chinese) collectors in supporting China’s avant-garde. Many painters sup
port themselves by “complex commercial relationships with the outside,
whether it be in the form of foreign buyers or Hong Kong and Taiwan in
terests (including publishers, record companies, galleries and film critics).”31
These include painters whose work makes officials squirm, but who have
found financial success among collectors in Hong Kong or outside the Peo-
ple’s Republic. Internally, however, the Chinese government makes it diffi
cult for foreign firms or individuals to own arts or communications compa
nies, which discourages foreign participation in corporate patronage.32
Self-Support
Arts organizations first look for ways to increase revenues from their regu
lar activities. Ticket prices have increased steadily in order to increase box
222 Chapter 7
office receipts. After cuts in state support, Hangzhou’s China Art Academy
increased its tuition from six hundred to six thousand yuan in 1994.33
Some arts groups go into business for themselves, sometimes in fields
far from their expertise. The Hangzhou Fine Arts Academy runs a com
mercial gallery, but also has real estate investments. A deputy director
was brought in especially to manage income-producing ventures, which
are run on a business-like basis.34 In Fuzhou, Fujian Television, like many
other stations, has built a local empire, including a restaurant and real es
tate, supervised by a manager imported from the construction business.
The Fujian Writers Association operates several enterprises, including an
advertizing company and a hotel. The ad agency can hire writers, while
the hotel also houses literary visitors, but both earn profits that support
association activities. The Fujian Minju Experimental Opera Company
gave over the ground floor of its headquarters to its jewelry factory, em
ploying dependents of its performers and staff. Such enterprises are in
tended to make profits in the market, but they are also set up paternalis
tically to employ relatives of workers for the parent organizations.
Similar is the experience of Xinhua (“New China”) Bookstore, the mas
sive state-owned chain. Xinhua worried about profits as its retail monop
oly crumbled in the 1980s, when the book business was also hit by infla
tion in paper prices. Xinhua managers began to enter other businesses,
some related, such as sales of popular audio and video equipment. They
also began to rent floor space to other merchants and even set up facto
ries, partly with a paternalistic eye for placing surplus workers in a mod
ernizing book industry.35
The city of Guangzhou even figured out how to turn a profit from old
statues. Gathering statues from many eras that had been scattered around
the city, Guangzhou established a Sculpture Park. By placing them in a
park with a steep admission fee, public art has been commodified, the
earnings presumably applied to support parks and culture.36
Some of these enterprises will surely fail, but the more profitable busi
nesses may become important as corporations in their own right, rather
than as sources of supplementary revenue for arts activities. They might
end up dominating the artists who initiated them.
The Snobbery Factor

Novelist Ba Jin criticized the “mutual co-operation of artists and entrepre
neurs”: “I am still of the old view that it is readers who sustain me as a writer,
not entrepreneurs.”37 But only a celebrated and well-supported writer, long
past the end of his career, can comfortably cast a cold eye upon new patrons
whom he does not need.38 Few practicing artists resist an alternative source
of funding, separate from both the Party and the cash register.
Yet, as the preceding chapter suggests, artists who court the new patrons
of the market most assiduously often earn aesthetic cold shoulders from
their colleagues. Millionaire painter Chen Yifei, for instance, initially made a
fortune by painting decorative and sentimental oils for Westerners; he now
produces them for newly rich Chinese, but is quite defensive about his many
highbrow critics (“People say I am commercial, but I say there are artists
who want to use politics to get attention, and I don’t think this is good”).39
DOES PRIVATE PATRONAGE

THREATEN THE COMMUNIST PARTY?
On the face of it, the growth of private or at least alternative patronage would
seem potentially to give voice to possible rivals to the Communist Party for
ideological influence. This can be seen in both some reformist hopes and
Party fears, which may view the impact of nonstate patronage too simply.
The Stone Corporation, China’s computer success of the 1980s, was typ
ical of new business ventures, established with state loans and well con
nected to the political elite.40 Founder Wan Runnan was connected to the
political elite by two marriages, one to the daughter of former president
Liu Shaoqi. Less typical was Wan’s political activism, which drove him
into exile after the 1989 Beijing Massacre. Wan later commented that his
company’s autonomy permitted a great deal of influence. Interestingly,
several of his examples are from the arts world:
For example, because we developed this private entrepreneurship, many of

the work units in China, the danwei, came to us for help. They would ask us
to sponsor dance troupes, singing contests, go tournaments, or even swim
ming races. We were able to influence a large part of Chinese society.41
We cannot really measure the influence of the glamorous Stone Corpo

ration, but dissident editor Wang Ruoshui echoed Wan’s possibly boastful
assessment when he told a reporter early in the 1989 protest movement
that his hopes for strengthening the independent role of intellectuals in China
were pinned in part on the willingness of private enterprises like the Stone Cor
poration, a Beijing computer company, to fund cultural activities. He argued
that although these private enterprises “had a relationship with the state,” they
would at last supply intellectuals with “a definite [independent] space.”42
Anxiety about the use of art as a source of funding seems to have played
a role in the 1994 rearrest of Beijing dissident Wei Jingsheng. The charges
accused Wei of planning to raise funds through a painting exhibition for
his allegedly “illegal” activities. The court claimed that
224 Chapter 7
Wei, in attempting to overthrow the government, developed a plan of action,

which included establishing an organization to “raise funds to support dem
ocratic movement activities,” purchasing several newspapers, setting up a
company in charge of organizing cultural activities, and organizing non
governmental painting exhibitions, performances, and publications with the
aim of setting up a propaganda and liaison base, attempting to “raise a storm
powerful enough to shake up the present government.”43
But, private arts patronage poses no immediate threat to Communist

rule; however weakened the Propaganda Department, it is still suffi
ciently powerful to block private propaganda that challenges Party doc
trine or legitimacy. For instance, the Party seems unlikely to allow there to
be powerful and completely autonomous cultural institutions, such as a
privately or collectively owned television network.
Alternative patrons are not especially threatening to the Party in part
because they are mostly drawn from elites with conservative views. The
new business class is not independent, but deeply rooted in the state. Its
new entrepreneurs have complex relations with state production units,
and the princelings—children of the Communist elite—are entrenched in
leading positions in the new market economy. Economic corruption is at
the heart of China’s reform. The Communist Party has pressed reform by
buying off the opposition, which was itself.44 Thus, the new economic
elites constitute no independent bourgeoisie and offer no social basis for
liberal politics.45 Indeed, so confident was the Communist Party that at its
Sixteenth Congress in 2002, it revoked the ban on capitalists becoming
members. Liberalism may one day be important in China, but artists are
looking for arts angels to help pay the bills, not sponsor their ideologies.
The private messages carried by China’s mass media are product-
focused advertising, without even vaguely civic-minded public-service
messages. When Fuzhou hosted a conference of authors and entrepre
neurs in March 1989, celebrated writers such as Zhang Xianliang and
(Chinese-American) Chen Ruoxi visited factories, where they chatted
with the managers. The program received much praise for bringing artists
into contact with life, but no one publicly recollected how Mao had sent
writers to hang out with the workers, rather than their bosses.46
Away from the commanding heights of ideology, organizations use al
ternative sources of patronage to create the conditions for greater artistic
autonomy. The Fujian town of Shishi was a hot spot for market activities
in the 1980s. Shishi was also touted as a cultural model, with new associ
ations for traditional music (nanyin), bonsai, calligraphy, and photogra
phy. “All are begun and aided by entrepreneurs. They raise their own
money and manage their own affairs, which is much better than having
the government come and tell them how to run things.”47 Alternative
funding allows a degree of leverage, not clear-cut institutional autonomy,
but a much murkier space for negotiation.
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb contrasted Polish and American artists before the

collapse of the Eastern European Communist regimes. The game for West
ern artists was to subvert the market for the sake of art,
avoiding mass-market demands by creating specialized markets or non-market

supports through state, foundation, corporate, or individual patronage. The
politics of culture in the East was about using or avoiding the party-state for
artistic purposes. . . . Gaming with the censor became part of the cultural world.
As Western artists are forced to work or subvert the market, the artists of the so
cialist bloc worked or subverted the administered art world. They pretended to
do what they never intended, to build a socialist culture. They found zones in
which censorship was lax, for example in student cultural institutions, and they
used elliptical language and other techniques of formal disguise. In this way, as
in the case of artists in the West who must play with and against the market to
get on with their work, the artists in the socialist world got on with their work
by playing with and against the party-state.48
Arts foundations and corporate donations diminish reliance upon both

