Chinese Drama after the 1989 Crisis

Abstract

Politics has a strong impact on Chinese drama. At the end of 1978 a full meeting of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) introduced the period of reform and "opening to the outside world" (duiwai kaifang) under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. In most respects the new policies led to a substantial rise in the standard of living of the people and in the quality and breadth of their culture. Even so, playwrights, artists and intellectuals continued to strain at the restrictions which the CCP still imposed on their work; and there were repressive campaigns to hold them back, for instance the "campaign against spiritual pollution" in 1983 and "the campaign against bourgeois liberalization" at the beginning of 1987, when the liberal CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang was dismissed. In general these periods of greater restriction were followed by a continued and even expanded . liberalization of the intellectual atmosphere. However, Hu Yaobang's death in April 1989 led to enormous and persistent student demonstrations, culminating in the Tiananmen Square massacre of 3–4 June 1989. The CCP claimed to have "quelled a counter-revolutionary rebellion," meaning that it believed it would have been overthrown but for this military action: a highly implausible interpretation, but one which has to be taken seriously in the light of events in Eastern Europe later that year. The 1989 crisis has been followed by an ideological crackdown of far greater proportions than any other in the 1980s; and although the situation has eased since then, it remains very much tenser and less open than during any part of the preceding decade.