Bold Words from China

...It is the irony of such laudable calls for a return to reason and civilized behavior that they reveal all the more plainly the present servitude of China's professional writers, who must still be "raised up" to the level of the cadre-bureaucrats, the theoretical "servants of the people...

...The ten-year period of the Cultural Revolution was barren of innovation because "potential intellectual resources were suppressed by the instruments of dictatorship...

...Many of our Party personnel have established deep friendships with literary and art workers," Hu Qili declared in his speech, in strange parallel to the man of anecdote who maintained that some of his best friends were Jews...

...Contrary to the general impression abroad, however, there is no single, clear voice calling the signals of change...

...Therefore, despite misgivings and dissension within its ranks, the Deng leadership again pressed down on the pedal of anti-leftism, barely in time to establish the dominance of this line at the fourth national congress of the Chinese Writers' Association,, which began on last December 20...

...The slogan is directed mainly at Party cadres, most of them culturally illiterate, who are still infested with such views-that is, who regard writers and artists as a tainted caste, to be assigned tasks according to a prescribed formula, and to be kept on very short leash, it being the nature of this element to grow arrogant and rebellious...

...It is part of what the Soviet emigre writer, Vassily Aksyonov, recently described as literary "success, Soviet-style...

...Although foreign analysts like to ascribe such inconsistency of policy to Deng Xiaoping's need to appease or compromise with a more left-leaning faction of the power coalition, it is no less plausible to assume that Deng himself has been uncertain and impulsive in dealing with the unexpected consequences of any slackening of controls...

...Mention the Soviet Union and a dark chain of free association begins: rigidity, orthodoxy, intransigency, menace, with unbroken links into the future...

...That the reformists do not miss these obvious possibilities can be seen from their constant, sentimental propaganda appeals for a united front to build up the "motherland...

...True, they continue to act harshly on dictatorial caprice and have shown no consistency in braking leftism or maintaining moderation...

...That this rage for freedom is not an observer's chimera but, in fact, elsewhere breaks through the surface of China's intellectual and cultural world can be corroborated by reference to the Chinese media during 1984-85...

...Only in 1984, it is now openly said, "did the evil wind not blow...

...For example, in the alleged interests of further "developing" Marxism, an article in the People's Daily last December 3 called for opening the door to foreign, non-Marxist cultural influences and for permitting theoretical and academic debate "based on different viewpoints...

...It needs an intelligentsia, not a sorry band of cowed scribes and dim semi-literates...

...Any of the writers or "commentators" would undoubtedly be prepared to say, as Liu Binyan indeed wrote, "I am not a dissident...

...In his message for a similar occasion on last December 31, the Party head of Heilongjiang Province spelled things out: The "criterion" for judging literature and art is whether or not they reject foreign pollutants and further modernization and building people's confidence in socialism...

...In the spirit of "close friendship" with "literary and art workers," the Party head of Heilongjiang helpfully suggested that "we [leaders] should regularly convey to [them] the guidelines of relevant documents and explain to them the political and economic situation, so that they can better understand...

...The triggering event was a speech by Hu Qili, member of the Party Central Committee Secretariat and an apparent rising star in the reform faction...

...We should not pin political labels on writers, but allow them to defend themselves...

...But the opinion they express, ingenuously or not, implies an open-endedness that runs counter to the sharp definition of limits found in other published statements, particularly from Party sources...

...The reformists have learned something about the effects of crushing repression on human creativity...

...Indeed, he added, "during those years a whole batch of people were trained who could make their living only from political movements and making people suffer...

...For the bright cultural future toward which Peking is hurrying, bedeviled by leftist obstructionists and cheered on by the outside world, looks to be, on closer inspection, ever more like the tarnished Soviet present...

...Liu Binyan could and did tick off precisely the names of provinces in which a "better" anti-leftist line has been pursued...

...our way...

...They have still to establish that respectable, docile intelligentsia, in the first place, and to reach that Soviet level of literary product dismissed by Aksyonov as "mediocrity," let alone of the exceptional works of talent and universal appeal which have managed to survive Soviet censorship...

...In the words of a Chinese media correspondent: "It is not possible for a trembling hand to produce great works...

...That something interesting is taking place inside China is undeniable...