state and popular audience, permitting artists some autonomy. This does
not assure ideological independence, but it provides room for maneuver.
Is autonomy freedom? It certainly permits artists to escape the imposition
of political structures on their work, but few push such autonomy to in
clude systematic critiques of the state within their work.
Private patronage thus introduces a helpful margin of security for
many artists. In a period when the chief alternative to dependence upon
unreliable state funding is to go into business, arts-minded entrepreneurs
and managers of state firms sometimes help cushion artists from the un
familiar perils of trade. The unpleasant job of fawning after rich patrons
and flourishing enterprises is often worth a little humiliation precisely be
cause it can permit artists to avoid even greater dependence upon the box
office. Arts groups in the United States are familiar with this strategy.
RECASTING HEGEMONY AS BREAD AND CIRCUS
A more important reason private patronage is no immediate threat is that

the basis for ideological hegemony has changed. The expansion of the cul
tural market and the emergence of arts angels certainly diminish the abil
ity of the Party to control the content of each work of art. But this is a dif
ferent thing from the loss of political control over the nation. The nature
of the Party’s rule has changed, not vanished.49
The Chinese state at the beginning of the twenty-first century has
largely abandoned the approach for legitimacy and hegemony pursued in
the Maoist era. When Mao died in 1976, an intellectual and emotional
bond between the Party’s rule and its revolutionary origins still remained.
226 Chapter 7
The Cultural Revolution was in part a systematic effort to recreate that

bond for a generation too young to remember prerevolutionary society.
The Maoist approach was twofold. First, it sought to remove from the
public realm any voices that supported either the old order or alternative
visions of socialism. The suppression of cultural markets weakened the
ability of the old bourgeoisie to mount any imaginable alternative to Party
rule. Second, the Party used the media and the arts to mobilize key sec
tors of the population (workers, peasants, and soldiers), not just in sup
port of the new state, but into an emotional bond with it. Maoist arts also
mobilized state bureaucrats through idealized representations of the good
cadre. The glue for this project was a relatively coherent doctrine, drawn
in part from classic Marxist texts, but above all from Mao’s speeches. Sev
eral institutions busied themselves with developing, revising, and elabo
rating this doctrine. As specialists in the manipulation of symbols, artists
were recruited to support the Party line in their work, scrutinized to make
certain that they did not go astray. In the old system, any alternative voice
to the Party’s, however innocent, posed a challenge. This is no longer true.
The significant change in the political economy of China’s arts is not
state-funding levels, but the general explosion in commercial culture,
which renders much of the Party’s past program for cultural hegemony ir
relevant. Ideological hegemony is the friendly, nonviolent sidekick of
blunt coercion; it achieves domination through the participation of the
population it subordinates. Regimes ease the difficulties of rule when they
foster a popular sense that the existing political order is the only one
imaginable.50
The Party has retreated to another level of control. It does not tolerate
serious political rivalry (even though it waffled a bit before suppressing
organizers of the China Democratic Party in 1998), yet an apparent abun
dance of arts products fills the nation to entertain, perhaps to dull the
senses of, the population. Artists no longer need to seem relentlessly mil
itant or cheerful, and the regime has sought a more human visage by en
couraging artists to take part in the systematic unmasking of such Maoist
myths as class purity. Criticizing Mao and his policies is now common
place, but such criticism provides an illusion of greater liberalism than is
warranted; attempts to criticize Deng Xiaoping or Jiang Zemin often
evoke tough suppression and ratchet up anyone’s level of cynicism.51
Altering the Meaning of Rule

Decades of cultural reform have altered the meaning of Party rule. The
Party now reasons that the regime survives best by depoliticizing ever-
larger hunks of Chinese culture. Earlier enforcement of a narrowly drawn
hegemony alienated intellectuals; now the regime banks on economic
growth and private pleasures, underscored by an implicit threat of inter

mittent violence. The Party certainly continues to use the arts for self-
promotion, as all regimes do. What is striking is how the Party no longer
works very hard to enforce a monopolizing hegemony.
By Deng’s death in 1997, Party ideology had atrophied, leaving little
Marxist content. Kalpana Misra shows how official ideology lost its priv
ileged position in public discourse, largely as intellectual consensus
among serious Marxists broke down in the face of new economic and so
cial conditions.52 Doctrine increasingly became a rationalization fash
ioned to avoid elite conflict, leaving few serious intellectual efforts to an
alyze changes sweeping across the nation, except outside the Party’s
institutions. It became unclear what socialism meant in any theoretical
terms, although as a practical matter, it seemed to include proceeding
with deliberation in subjecting state enterprises to market discipline, per
haps shrewdly postponing an inevitable shakedown in employment. Ide
ology meant, Listen to the Party, try to become rich, and be patriotic, as
nationalism supplanted revolution as the emotional component of
China’s official belief system.
The Party had earlier experienced major changes in its ideological
work, such as the movement from the liberalism of the Hundred Flowers
to the fierceness of the antirightist campaign, or from the energizing mass
mobilization of the Great Leap Forward to the economic retrenchment of
the early 1960s to the surrogate class warfare of the Cultural Revolution.
This change is different, as it is not a substitution of one belief for another,
but a reduction in the capacity and centrality of the belief machine itself.
The commodity economy’s embrace of culture diminishes art’s utility
as symbol of (potentially) political consciousness, turning attention in
stead to art’s role in the marketplace, whether as decoration, speculative
investment, or status symbol. Indeed, the rapid development of commer
cial advertising sets up an apparent counterideology that does not di
rectly challenge the state, but that subtly advances an ideology of material
acquisition, and of self-identification with glamorous products. There
have been inevitable clashes, as when Party leaders angered the advertiz
ing industry by demanding that the center of Beijing be cleansed of com
mercial billboards for the fiftieth anniversary of the People’s Republic.
Yet, as Geremie Barmé has shown, Party propaganda and corporate ad
vertizing have developed a bizarre symbiosis of shared imagery.53
The circle of controversy in Chinese art is shrinking. The new sensa
tionalism of the popular media demonstrates that the Chinese state is
now willing to tolerate images and ideas that it once would have consid
ered vile. Yet, the limits on explicitly political discussion are far harder to
crack. Chen Xitong, the spectacularly corrupt Beijing mayor, was purged
in 1995. A roman à clef about his fall, The Wrath of Heaven, was published
228 Chapter 7
openly in 1997, but as the Party delayed his trial, the novel was banned
and driven into an underground life of pirated and Hong Kong editions.54
Sex and celebrity biographies become a surrogate for politics, enabling
Chinese to tell themselves how much more open their country is without
seriously questioning what limits remain in effect.
James Scott argues that culture is harder for elites to patrol than pro
duction sites.55 Even if they wished, Party officials are no longer able to
police all the sites of popular commercial culture. Orville Schell describes
official confusion about how to handle rock music or whether the Party
should handle it at all, since it may be politically harmless for all its ap
parent fury.56 Some scholars now find that even state television program
ming reveals evidence of a popular culture that challenges, or at least
complicates, the Party control over ideology.
The rise of entertainment culture has effectively demobilized the audi
ence, for the left could only use mass mobilizing art when it enjoyed a me
dia monopoly. Emblematic of this shift is the decline of the propaganda
poster, which once was the characteristic genre linking art and politics. At
the end of the 1980s, propaganda posters were readily available in book
stores in major cities, but by the middle of the next decade, they were only
easily found in smaller places.57 What replaced the propaganda poster?
More propaganda posters, this time pressing the merits of commercial
products instead of socialist political campaigns. More broadly, television
supplanted the cultural world of the propaganda poster. Television en
courages more distanced, uninvolved audiences, and its linkage of arts to
politics is essentially passive; by century’s turn, China had the world’s
largest television audience.58
Cynicism and Nationalism

One of the most noted ideological harvests of the reform period has been
widespread cynicism, intensified by the suppression of the 1989 popular
movement. In Jiwei Ci’s analysis, revolutionary utopianism once provided
many with a sense of purpose. But the regime’s failure to realize utopia led
first to Cultural Revolutionary nihilism and finally to hedonism and its po
litical ideology, liberalism. The government’s suppression of liberalism left a
crude, but politically passive, hedonism as the shaky philosophical founda
tion for contemporary society. “In proportion as people’s sensual needs were
satisfied, their political demands weakened and lost their relevance.”59
Cynicism is joined by its boastful cousin, nationalism, as the emotional
core of the new ideology. Maoism was certainly nationalistic, but clothed
itself in the language of international revolution. Today nationalism has
become patriotism, fueled by an understandable pride in China’s eco
nomic growth and popular aspirations to great power status. Like com
modity culture, patriotism is promoted by a regime that knows that it

needs something for the population to believe in, but worries that it will
get out of control, which it of course does.60 Jiang Zemin included boost
ing nationalism in the tasks for the arts he enumerated at the Sixteenth
Party Congress in 2002: “Without an inspiring spirit and lofty character, it
is impossible for a nation to stand proudly in the family of nations.”61
Will a cultural politics of bread and circuses work to preserve the
Party’s power? Probably not for the long haul, but it buys time. Many in
the Party who want tougher standards believe that with more effective
censorship, the Party will prolong its rule and that, otherwise, it may
bleed slowly to death as its authority is eroded away around the edges.
But the ruling faction would rather bleed slowly than fall suddenly; the
current policies permit elite families to amass fortunes from personal cor
ruption in the meantime.
China Becomes More Ordinary

