The CCP`s Literature and Arts Policy Before and Since the Tienanmen Incident

Abstract

When Teng Hsiao-p`ing (Deng Xiaoping) seized power in the late 1970s, mainland China`s writers and artists hoped for a new era of creative freedom. Their hopes were soon dashed, however. Teng, for all his reformist economic policies, took the lead from Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) where literature and arts policy was concerned. Instead of attaining true liberation, writers and artists were purged one after another, until the final bloodshed of Tienanmen (Tiananmen). In early 1992, Teng`s call for a faster pace of economic reform injected a new vitality into mainland Chinese society. However, the only innovation in the Chinese Communist Party`s arts policy is that writers and artists are now asked to study Teng Hsiao-p`ing on Literature and Arts as well as Mao`s ``Yenan Talks.``