...Some people," he wrote, "have always tried to oppose rightism, in other words, to reduce the freedom of literary creation...

...The articles do not challenge current state ideology or Party rule...

...Nevertheless, the wind of evil lately blowing is not as fierce or relentless as it was during the time of Mao...

...The Dengist projection into the future is now clear to see...

...Writers must be able to think with their own minds and must have ample freedom to choose material, themes, and artistic methods to express their own feelings, emotions, and thoughts...

...The weight of unpromising evidence, listing on the Party side, indicates, then, that creative freedom in literature and the arts, like the freer activity in the Chinese economy today, will probably remain a "bird in a cage...

...Haven't we, in fact, seen it somewhere before...

...Obviously, we have-in the country of "mature socialism" that is China's neighbor, the Soviet Union...

...This was, in the words of the Hong Kong journal Cheng Ming of February 1, nothing less than a "public opinion poll," with "zero marks" given the leftists and total approval accorded all those, represented by Zhou Yang, who recently suffered censure for exposing new forms of "alienation" under socialism and advocating a return to humanistic values...

...The Party may assign its own definitions to "rightism" and "leftism" as it attempts to justify its wavering course, but the terms have long escaped their propaganda categories into the world where real meaning is forged...

...the purpose of the blast really the same as before...

...Indeed, is this anything new in the Communist world...

...For Liu Binyan, all such ideological verbiage is stripped to ascertain one central meaning- freedom, its loss or gain...

...In order to achieve this awesome status, China cannot remain intellectually and culturally inferior, incapable of inspiring its own people or making an impression abroad...

...Is all this true about China...

...In short, there is no place in this "revolutionized thinking" for the distinguishing mark of the world's great literature- universality...

...But this is the reality of all practice in China, which is not only divided into individual kingdoms, but hidden kingdoms within kingdoms...

...But is this what the Chinese intelligentsia really wants-or the world expects...

...Congratulatory telegrams from the two officials, read to the assembled writers at the opening sesThe reformists have learned something about the effects of crushing repression on human creativity...

...The author's answer, based on a review of history, was that "the suppression of public opinion [has always] led to disaster...

...A he earlier noted speech of Hu Qili, which released, among other emotions, a torrent of relief and gratitude in its audience-causing one poor writer to gush afterward that "it was most soothing, like the morning dew'- nevertheless also proffered the same literary recipe from the cookbook of socialist realism, namely, the optimistic portrayal of the new Dengist man, the reformer dedicated to the four modernizations...

...The reformists have a very different vision for China from that of the Maoist obscurantists, with their bizarrely retrograde worker-peasant-soldier society...

...At the same time, Hu echoed one of the reform faction's most enlightened themes, calling upon the Party cadres to place writers and artists "on an equal footing with" themselves in the matter of literary criticism: "We [the Party] must not do things in an oversimplified and crude manner, nor should criticism be exaggerated...

...As he also noted, Soviet ideologists have nothing against creative talent and, on the contrary, would welcome true literary quality, "with only one condition, its docility...

...Moreover, the constant vacillation and ambiguity of central policy favor latitude in local "interpretations," generally in the best self-interest of the lesser Party nobility, with whom China's professional writers ultimately have to deal...

...They must be credited, therefore, with a civilizing mission...

...A he episode may be even more fascinating than it appears, for it is doubtful that the "opinion" expressed from the floor truly matched that of Hu Yaobang, who reportedly sat smiling rather cheerily from the platform at the prolonged applause...

...On the other hand, a message of greeting from the sickbed of Zhou Yang-a famous litterateur with a checkered political past, who had, however, turned against the left and become a prominent target of the campaign against spiritual pollution-drew spontaneous, "thunderous" applause, lasting several minutes...

...The Party attitude is both newly benign and patronizing...

...As a similar essay in the People's Daily explained on March 1, scholars who are "on guard" and afraid never say or produce anything new...

...Many of them would surely welcome decent income and housing, security, public recognition, and even state prizes...

...It might be argued that many backward opinions uttered in the media represent subordinate or provincial perversions of central policy, and, indeed, this is often true...

...If a theory cannot withstand debate, but gains its advantage from "some external force," then it is a "false advantage," which is bound to collapse...

...Creation must be free," he said...