China remains extraordinary in the scale of its politics, but not in their cul
tural dimension. China’s cultural politics entered the twenty-first century
looking less exotic and sharing more features than ever with other na
tions. China’s cultural life has begun to seem “normal”; not so normal as
Denmark, perhaps, but comparable to other large industrializing nations,
such as Brazil, Mexico, or India.62 Charismatic rule has long given way to
bureaucratic administration. It is no longer reasonable to characterize the
extent of free expression as the preeminent arts issue, although it certainly
continues to be contested, as it is in many other nations. The question of
China’s revolutionary heritage is now primarily rhetorical. Other arts is
sues have become more salient, such as protecting the national artistic
heritage against economic development, understanding the aesthetic and
social implications of new technologies, reducing cultural and educa
tional gaps between rich and poor regions, nurturing young artistic talent,
finding a meaningful place for the arts of ethnic minorities within a Han-
based national cultural identity, and winning international respect for
China’s cultural achievements.
No longer does power simply treat art as its prettified voice, and no
longer does the ruling Party embrace the arts at the center of a grand
scheme for rebuilding national identity and power. The privileged place
of the arts is no longer unquestioned. The sometimes elusive quality of
these cultural changes is suggested by the experience of Brian Chao Tak
hay, a Hong Kong official who assumed responsibility for culture and
recreation after holding the top position in trade policy. When he met his
former Beijing counterpart, Minister of Foreign Trade Wu Yi, she congrat
ulated Chao, commenting that “in Beijing, officials who are in charge of
230 Chapter 7
ideology are more important than officials like me who are in charge of
these mundane matters.” Chao protested that in Hong Kong he had noth
ing to control, but later could not decide if Wu had been serious or had
made a self-deprecating joke.63
The Chinese are increasingly thinking of the arts in ways similar to cap
italist planners. For instance, culture is increasingly viewed as a growth
area for the economy. The culture industry has been incorporated into the
tenth Five-Year Plan (2001–2005), and some identify culture as a future
pillar industry upon which the economy will rest.64 The Chinese real es
tate industry has even followed New York and Paris in learning that hav
ing artists in the neighborhood helps boost property values.65
Although China’s arts scene increasingly resembles those of other
countries, one would not know it from public discourse in the United
States, where the demonization of China continues. As the Chinese state
loosens its grip on cultural life, we seem to like it even less than when it
was vastly more oppressive. Some readers will be annoyed by my argu
ments that China’s authoritarianism has diminished. Attempts to analyze
unpleasant institutions are often mistaken for rationalization, so this is
probably the appropriate place to comment that as a member of the Amer
ican Civil Liberties Union, I do not find China’s cultural climate to my
personal taste. But responsibility for changing this climate rests with Chi
nese citizens, not foreigners. We have problems of our own to handle and
can most influence other nations, if that is our goal, by the power of our
own example.
ART AND DEMOCRATIC REFORM
The Communist Party’s recipe for reform is most often understood to be

economic liberalization plus tight political control. Many believe that eco
nomic change must be balanced by political reform, or economic growth
will be thwarted. This book argues that political reform has already begun
and that it has proceeded first in the realm of culture. The simple opposi
tion of reformed market to an unreconstructed state is simplistic and dis
regards complex changes in the symbolic realm.
A reactive loosening of political controls over culture and the transfer of
arts and entertainment from state to market is no less profound in impact
than a carefully planned reform. Cultural loosening is likely to be fol
lowed by the kind of explicit alterations of other institutions that will be
more broadly recognized as political reform.
A weakening of state cultural institutions is not prima facie evidence of
a frail Chinese state. The Maoist state relied upon a radical ideology to
muster support for a broad package of revolutionary changes.
Some China watchers argue that the ideological decline from Mao’s
days weakens the central capacity to rule. They are confusing governance
with the Maoist regime’s need to implement ambitious economic and po
litical changes. The Chinese Communist Party came to power not just to
govern, but to transform Chinese society radically in a short period of
time. Its goals included communizing land, launching satellites, and de
veloping nuclear weapons—amid famines and deprivation—and financ
ing history’s largest industrial program, despite a predominantly agrarian
economy. An exacting ideology was needed to impose unspeakable sacri
fices on the Chinese population.66
The post-Mao Chinese state cherishes few visions of transforming soci
ety that would be aided by state-dominated arts institutions deploying a
demanding ideology. One should not infer a fragile state from a weak
ened Party. Nor should one presume that a collapse of the Communist
Party would produce a democratic regime.
If the Communist Party were to collapse or to share power with others,
how different would China’s cultural policies be? Cultural freedom
would probably not flower in the ways the international human rights
community hopes. There would probably be fewer political prisoners,
probably more explicit political discussion. But in the absence of demo
cratic reforms—not just removing the Communist Party—China would
remain an authoritarian land that gives grief to Amnesty International.
China may well change without Westerners liking the change very much.
Any serious democratic reform must be a long-term project and is un
likely to proceed smoothly.67 Do the arts have any contribution to make?
If democratic institutions must rest atop a civil society in which ever
more vigorous civic organizations confound the state with newly discov
ered autonomy, then the professionalization of the arts may be seen as
part of a broader trend.68 In the republican period, the weakness of the
central state made civil society an important component of the polity, in
which self-governing, nonstate associations provided services to their
members: guilds, native place associations, clans, surname associations,
temple societies, monasteries, secret societies, unions, student organiza
tions, chambers of commerce, and bankers and lawyers associations.
The Communist Party destroyed autonomous groups as it reorganized
society, creating the ambiguous category of people’s (minjian) organiza
tions. In the arts, these nonprivate, but not fully state, groups include the
associations of artists and performers that dominate professional culture.
The Party effectively blocked interaction among these groups except
through Party members, thereby strengthening its own rule.
Evidence for a growing role in civil society for the arts can be found in
the 1986 and 1989 demonstrations against the Party, in which the leaders
of many arts organizations were subject to conflicting pressures from their
232 Chapter 7
members to participate and from Party leaders to calm participants down.

Many collaborated with demonstrators in Beijing and elsewhere by pro
viding buses or by agreeing to look benignly upon participating mem
bers. One may also point to the slowly increasing autonomy of artists,
both within established cultural organizations and in new, privatized re
lationships to the marketplace. Yet, sometimes, the proponents of civil so
ciety may search too desperately for autonomous civic organizations in a
society in which power relationships are rarely clear-cut. And while
groups such as writers’ or dance associations are not mere tentacles of the
Communist Party, regarding them as constituents of civil society under
states their own complex history as nonstate, nonprivate organizations.
Bryna Goodman cautions that the public sphere–civil society discussion
often introduces too passive a view of Chinese society during the Repub
lican era. Goodman calls for a focus on “interpenetration and shifting
strategic boundaries,” instead of “oppositional forces and absolute no
tions of autonomy.” A similar complexity is useful for understanding con
temporary China.69
Professional artists may be seen as participants in an embryonic or par
tial civil society.70 The increase in civic organizations is impressive, with
estimates ranging from the 186,000 registered in the late 1990s to perhaps
a million citizen-run organizations of all sorts.71 The magnitude of in
crease poses huge problems for Party desires for control, even over or
ganizations that it ostensibly leads, and even after trimming the number
of registered organizations by a fifth. But civil society may well follow
corporatist, rather than democratic directions.72 Future problems in rela
tions between artists and the state will assume new forms alongside the
old ones. The cozy links between the state and increasingly powerful en
terprises may well lead to collusion at the expense of artists and other less
powerful agents. Recent hints of this include the State Bureau of Cultural
Relics’s curtailing of rapid growth in auction firms by limiting auctions to
six companies.73 Similarly, fifteen television stations and production cen
ters have joined to set wages for actors to prevent their salaries from ris-
ing.74
The idealized traditional social roles for Chinese artists, whether as tu
tors to the people or remonstrators against tyranny, bestow on artists a spe
cial status that is ultimately not very democratic. As long as artists regard
themselves as properly above ordinary citizens, their relationship to de
mocratization must be ambiguous. The slow process of depoliticization
through which artists abandoned state propaganda for the exploration of
increasingly personal themes may turn out to be an important contribution
of the reform period to the democratic reconstitution of Chinese culture.
The arts might also offer another potential contribution to democracy:
an increased toleration for rival points of view. This does not come easily.
Many artists initially supported the reforms by creating works denounc

