The Reform of the Cultural System: Culture, Creativity and Innovation in China

Abstract

Dramatic changes have occurred in Chinese society over the past three decades. Many of these changes are attributable to the government’s economic reforms presided over, firstly by MAO Zedong’s successor DENG Xiaoping, and following DENG, JIANG Zemin, HU Jintao and XI Jinping. In this chapter, we focus on changes that have led to a revised understanding of culture. According to a Chinese Communist Party definition, informed by historical materialism, culture ‘in a broad sense, refers to the sum total of all the material and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the course of the historical development of society; in a narrow sense, culture refers to ideology and related institutions and organizations’ (Cihai: Sea of Words. Chinese Encyclopedia 1989, p. 1731). However, over the past three decades, the Chinese government has voluntarily relinquished control over many aspects of cultural production in exchange for the potential benefits of cohesion and increased productivity that social liberalization is seen to promote. Inevitably the market, rather than government propaganda, has become the arbiter of people’s cultural tastes (Gerth 2010). It is important to bear in mind, however, that broadening of consumption practices does not necessarily constitute cultural pluralism. Indeed, the extent to which culture is commercializable remains contentious. In the view of conservatives, culture cannot be left to the forces of the market; yet the same conservatives assert that China’s culture should be globally competitive.