...The essay stressed the importance of "academic democracy," meaning that "academic and theoretical right and wrong cannot be determined by administrative decree or by irrelevant and unfair 'mass criticism,' but [only] by academic discussion and practice...

...The most important words to float out of this "discussion" and reach the West, where they are often taken at face value, are "emancipation of the mind" and "creative freedom...

...Long ago, it was the "fatherland," even holy Russia, not the totalitarian state, that Stalin invoked for Soviet subjects to defend when Nazi Germany invaded during World War II...

...One of the prominent participants in the writers' congress, the journalist Liu Binyan, revealed such divergence of meaning with striking clarity in an article later published in February in a Hong Kong journal...

...Patronization can go to considerable lengths...

...So much for the yearnings of the 80-year-old novelist Ba Jin, expressed in a speech written for the writers' congress, to see a Chinese "Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Tolstoy...

...An article in the Peking China Daily of February 27 advocated "greater freedom" for social scientists to differ from "established thought" without fear of making "political" mistakes...

...Such people have apparently pinned on the reformists whatever realistic hope they have of tolerable cultural conditions...

...Nowhere is this more distinctly articulated than in China's literary world, of late a fairly open arena, where writers and journalists, many of them scarred survivors of long "leftist" persecution, and assorted Party leaders have been talking aloud, not so much with as at each other...

...The intense shock produced within China and the possibility, since hinted at, that foreign investors' confidence in Chinese stability might be shaken helped snap Peking back to its senses...

...It is this cruel record that one writer in the People's Daily clearly had in mind last December 8 when he said it had to be admitted with shame that one of the Chinese "characteristics" of socialism during most of its history was "an addiction to making others suffer...

...He dealt ruthlessly with the amateur young writers who spoke out boldly across China during the brief heyday of Democracy Wall in 1978-79, silencing them with long prison terms...

...The reformists in Peking have a distance to go, however, before fully appreciating this dilemma...

...Not only are creditable writers and artists needed to serve the new nationalism, but, it is hoped, they themselves may warm to its rays-a corollary effect of potential benefit to the Party at this time of unsettling change and ideological crisis...

...Alarmed also by "rightist," or "bourgeois liberal," trends in officially recognized "theoretical, literary, and art circles," he initiated a stifling increase in cultural controls during 1980-83, culminating in the notorious campaign against "cultural pollution," which threatened for a time to take off in cultural revolutionary fashion...

...The same could be said of Peking's most advanced ideologists of reform...

...It is the creation at maximal speed of a modern, Communist superstate, the colossus of the Pacific...

...Almost everyone, liberal and conservative, seems bullish on China these days...

...It also meant-and here the article aimed at its real target and betrayed its "anti-rightist" colors-putting an end to all those works exhibiting "moral fever," that is, exalting "abstract" morality and human virtues which allegedly have an "eternal" value transcending historic and social conditions...

...One's own views and grounds," the author wrote, "should be the only basis for conducting discussions...

...The theme of freedom as understood by Liu Binyan also became, unexpectedly and overwhelmingly, central to the mood and proceedings at the writers' congress...

...It is this addiction that the reformists in Peking, some of whom were themselves victims of Maoist barbarism, would like to eliminate from the Chinese cultural world...

...Pride in Chinese achievement, for which Communist party leadership would, of course, be taken as indispensable, could do much to shore up the crumbling ruins of Marxist faith...

...There is no neat and simple congruence here between political formula and popular aspiration...

...Under the reign of Maoist ultraleftism, an article of "literary criticism" in the official press was as chilling as an execution...

...Although the speech made its mark instantly by taking a clear anti-leftist line, the key word that elicited a surge of euphoria was "freedom," especially when used ex-hilaratingly alone, without the usual tail of ideological qualifiers...

...Neither Hu Qiaomu nor Deng Liqun attended...

...Behind the lines of purely verbal severity, which sometimes, curiously, seemed to hold out hope of redemption, the reality was sickeningly violent: seizure, subjection to public "struggle," imprisonment or harsh exile, and, during the Cultural Revolution, torture and death at the hands of an adolescent mob...

...I am not sure whether it implies that we are enjoying too much proletarian freedom here and so it is unnecessary to import any from foreign countries, or that freedom will be contaminated by bourgeois characteristics once it goes beyond a certain limit, and so a limit has to be set...