ing the radicals who had fallen from power. But now, the need to propa
gandize against Maoism seems remote, and China’s aesthetic palette is
more diverse than ever. Much of this tolerance is still passive, ignoring
what one doesn’t like. Few in China will yet defend the rights of adver
saries to make speeches, much less paint ugly canvases or compose un
appealing symphonies. Yet, this aesthetic balance is one way in which de
mocracy can be learned. Artists may discover how to become tolerant as
the authority of the state becomes ever less appealing as a final arbiter of
taste. Increased tolerance among artists themselves would permit a
greater competition of ideas, which often remain nakedly bound to polit
ical supporters. Moreover, artists might well have a slow, but politically
helpful, demonstration effect upon other citizens.
Even without reforms that Westerners would identify as democratic,
China is likely to enjoy a period in which the arts contribute to a pub
lic discourse that has been muted since the revolution. In a period of
looser cultural restrictions, artists are no longer compelled to perform
politically. Herbert Marcuse argued that intensely politicized art alien
ates.
The political potential of art lies only in its own aesthetic dimension. Its rela
tion to praxis is inexorably indirect, mediated, and frustrating. The more im
mediately political the work of art, the more it reduces the power of es
trangement and the radical, transcendent goals of change. In this sense, there
may be more subversive potential in the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud
than in the didactic plays of Brecht.75
Mao voiced a similar understanding of art’s bond to power, when he

claimed that the art of the bourgeoisie becomes more dangerous as it in
creases in beauty.76 David Strand argued that in the Chinese version of
civil society, movements, however transitory, are stronger than institu
tions. Thus, aesthetic currents for new styles of poetry or painting or the
introduction of new techniques in music or film might carry greater op
positional weight beyond what the present disorder in artists’ organiza
tions suggests.77 Perhaps artists’ gifts for nuance, shadow, and obscurity
will be an asset in the new politics of culture.
NOTES
1. The following is based on Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1995 [“China statistical

yearbook 1995”] (Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 1995), and also the vol
umes for 1985 to 1994.
2. Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1995, 648.
234 Chapter 7
3. Based on Barry Naughton, Growing out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform,
1978–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 331.
4. The classic study is William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, Performing
Arts: The Economic Dilemma (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966). For a more
recent review, see James Heilbrun and Charles M. Gray, The Economics of Art and
Culture: An American Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
5. I have traced a similar trajectory in postrevolutionary China in Pianos and
Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 100–127.
6. For a skeptical view of the gap theory, see Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Com
mercial Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
7. “Ruizheng fangxiang wanshan guizhang jiankang fazhan” [“Adjust the di
rection, improve the regulations, develop in good health”], Zhongguo wenhua bao
(February 25, 1990).
8. “Karaoke Bar Tax to Finance Arts,” South China Morning Post (November 15,
1996).
9. Chen Guokai, “Becoming an Official” [Dangguan], Zhongpian xiaoshuo xu
ankan [“Novella selections”] 5 (1995), 24–32, originally in Zuopin [“Works”] 7
(1995).
10. “Private Capital Major Money Source for China’s Film Industry,”
People’s Daily Online, at http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200305/24/
eng20030524_117167.shtml (May 24, 2003).
11. Dorothy J. Solinger, “Urban Entrepreneurs and the State: The Merger of
State and Society,” in Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum, ed., State and Society in China: The
Consequences of Reform (Boulder: Westview, 1992), 6–7.
12. Huang Rufei, “Xue wenhua—Zhangzhoushi getihu de xin zhuiqiu”
[“Study culture—The new pursuit of the independent business people of
Changzhou”], Fujian ribao (March 18, 1989).
13. This image of commercial wholesomeness is reinforced by a page of photos
of entrepreneurs at play in Fujian ribao: a stamp collector, a jogger, a pianist play
ing duets with his daughter, a coin collector, a chess player, a calligrapher and
painter, a dancer, and a pigeon fancier. Fang Youde, “Shenghuo she xuanli duo
caide” [“Life is resplendent and multicolored”], Fujian ribao (June 23, 1989).
14. On the complexities of the changing business elite, see Margaret Pearson,
China’s New Business Elite: The Political Consequences of Economic Reform (Berkeley:
15. Alice Cairns, “Hammer and Tongs,” Sunday Morning Post Magazine (May 26,
1996), 12.
16. Yang Yingshi, “Fledgling Art Market,” China Daily (March 27, 2000); and
“Private Galleries in Shanghai: A World of Free Art,” Xinhua (April 20 2002).
17. China News Digest—Global (January 22, 1996).
18. According to one observer, “it was precisely the rural collective enterprises—
owned by townships and villages, yet operating in a marketized environment—that
were among the most dynamic of all sectors of the rural economy. At the end of the
decade, they still overshadowed private enterprises in total output value by a ratio
of two to one.” Philip C. C. Huang, “The Paradigmatic Crisis in Chinese Studies,”
Modern China 17(3) (July 1991), 332.
19. Jiang Li, “Shandong gewujuyuan tizhi gaige diaocha baogao” [“Report on
an investigation of the structural reform of the Shandong Song and Dance The
atre”], Renmin yinyue (May 1986), 12–13.
20. China News Digest—Global (March 2, 1998).
21. Zhang Zuomin, “Women weishenma zhichi huaji shiye?” [“Why do we
support the activities of spoken drama troupes?”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (January
29, 1989).
22. “Gongtong jianli ‘jingji wenhua lianheti’” [“Joint establishment of ‘eco
nomic and cultural cooperative body’”], Zhongguo wenhua bao (April 8, 1990). Jing
Wang also discusses changing names for financial support in “‘Culture’ as Leisure
and ‘Culture’ as Capital,” positions 9(1) (spring 2000), 69–104.
23. Luo Weinian, Zhan Songsheng, and Tian Naiqi, Shiyong gonggong guanxi 88
li [“Eighty-eight rules of practical public relations”] (Guangzhou: Kexue Puji
Chubanshe Guangzhou Fenshe, 1988), 124.
24. Yali Peng, “The Politics of Tobacco in China’s Southwest,” unpublished pa
per, February 1995.
25. “The strength of humankind is patience added to time; the strong are those
with both willpower and the capacity to wait for opportunity,” Xiaoshuo xuankan
(May and November 1987).
26. “Xiamen Wenxue gaiwei lianhe chuban” [“Xiamen Literature becomes a joint
publication”], Fujian zuoxie bao [“Fujian Writers Association news”] 12 (May 15,
1987), 3.
27. “Guangdongsheng diyige wenhua shiye jijinghui zai Foshanshi chengli”
[“Guangdong’s first cultural enterprise foundation established in Foshan”],
Zhongguo wenhua bao (March 20, 1989).
28. “Guan Shanyue fenbei xiang meixie he zaiqu juankuan” [“Guan Shanyue
makes separate contributions to the artists association and the areas hit by disas
ter”], Renmin ribao (haiwaiban, “overseas edition”) (August 20, 1991).
29. Haineiwai wenxuejia qiyejia bao [“The domestic and overseas writers’ and en
trepreneurs’ news”] (May 22, 1989).
30. In her short story, “The Other World,” Zhang Jie describes a hotel for for
eign tourists as patron of the arts. A hapless literary man is given free room and
board in exchange for writing calligraphy for Japanese tourists and advertizing
copy for the hotel. Zhang Jie, As Long as Nothing Happens, Nothing Will (London:
Virago, 1988), 68–108.
31. Geremie Barmé, “Official Bad Boys or True Rebels,” Human Rights in China
3(4) (winter 1992), 19.
32. “Foreign Theatre Managers Barred in Arts Crackdown,” South China Morn
ing Post (August 29, 1997).
33. Morgan Perkins, unpublished paper (1997) on fine arts.
34. Wang Gongyi, interviewed in Eugene, Oregon, December 10, 1994.
35. Li Zhuoyan, “Bookstores Try Other Ventures,” China Daily (February 21,
1989).
36. For more on the politics of statuary in the commodity economy, see my
“Public Monuments and Private Pleasures in the Parks of Nanjing: A Tango in the
Ruins of the Ming Emperor’s Palace,” in Deborah Davis, ed., The Consumer Revo
lution in Urban China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
236 Chapter 7
37. “Zuojia buneng kao qiyejia yanghuo” [“Writers cannot depend upon entre
preneurs for their livelihood”], Fuzhou wanbao (March 30, 1989).
38. Ba Jin sang a different tune in 1957, when he commented that “the readers
will read whatever books are offered to them.” Union Research Service (June 4,
1957), 272.
39. Isabel Hilton, “Chinese Artist Leads Great Leap Forward,” South China
Morning Post (August 31, 1997).
40. See Scott Kennedy, “The Stone Group: State Client or Market Pathbreaker,”
China Quarterly 152 (December 1997), 746–777; and Yu Tu, “Wan Runnan yu sitong
gongsi” [“Wan Runnan and the Stone Company”], Zhengming 142 (August 1989),
40–41.
41. Wan Runnan, “Capitalism and Democracy in China (I),” China Forum
Newsletter, 1992, 2, quoted in Frederic Wakeman Jr. “The Civil Society and Public
Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture,” Modern China
19(2) (April 1993), 110.
42. David Strand, “Protest in Beijing: Civil Society and Public Sphere in China,”
Problems of Communism (May–June 1990), 14, quoting Nan Fangshuo, “A Look at
the Mainland Democracy Movement on a Visit to Beijing,” Jiushi niandai (April
1989), 37.
43. “Wei Sentenced for Political Conspiracy,” China Daily (December 14, 1994).
44. See Maurice Meisner, The Deng Xiaoping Era; Richard Baum, Burying Mao:
Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994), 300–345.
45. See my “China’s Cultural ‘Liberalization’ and Conflict over the Social Or
ganization of the Arts,” Modern China 9(2) (April 1983), 212–227.
46. Fuzhou Television documentary (April 4, 1989).
47. Chen Ning and Lu Yida, “Yuhuanzhong de fenqi” [“Struggling through
hardship”], Fujian ribao (May 6, 1989).
48. Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, After the Fall: The Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), 231–232.
49. See Daniel C. Lynch, After the Propaganda State: Media, Politics, and “Thought
Work” in Reformed China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999).
50. The concept derives from Gramsci, among others. See T. J. Jackson Lears,
“The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” American His
torical Review 90(3) (1985), 567–593; for a more complex view, see James C. Scott,
Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale Univer
sity Press, 1990).
51. For example, see Geremie Barmé, Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the
Great Leader (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
52. Kalpana Misra, From Post-Maoism to Post-Marxism: The Erosion of Official Ide
ology in Deng’s China (New York: Routledge, 1998).
53. Geremie Barmé, “CCPTM & ADCULT PRC,” The China Journal 41 (January
1999), 1–24.
54. Chen Fang, Tianyuan [“The wrath of heaven”] (Hong Kong: Taipingyang
Shiji Chubanshe, 1998). Two years later, a television mini-series based the Chen Xi-
tong case was also blocked by the Party. Fong Tak-ho, “TV Series on Capital Graft
Scandal Banned,” Hong Kong Standard (May 6, 2000).
55. Scott, Domination, 157.

