Capitalist bears and socialist modernisation: Chinese children's literature in the post-Mao period

Abstract

This article looks at what Chinese children have read in the last quarter of the 20th century. It first briefly examines the official guidelines for children's literature in the post-Mao era, and then analyses some examples to identify the new contents of children's books in China. These examples are taken from two subdivided periods: from the late 1970s to the early 1980s and from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.