...For a few of the top leaders of the "reform faction," who now more or less steer the course from Peking, notably strong man Deng Xiaoping and his protege Hu Yaobang, the phrase "emancipation of the mind" has a specific meaning-to throw off the fanatic leftist views of the late Mao era, in this case, on literature and art...

...This cliff-hanger prelude to the congress and the last-minute rescue, attributed by the grapevine to Hu Yaobang, undoubtedly contributed to the extraordinary emotionalism of its proceedings...

...Deng Xiaoping may yet have time to make it, with luck...

...An article in the People's Daily of February 4, entitled "Silence is the Thing to be Feared," began with a question: "Should a political party or state encourage the free airing of views and allow people to speak out freely...

...As no Chinese writer can forget, the Cultural Revolution itself began with an article criticizing a play written by the historian and then vice-mayor of Peking, Wu Han, who was consequently, as the official phrase now goes, "persecuted to death...

...Once this criterion is met, he said, "we can go all out creating freely...

...A radio commentator on January 7 hailed both the apparent victory for literary freedom and the democratic proceedings at the writers' congress and cited "public opinion" on behalf of the extension of such achievements "to the entire sphere of ideology, instead of being limited merely to the literary world...

...All of society] should act firmly to ensure that writers have such freedom...

...Instead, the more closely one listens, the more voices one hears, often using the same words to say quite different things...

...The common Party definition for rightism is, however, "bourgeois liberalism," about which Liu Binyan has the following to say: "I have pondered deeply over this term for five years, but so far I have not quite understood what it means...

...Unfortunately," Aksyonov added, "these two virtues-quality and docility-seldom go hand in hand...

...Thus, the Party head of Guangdong Province, in a January 29 message to a meeting of the provincial branch of the Chinese Writers' Association, "expressed the hope that writers would correctly exercise the freedom to create"-a line of delicious absurdity which, however, says perfectly what it means...

...Say China and you elicit a string of sunny antonyms: flexibility, pragmatism, compromise, and doors opening upon vistas of promise and hope...

...All this is not only possible, but seems familiar...

...Are the Chinese Communists, perhaps, "going Miriam London is a researcher in Chinese and Soviet studies...

...Do they indeed...

...Following upon other ideologically irreverent-sounding phrases heard from China in recent days, these bold words seem to rattle the dry bones of Marxist dogma and threaten to blow them away...

...An article in Peking's Guangming Daily last October 18 began by proclaiming the necessity of "revolutionizing thinking" on literature and art, in response to the "extensive and profound social revolution" currently taking place in China, and proceeded to explain what this meant: "Our literature and art should enthusiastically extol the socialist new people and praise the reformers...

...Nor is world...

...When the Party's top theoretical organ, Red Flag, advocates freedom of creation, discussion, and debate, "as long as they do not go against the law" (February 16), every functionary knows that he is safe to maneuver within the misty confines of this "law," and every writer feels uneasy and on guard...

...According to certain Hong Kong journals, which have a good track record for reliable "inside information," only swift maneuvering by Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang headed off an attempt by the more left-leaning top Party ideologist Hu Qiaomu and central sion, were received in total silence, without even a polite round of applause...

...The emphasis is on attaining national power and prestige great enough for China to exact its own terms from the rest of the propaganda head Deng Liqun to accomplish precisely the reverse, that is, to push anti-rightism as the line on literature and the arts...

...As Cheng Ming reported, "once 'freedom' was mentioned on the platform," the writers at the congress seemed themselves set free, departing from the "normal practice," the rigid format and "tongue-in-cheek talk," of previous congresses and, at last, making a false propaganda cliche come true, namely, by "freely airing their views...

...The cage may turn out to be quite spacious, comfortable, and even dignified- attractive, in fact, to many of China's writers, who would likely see in it an improvement over their present material poverty and lack of status...

...Liu Binyan thus automatically equates anti-rightism with loss of freedom-an equation that he has evidently long taken for granted...

...The appearance of such articles in major organs Of the official media would not be possible without powerful, backstage support, evidently from individuals in the reformist faction...

...Certainly not more than this, and perhaps much less...