56. Orville Schell, The Mandate of Heaven: A New Generation of Entrepreneurs, Dis
sidents, Bohemians, and Technocrats Lays Claim to China’s Future (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1994), 311–320.
57. Stefan Landsberger, Chinese Propaganda Posters: From Revolution to Modern
ization (Amsterdam: The Pepin Press, 1995), 205–211.
58. More than a billion viewers watched 317 million sets. Wenhui bao (Septem
ber 24, 1998), in South China Morning Post (September 25, 1998).
59. Jiwei Ci, Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism
(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994).
60. The starting point for the new nationalism is Song Qiang, Zhang Cangcang,
and Qiao Bian. Zhongguo keyi shuo bu [“China can say no”] (Beijing: Zhonghua
Gongshang Lianhe Chubanshe, 1996), followed by numerous imitators. See Su
isheng Zhao, “Chinese Intellectuals’ Quest for National Greatness and National
istic Writing in the 1990s,” China Quarterly 152 (December 1997), 725–745; and
Jonathan Unger, ed., Chinese Nationalism (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
61. Jiang Zeming, “Report to the 16th Party Congress,” China Daily (November
18, 2002).
62. Compare Brazil, another large, multiethnic, frequently authoritarian devel
oping nation in Randal Johnson, “Regarding the Philanthropic Ogre: Cultural Pol
icy in Brazil, 1930–45/1964–90,” in Daniel H. Levine, ed., Constructing Culture and
Power in Latin America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 311–356.
63. Glenn Schloss, “Staunch Advocate of Free Speech,” South China Morning
Post (April 15, 1996).
64. “Research Base for Cultural Industry Opens in China,” Xinhua (August 19,
2002). See also Dan Shilian, Xiandaixing yu wenhua gongye [“Modernity and the
cultural industry”] (Guangzhou: Guangdong Renmin Chubanshe, 2001); and
Chen Fang and Xie Hong, Wenhua cehuaxue [“Cultural planning”] (Beijing: Shishi
Chubanshe, 2000).
65. Erik Eckholm, “A Factory Is Transformed by the Art of Real Estate,” New
York Times (February 6, 2003).
66. Yasheng Huang, “Why China Will Not Collapse,” Foreign Policy 99 (summer
1995), 59.
67. For one culturally sensitive analysis, see Suzanne Ogden, Inklings of Democ
racy in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).
68. For examples of the civil society discussion of Western and Eastern Europe,
see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry
into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, trans.
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989); Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil So
ciety and Its Rivals (London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 1994); Giuseppe Di
Palma, “Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society: Politico-Cultural Change in
Eastern Europe,” World Politics 44(1) (October 1991), 49–80; and Charles Taylor,
“Modes of Civil Society,” Public Culture 3(1) (fall 1990), 95–118, and the response
by Partha Chatterjee, 119–132. For civil society arguments about China, see Strand,
“Protest,” 1–19; Elizabeth J. Perry and Ellen J. Fuller, “China’s Long March to De
mocracy,” World Policy Journal (fall 1991), 663–685; Barrett L. McCormick, Su
Shaozhi, and Xiao Xiaoming, “The 1989 Democracy Movement: A Review of the
238 Chapter 7
Prospects for Civil Society in China,” Pacific Affairs 65(2) (summer 1992), 182–202;
Wang Hui, Leo Ou-fan Lee, with Michael M. J. Fischer, “Is the Public Sphere Un
speakable in Chinese? Can Public Spaces (gonggong kongjian) Lead to Public
Spheres?” Public Culture 6 (1994), 597–605; Bryna Goodman, “Creating Civic
Ground: Public Maneuverings and the State in the Nanjing Decade,” in Gail Her-
shatter et al., eds., Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain (Palo Alto: Stan
ford University Press, 1996), 164–177; Wakeman, “The Civil Society,” 108–138;
William Rowe, “The Problem of ‘Civil Society’ in Late Imperial China,” Modern
China 19(2) (1993), 139–157; Rudolf Wagner, “The Role of the Foreign Community
in the Chinese Public Sphere,” China Quarterly 142 (1995), 423–443; Gordon White,
Jude Howell, and Shang Shaoyuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and So
cial Change in Contemporary China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966); Jeffrey
N. Wasserstrom and Liu Xinyong, “Student Associations and Mass Movements,”
in Deborah Davis et al., eds., Urban Spaces: Autonomy and Community in Contempo
rary China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 375–393; Kraus, “Pub
lic Monuments.”
69. Goodman, “Creating Civic Ground,”165.
70. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, China Wakes: The Struggle for the
Soul of a Rising Power (New York: Times Books, 1994), 279; Andrew J. Nathan and
Tianjin Shi, “Left and Right with Chinese Characteristics: Issues and Alignments
in Deng Xiaoping’s China,” World Politics 48(4) (July 1996), 529.
71. See Tony Saich, “Negotiating the State: The Development of Social Organi
zations in China,” China Quarterly 161 (March 2000), 124–141; Jonathan Unger,
“‘Bridges’: Private Business, the Chinese Government and the Rise of New Asso
ciations,” China Quarterly 147 (September 1996), 795–819; Human Rights in China,
“China: Social Groups Seek Independence in a Regulatory Cage,” April 1998,
www.igc.org/hric/reports/freedom.html.
72. Unger, “Bridges,” 795–819.
73. Liao Wang and Bei Bao, “Hammer Falls on Auctioneers,” China Daily
(March 26, 1996).
74. Wang Xizuo, “Beijing dang’an,” Jiushi niandai 330 (July 1997), 93.
75. Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension. Toward a Critique of Marxist Aes
thetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), xii–xiii.
76. Mao: “The more reactionary a work is in content, the more artistic it is, the
more it can harm the people, and the greater is the need to reject it.” Quoted in the
“Cultural Revolution for Exchange of Revolutionary Experience” of the Vanguard
Song and Dance Ensemble of the Tsinan Armed Forces Units, “Lo Jui-ch’ing’s
Three Poisoned Knives for Slaying Literature and Art in the Armed Forces,” Chieh-
fang-chun Wen-I 13–14 (September 10, 1967), in Survey of China Mainland Magazines
605 (December 11, 1967), 12.
77. Strand, “Protest.”
Index
A Mei, 131 Balfe, Judith Huggins, 202

Academy of Sciences, 156, 167 Baltimore Symphony, 23
Academy of Social Sciences, 122 Balzac, Honoré de, 220
acrobats, 10, 25–26 Bao Tong, 26
advertising, 216, 227 Bao, Y. K., 190
aesthetics, 28, 148, 167–68 Barmé, Geremie, 173, 227
Ai Qing, 77, 157 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 76
amateur arts, 39, 54, 160–63 Bei Ling, 113
Anhui, 115, 198 Beijing, 18, 46, 47, 153, 163
Anna Karenina, 50 Beijing airport, 77
Anthony, Susan B., 77 Beijing Film Studio, 168
antirightist campaign, 11, 38, 41, 49, Beijing Hotel, 75
50, 155, 158, 227 Beijing Massacre, 20, 93, 123, 148, 193,
army. See People’s Liberation Army 198, 223
art for art’s sake, 205 Beijing Opera House, 205
Arts Federation, 43, 62, 165, 169, 170 Beijing Spring, 125
Association of Chinese Writers, 166, 220 Beiping, 14
Association of Journalists, 198 Berger, John, 86
Association of Shanghai Symphony Bertolucci, Bernardo, 58
Lovers, 196 Betterton, Rosemary, 85
autonomy of artists, 78, 82 big pot, 20, 50
avant-garde, 221 Bing Xin, 221
Bitter Love, 61
Ba Jin, 39, 170, 222 “black art” scandal, 54
Baba, 75 Black Snow, 196
Babbitt, Milton, 149 Bloomer, Carolyn, 86
Bai Hua, 59, 61, 126, 144, 164 Bo Yibo, 51
239
240 Index
Boeing, 24 Chen Yifei, 223

Bolshoi Theatre, 156 Chen Yun, 26, 47, 59
Botticelli, Sandro, 76 Chen Zui, 82, 86
Bouguereau, William-Adolphe, 84 Chengde, 220
Bourdieu, Pierre, 199–204 Chengdu, 46, 61
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le, 152 Chiang Kaishek, 75, 121
Brazil, 229 Chicago Art Institute, 83
Brodsky, Josef, 148 China Academy of Fine Arts, 41, 75,
Bureau of Cultural Relics, 65, 232 186
China Art Academy, 222
Cai Yuanpei, 88 China Art Gallery, 80, 82, 197
calligraphy, 10, 12, 28, 51, 63, 120, 169, China Braille Publishing House, 118
186, 192–93, 196, 221, 235n30 China Culture News, 97
Camel xiangzi, 39 China International Radio, 124
Cao Hua, 193 China National Symphony Orchestra,
Cao Yu, 152 23–25. See also Central
Capital Steel works, 44 Philharmonic Orchestra
Cellini, Benvenuto, 5 China News Digest, 134
censorship, 109, 107–41 China Song and Dance Troupe, 25
Central Academy of Crafts and China Women’s News, 86
Design, 166 Chinese Broadcast Arts ensemble, 25
Central Academy of Fine Arts, 75, 89 Chinese Musicians Association, 170
Central Conservatory, 193 Chinese Opera Academy, 25
Central Fine Arts Academy, 88, 155, Chinese Women’s News, 89
197 Chirac, Jacques, 190
Central Intelligence Agency, 125 Choephel, Ngawang, 113
Central Party School, 77 Chongqing, 152
Central People’s Radio, 124 Chou Wen-Chung, 13
Central Philharmonic Orchestra, 23, Chronicle of Higher Education, 131
25, 51. See also China National Ci, Jiwei, 228
Symphony Orchestra Clark, Kenneth, 87
Central Television, 124 Commission for Cultural Relations
Chang Shuhong, 95 with Foreign Countries, 44
Changsha, 111, 122 Communist Association of Proletarian
Chao, Brian, 229 Writers, 156
Chaoge, 82 Communist Party Eleventh Central
Chaozhou, 189 Committee, 17
Chekov, Anton, 152 Confucianism, 48, 150
Chen Guokai, 216 corruption, 189–90, 195
Chen Kaige, 127 Cultural Annals, 117
Chen Qixia, 157 cultural markets, x, 10, 12, 16, 26, 29,
Chen Ruoxi, 224 40, 50, 58, 64–65, 96, 113, 122, 124,
Chen Shuhua, 88 128, 147, 157, 183, 190, 197–99, 205,
Chen Shui-Bian, 131 218–23
Chen Tong, 26 Cultural Revolution, 15, 16, 29, 46, 51,
Chen Xitong, 227 53, 54, 65, 76, 81, 111, 114, 120, 122,
Chen Yi, 22, 46, 50, 114, 159, 164 125, 158, 160, 202, 204, 226, 227
Index 241
Culture, Ministry of, 15, 27, 42, 46, feudalism, 81, 86

49–50, 56–58, 62, 65, 80, 95, 97, 115, Film Bureau, 128
158, 188, 192, 198 Fine Arts, 170
Fine Arts Academy, 88
Dai minority, 77–79 Fine Arts Association, 155
dance, 61, 63, 190, 193 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 155
Davis, Deborah, 196 Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 42, 44
Dazhai Production Brigade, 27 Foshan, 221
Death of a Salesman, 58 Fou Ts’ong, 45
democracy, 17, 81–83, 230–33 four cardinal principles, 18
Democracy Wall, 17–18, 107, 125, 165 Fourth National Arts Congress, 78
Democratic League, 177n54 Freud, 13, 83
Deng Lijun, 64 Friedman, Milton, 13
Deng Lin, 189, 190 Fu Xiaoshi, 97
Deng Liqun, 19, 59 Fudan University, 168
Deng Pufang, 189 Fujian, 13, 43, 65, 94, 129, 163, 186, 187,
Deng Rong, 129 190, 193, 221
Deng Xiaoping, 6, 13, 19, 54–64, 78, 93, Fujian Entrepreneurs Association, 218
107, 117, 124–25, 128, 129, 159, 162, Fujian Literature Foundation, 221
163, 189; contrast to Mao Zedong, Fujian Minju Experimental Opera
6–9; disinterest in arts, 22, 28, 64; Company, 222
return to power, 15–17; “southern Fujian Teachers University, 80, 95
inspection,” 21, 58, 96 Fujian Television, 222
Deng Zhifang, 189 Fujian Writer’s Association, 45, 186–87,
Denmark, 229 195, 222
Ding Ling, 153, 157 Fuzhou, 22, 60, 61, 80, 90, 118, 224
Ding Yi, 88 Fuzhou Evening News, 131
Disney, Walt, 205 Fuzhou Municipal Workers Cultural
Dongfang, 117 Palace, 91
Dream of the Red Chamber, 37
Dreiser, Theodore, 83 Gang of Four, 15, 76, 111, 160
Dubin, Steven C., 146 Garlic Ballads, The, 131–34
Dunhuang, 91 Gateway to China, 134
Duni Opera Company, 163 Gauguin, Paul, 79
General Federation of Trade Unions,
East Germany, 2 45
Eastern Europe, 10, 29, 41, 109, 173–74 Getting Used to Dying, 126
Economic Daily, 124 Godzilla, 1, 143
Elvin, Mark, 74 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 76
“engineers of the human soul,” 12 Goldblatt, Howard, 131
Evans, Harriet, 84 Golden Lotus, 61, 95
Exploration of Contemporary Arts, 117 Golden Sands, Running Waters, 97
Golden Years, 126
Fang Jie, 19 Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., 225
Fang Lizhi, 20, 93, 123 Golgol, Nicolai, 152
Feidu, 126 Gong Li, 96
Feng Xuefeng, 157 Goodman, Bryna, 232
242 Index
Gorky, Maxim, 156 Hu Jiwei, 59

Gottlieb, Adolf, 149–50 Hu Qiaomu, 114, 157
Great Hall of the People, 10 Hu Qili, 93
Great Leap Forward, 7, 11, 25, 51, 160, Hu Shi, 39, 53
227 Hu Yaobang, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 33n33,
Great World Amusement Center, 39 45, 63, 93, 123
Gu Cheng, 164, 198 Hua Guofeng, 15, 16, 17, 78, 107
Gu Wenda, 133 Hua Junwu, 11
Gu Yuan, 197 Huang Shuqin, 96
Guan Shanyue, 186, 221 Huang Yongyu, 128
Guanfu Classic Art Museum, 219 Huang Zhen, 46, 57
Guangdong, 27, 186, 221 Huang Zhou, 186
Guangdong Writers Association, 216 Hubei, 191
Guangming Daily, 124 Hui’an county, Fujian, 129
Guangzhou, 14, 25, 46, 98, 111, 127, 222 Hunan, 58, 198
Guangzhou Fine Arts Academy, 75 Hunan Television, 111
Guerrilla Girls, 86 Hundred Flowers, 41, 154, 155, 165,
Guilin, 56 227
Guizhou, 113 Hundred Flowers movement, 50, 157
Guo Moruo, 50, 157 Hungary, 172, 216
Guomindang, 118, 121 Hunt, Lynn, 92
Huters, Ted, 39, 155
Haimen County, Jiangsu, 55
Hainan, 24 In the Heat of the Sun, 138n48
Hainan Photographic Arts Publishing India, 229
Company, 118 inflation, 90, 187
Half of Man Is Woman, 126 Inner Mongolia, 44
Hall of Culture and History, 41 Inner Mongolia Audiovisual
handicrafts, 10, 62 Publishing Company, 118
Hangzhou, 46, 80, 186 intellectual property rights, 97, 98, 129
Hao Liang, 162 internally restricted art, 12, 90, 119, 188
Hao Ran, 162, 202, 204 Irish Republican Army, 116
Haraszti, Miklos, 172–73 iron rice bowl, 17, 55
“Hard Porridge,” 127
He Jingzhi, 26, 45 Jia Pingwa, 126–27
Hebei, 53, 118, 169, 216 Jiang Feng, 153, 162
Hefner III, Robert, 190 Jiang Qing, 15, 46, 51, 53, 60, 61, 162
hegemony, ideological, viii–ix, 5, 21, Jiang Wen, 138n48
38, 173, 213, 225–30 Jiang Zemin, 9, 21, 24, 28, 29, 61, 63,
Henan, 191 229
Hi Feng, 53 Jiangxi, 95
Hollywood, 134 Jiangxi Soviet, 151
Holm, David, 152 Jianlibao Cantonese Opera Troupe, 220
Hong Kong, 13, 134, 186, 189 Jianlibao Light Orchestra, 220
Hoxha, Enver, 15 Jinzhou, 196
Hu County, Shaanxi, 161 Joan of Arc, 77
Hu Feng, 37, 122, 157 Johnson, Samuel, 5
Hu Jintao, 9, 22 Journey to the West, 97
Index 243
Ju Dou, 120 literature, 6, 10–12, 21, 37, 39, 49, 57, 61,
Judd, Ellen, 161 112–13, 119, 126–27, 131–33, 144, 146,
159, 162, 170, 185–88, 190, 196, 200,
Kang Sheng, 76 201, 203, 207, 216–18, 220–22, 228
Ke Wenhui, 83 Liu Baiyu, 26
Kunming, 95 Liu Binyan, 20, 59, 93, 117, 170
Kunming Cigarette Factory, 220 Liu Fuzhi, 57
kunqu, 190 Liu Haisu, 74, 75, 81
Liu Heng, 196
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 108 Liu Qingtang, 34n40, 162
Laing, Ellen, 161 Liu Shaoqi, 19, 53, 76, 77, 159, 223
Lao She, 39 Liu Shikun, 162
Larson, Wendy, 167 Liu Xinwu, 202
Last Emperor, 58 Liu Xiobo, 119
laws of art, 20, 23, 82, 126, 167–69, 183, Liu Zaifu, 167
197. See also professionalism Liu Zhongde, 62
Leda and the swan, 83 Living, 127
Legend of the White Snake, 52 Long Yuzhi, 62
Li Dazhao, 88 Lu Di, 53
Li Desheng, 43 Lu Dingy, 76
Li Huasheng, 61, 79 Lu Dingyi, 49
Li Jingquan, 33n3 Lu Rui, 203
Li Jun, 57 Lu Wenfu, 202
Li Kuchan, 155 Lu Xun, 39, 220
Li Lanqing, 29 Lu Xun Arts Academy, 40, 151, 152, 153
Li Ling, 24 Lu Xun Fine Arts Academy, 76
Li Pei, 193 Lynch, Daniel, 125
Li Peng, 28, 63, 93, 123
Li Ruihaun, 78, 93, 120 Ma Liuming, 98
Li Tieying, 28 Ma, Yo-yo, 13
Li Zehou, 124 Ma Zhe, 113
Liang Qichao, 39 Mackerras, Colin, 154–55
Liang Xiaosheng, 168 Makarenko, Anton, 156
Liao Yiwu, 122 Maksimov, 75
Liaodong County Paper Factory, Mama, 139n65
220 management, 56, 58
Liaoning, 77, 79, 111 Mao Amin, 195
libel, 129 Mao Dun, 49, 57, 220
liberalization: bourgeois, 18, 59, 79, Mao Zedong, 6, 10, 15, 47–54, 63,
82, 93, 117, 170; cultural and 80–81, 114, 151, 153, 154, 158–59;
political, viii–ix, 18–19, 21–22, 125, arts enthusiasms, 10–11, 22, 28,
210 51–53; contrast to Deng Xiaoping,
licensing, 198 6–9; Maoist approach to culture,
Life of Wu Xun, 37, 53, 120, 157 226, 233; “Talks at Yan’an Arts
Lin Biao, 50–51 Forum,” 152
Lin Mohan, 26 Mapplethorpe, Robert, 133
Lin Yutang, 39 Marcuse, Herbert, 233
Link, Perry, 115–16 Martin, Helmut, 13
244 Index
May Fourth movement, 29, 41, 151, Oriental Song and Dance Troupe, 44,
203–4 159
McClary, Susan, 147 Orwell, George, 2, 120
Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 205 Ouyang Shan, 159
Mexico, 229
Miller, Arthur, 58 painting, 10, 12, 47, 54, 57, 61, 73–105,
Mimosa, 126 111, 115, 128, 130, 133, 149, 150, 153,
Misra, Kalpana, 227 155, 161, 170, 186, 189, 192–95, 198,
missionaries, 75 201, 204, 221, 223
Mo Yan, 61, 131–33 Pan Yuliang, 2, 96
models, 74–76, 79, 87–89 Pang Zhonghua, 195
Modigliani, Amedeo, 80 Paris, 186
Moliere, 152 patronage, 3–6, 37–72, 77, 93, 144, 164,
Moore, Jeanne, 86 213–38
Morris, Philip, 220 Pei, I.M., 13
Moscow Arts Theatre, 156 Peng Ming, 111
Moscow University, 156 Peng Zhen, 18, 51, 76
Museum of Modern Art, 133 Penguin books, 131
music, ix, 3, 23–24, 29, 44, 47, 109, 111, People’s Daily, 14, 59, 78, 123, 124
117–18, 146–47, 149 155, 162, 170, People’s Liberation Army, 15, 21, 43,
166, 190, 193, 195; popular, 12, 64, 46, 50, 58, 60–61, 127, 132, 148
90, 194, 196, 214, 228 Petofi, Sandor, 159
Nanchang, 74 Photography News, 92
Nanchang Municipal Mass Arts Picasso, 13, 79
Center, 91 Pickowicz, Paul, 173
Nanjing, 61, 80, 88, 121, 134 pingtan, 47
Nanjing Art Museum, 27, 88, 188 poetry, 10, 48, 50, 61, 75, 113, 118, 122,
National Arts Congress, 164 148, 160, 164–65, 168, 190, 198, 208
National Endowment of the Arts, 43 Political Bureau, 120
nationalism, 134, 217–19, 228–29 political elite, 51–54, 63–64
“New Art in China Post 1989,” 133 pollution, spiritual, 18, 59, 79, 170
New China Bookstore, 27, 90, 124, 222 population, 6,7
New China News Agency, 124, 129 pornography, 10, 91–95
New Life movement, 29 posters, propaganda, 228
News Front, 116 Presley, Elvis, 29
Ningxia Arts Federation, 126 professionalism, viii–x, 3–6, 11, 20,
Nortel, 24 39–41, 50, 74, 78, 82, 125–26, 143–82,
North Korea, 18 197–99, 203–5, 231–32. See also laws
nudes, 73–106 of art
Propaganda Department, Communist
Office of News and Publications, 94 Party, 16, 43, 48–49, 58–60, 109, 114,
Ohio, 133 124, 127, 132, 165, 169–70, 224
opera, 10, 19–20, 22, 25, 39, 46, 51–53, Public Security, Ministry of, 15, 44
57, 61, 118, 154, 161, 163, 189, 194,
214, 216, 220 Qi Benyu, 34n40
Organization Department, Communist qigong, 90
Party, 16 Qinshi Huangdi, 151
Index 245
Qiu Ju Goes to Court, 127 Shanxi Opera Troupe, 51

Qiushi, 124 Sheldon, Sidney, 12, 190
Shen Congwen, 11, 39
Radio, Film, and Television, Ministry Shen Tu, 77
of, 59, 115, 120 Shenyang, 26, 46
Raise the Red Lantern, 120, 201 Shenzhen, 123
Ramos, Fidel, 29 Shi Ximin, 157
Reading, 199 Shishi, 94, 224
Red Flag, 164 Sichuan, 91
Red Guard, 122 Sistine Chapel, 77
The Red Lantern, 161 slogans, 70n65
Red Sorghum, 128, 132 socialist spiritual civilization, 22, 169,
reform, political, vii–x, 26, 30, 230–33 205
retirement, 16 Soviet experience, 38, 41
Rodin, August, 85, 86 Soviet Union, 42, 75, 148, 155
Rosenberg, Harold, 153 Soviet Writers Union, 155, 171
Rueschemeyer, Marilyn, 2 Stalin, 132
Stanislavsky, Constantin, 152, 156
Sanming, Fujian, 194 Stars Fine Arts Exhibition, 162, 198
Schell, Orville, 228 State Planning Commission, 62
Schoenberg, Arnold,13 State Press and Publication
Schoenhals, Michael, 110, 116 Administration, 92–93, 109, 117,
science, 76, 81–83, 167, 172 118, 123, 124, 167
Scott, James C., 228 Stone Corporation, 223
Sculpture Park, 222 storytellers, 39, 42
The Secret History of the Qing Court, 120 Strand, David, 233
Seek Truth from Facts, 124 Strangers in Beijing, 184
Selections from Fiction, 220 Su Dongpo, 48
self-reliance, 7 Su Shaozhi, 93, 123, 131
September Morn, 87 Su Tong, 201
Shaanxi, 151, 152, 161 subsidies for art, 23, 56, 214–16
Shajiabang, 161 Sullivan, William M., 145
Shangdong Song and Dance Theatre, Sun Quanfang, 75
219 Sun Shaozhen, 168
Shanghai, 14, 46, 51, 80, 94, 115, 194 Sun Yatsen, 88
Shanghai Baby, 126 Suzhou, 47
Shanghai Democratic League, 157
Shanghai Fine Arts School, 74 Taiwan, 13, 14, 61, 64, 132, 133
Shanghai Kunqu Company, 190 Tang Daxi, 77
Shanghai Library, 91 television, 3, 5, 7, 12–13, 22, 59, 76, 82,
Shanghai Museum, 205 88, 96, 109, 115, 118, 120, 123, 125,
Shanghai Philately, 120 186, 196, 197, 200, 203, 218, 222, 228,
Shanghai Population Planning Center, 232
91 Teng Jinxian, 128
Shanghai Propaganda Department, 157 Texaco, 220
Shanghai Stock Exchange, 24 Tianjin, 15, 78
Shanghai Television, 22 Tibetan, 84
246 Index
Ting Shaoguang, 208n35 Wu Zuoren, 76

Tongzhi Restoration, 29 Wuer Kaixi, 63
Tosca, 61 Wuhan, 14, 61
tourism, 219–21
Xi’an, 46, 126
U.S. Defense Department Film and Xi’an Spoken Drama Academy, 56
Television Liaison Office, 134 Xiamen, 14, 95, 97, 198
United Front Work Department, Xiamen Arts Association, 169, 220
Communist Party, 44 Xiamen Daily, 95
University of Oregon Museum of Art, Xiamen Literature, 220
133 Xian Xinghai, 24
Unrequited Love, 164 Xian Xinghai-Nie Erh Musicians
Association, 170
Venus de Milo, 76, 83, 87 Xianyou County, 163
Village of Widows, 129 Xiao Lu, 133
von Hallberg, Robert, 173 Xiao Qian, 157
Xiao Wangdong, 51
Wagner, Rudolf, 156 Xiaojinzhuang, 162
Wal-Mart, 134 Xie Dongming, 82
Wan Runnan, 223 Xie Ming, 23
Wang Anyi, 162 Xie Xingbiao, 86, 87
Wang Meng, 21, 127–28, 57, 171, 173, Xin Fengxia, 39
202 Xinji, 169, 170
Wang Renzhi, 26 Xinjiang, 44, 57
Wang Renzhong, 120 Xu Beihong, 75, 88
Wang Roushui, 59, 223 Xu Bing, 199
Wang Ruowang, 20, 164
Wang Shiwei, 153 Yalu River, 111
Wang Shuo, 119, 195, 201 Yan Jiaqi, 93, 123
Wang Xiaobo, 126, 203 Yan’an, 4, 17, 20, 40, 48, 79, 151, 152,
Wang Yuqi, 91 153, 155, 164
Wang Zhen, 18, 59 Yan’an Arts Forum, 9, 51, 152
Washington Post, 116 Yang Baibing, 43
Washington Times, 116 Yang Feiyun, 91
Water Margin, 53 yangge, 44
Wei Guoqing, 43 Yangzi River Power Company, 220
Wei Hui, 126 Yao Wenyuan, 111, 160
Wei Jingsheng, 18, 107, 122, 131, 223 Yao Xueyin, 26
Wen Yuhong, 203 Ye Wenfu, 61
Wenyi bao, 170 Yellow Earth, 20, 164
“What if I Were Real,” 64 Yellow Mountain, 64
White III, Lynn T., 49, 116 Yellow River Cantata, 24
The White-Haired Girl, 57 Yi Chuan, 108
Whitney Museum of American Art, 133 Yin Chengzong, 162
Williams, Raymond, 40, 44, 154, 157, Ying Ruocheng, 58, 62, 80
169, 170, 171, 172, 197 Youth League, Communist, 16, 45, 62,
Wu Yi, 229 111
Index 247
Yu Hua, 203 Zhang Zuomin, 97

Yu Huiyong, 57 Zhangzhou, 218
Yu, Julian, 195 Zhao Dan, 112–13, 163
Yu Qiuli, 43 Zhao, Henry Y. H., 203
Yu Yanfeng, 96 Zhao Ziyang, 19, 20, 26, 30, 60, 62, 93,
Yuan Yunsheng, 77–79, 84, 93 123
Yuanming Park Village, 131 Zhdanov, Andrei, 156
Zhejiang, 114, 220
Zeng Kejia, 162 Zhongnanhai, 15
Zha Jianying, 97 Zhou Enlai, 47, 76, 114, 164
Zhai Mo, 83 Zhou Weichi, 57
Zhang Chunqiao, 43, 54, 111, 160 Zhou Yang, 11, 49, 50, 59, 157, 165
Zhang Huan, 98 Zhouzhou Conference, 26
Zhang Jie, 235n30 Zhu Haihong, 123
Zhang Pinghua, 15 Zhu Houze, 59
Zhang Xianliang, 6, 126, 195, 224 Zhu Muzhi, 65
Zhang Yimou, 120, 127, 132, 201 Zuo Zhangwei, 85, 86, 90
Zhang Yuan, 139n65 Zuopin, 77
Zhang Zhixin, 77
About the Author
Richard Curt Kraus is director of the Robert D. Clark Honors College and
professor of political science at the University of Oregon. His other books in
clude Class Conflict in Chinese Socialism; Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-
Class Ambitions and the Struggle over Western Music; Brushes with Power: Mod
ern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy; and Urban Spaces: Autonomy and
Community in Contemporary China (coedited with Deborah Davis, Barry
Naughton, and Elizabeth Perry).
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Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern

Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival,

and the Arty in China

The New Politics of Culture

Richard Curt Kraus

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ISBN 0-7425-2719-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7425-2720-4 (pbk. : alk.

1. Art and state—China. I. Title. II. Series.

Printed in the United States of America

∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

1 Cultural Reform as an Afterthought 1

2 The Waning Authority of the Chinese State as

Patron of the Arts 37

4 The Chinese Censorship Game: New Rules

for the Prevention of Art 107

5 Artists as Professionals 143

6 The Price of Beauty 183

7 The Hands That Feed Them 213

About the Author 249

of art-as-ideology. The often unsettling impact of rapid economic growth

CHINA’S POLITICIZED ARTS

a simple stereotype, that Stalinist policies overwhelmed and deformed an art

have an important dimension that is essentially aesthetic, we cannot quite

ture,” that frustratingly imprecise term that we cannot do without. Cul­

TWO DEATHS, TWO CHINAS: 1976 AND 1997

China’s Place in the World

FROM ARTISTIC HOMOGENEITY TO DIVERSITY

The end of the Cultural Revolution was a monochrome moment in

as vulgar. The Stalinist ideal of becoming “engineers of the human soul”

Equally important were the increasing international contacts that grew

spawned a commercial culture that sometimes seemed from a different

THE ROUNDABOUT ROAD TO CULTURAL REFORM

The Return of Deng Xiaoping

in this project was Hu Yaobang, first as head of the Party’s Organization

Cultural Revolution, protestors posted big character posters. Deng rather

Back and Forth through the 1980s

openness and restriction have long characterized politics in the People’s

Reforming Cultural Institutions

Most intellectual and artistic products circulate in the form of commodities,

Dreams of Professional Autonomy

The Beijing Massacre

THE UNEVEN PACE OF ARTS REFORMS

The China National Symphony Orchestra

in the orchestra. Of the orchestra’s 1989 1.2-million-yuan (approximately

Breaking the Habit of the Planned Arts Economy

Inept Reforms and Inappropriate Models

well. Or, as a salesman describes an abortive reform initiative in one loca­

THE EMERGENCE OF A DISCRETE AESTHETIC REALM

ern Europe and revealed only a superficial interest in traditional culture.70

ture,” that frustratingly imprecise term that we cannot do without. Cul

well. Or, as a salesman describes an abortive reform initiative in one loca

official sanctions (ranging from labeling to imprisonment) during the Cul

1. My debt to earlier research on the politics of Chinese culture will be appar

T he representation of the naked body is an arena of persistent contro

Fundamental training in drawing and sculpture requires models—male, fe

massive propaganda campaign about Zhang Zhixin (1930–1975), a Liao

Li remarkably deferred to the professional expertise of artists, in con