History of Chinese Culture/Chapter 14

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History of Chinese Culture

Chapter 14: Reform Era — Cultural Revival, Commercialization, and Globalization (1976–present)

1. Introduction: Culture after Revolution

The death of Mao Zedong on September 9, 1976, and the arrest of the "Gang of Four" (四人帮, Sirenbang) the following month, brought the Cultural Revolution to an end and opened a new era in the cultural history of Chinese civilization. The reform and opening-up policy (改革开放, gaige kaifang) launched by Deng Xiaoping (邓小平, 1904–1997) in December 1978 transformed not only China's economy but every dimension of its cultural life — unleashing a torrent of creative energy, intellectual debate, cultural experimentation, and engagement with the outside world that had been suppressed during the Mao era.

The cultural history of the reform era (1976–present) is a story of extraordinary complexity and rapidity. In the space of less than half a century, China has experienced a "culture fever" that reopened fundamental questions about the nature of Chinese civilization; a revival of traditional culture — Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, folk religion, classical arts — that has partially reversed the devastation of the Mao era; a commercialization of culture that has transformed every art form into a commodity in a market economy of unprecedented scale and dynamism; the emergence of a contemporary art scene that has become one of the most creative and commercially important in the world; a cinematic tradition that has produced some of the most acclaimed films of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; a popular music culture that has evolved from the protest songs of the 1980s to the globalized C-pop of the twenty-first century; a digital revolution that has made China one of the most technologically connected societies on earth; and a debate about cultural identity — the relationship between tradition and modernity, between Chinese and Western cultures, between official ideology and lived experience — that is arguably the most consequential cultural conversation taking place anywhere in the world today.

This chapter examines the cultural history of the reform era under eleven headings: the "culture fever" of the 1980s; the revival of traditional culture; the commercialization of culture; contemporary Chinese art; Chinese cinema; popular music; television and mass media; the internet and social media; the "Confucius revival" and the guoxue movement; architecture and urban transformation; and the question of Chinese cultural identity in the twenty-first century.

2. The "Culture Fever" of the 1980s

The decade following the end of the Cultural Revolution witnessed an explosion of intellectual and cultural activity that the Chinese called "culture fever" (文化热, wenhua re) — a passionate, wide-ranging, and often chaotic debate about the nature of Chinese culture, its relationship to Western modernity, and the path that China should take toward the future. The "culture fever" of the 1980s was, in many respects, a resumption and intensification of the debates that had been initiated by the New Culture Movement of the 1910s and 1920s and that had been suppressed during the Mao era.

The intellectual ferment of the 1980s was made possible by the relaxation of political controls over cultural production — a relaxation that, while never complete and subject to periodic reversals, was sufficient to allow Chinese intellectuals, writers, artists, and filmmakers to address themes and express ideas that would have been unthinkable during the Mao era. The "Scar Literature" (伤痕文学, shanghen wenxue) movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which depicted the suffering and disillusionment caused by the Cultural Revolution, was followed by the "Root-Seeking Literature" (寻根文学, xungen wenxue) movement of the mid-1980s, which sought to reconnect Chinese literature with the pre-revolutionary cultural traditions — folk culture, regional identity, ethnic minority cultures, and the deeper layers of Chinese civilization that the Mao era had sought to eradicate.

The philosophical and intellectual debates of the 1980s ranged across an extraordinarily wide terrain. The "Discussion of Humanism" (人道主义讨论, rendao zhuyi taolun) challenged the Maoist subordination of the individual to the collective. The television documentary series Heshang (河殇, "River Elegy," 1988) — which argued that Chinese civilization, symbolized by the Yellow River, was insular, stagnant, and backward compared to the dynamic, outward-looking civilizations of the "blue ocean" (the West) — provoked a nationwide debate about Chinese cultural identity that was intensely controversial and that reflected the deep ambivalence of Chinese intellectuals about their own cultural heritage.

The cultural ferment of the 1980s came to an abrupt and traumatic end with the Tiananmen Square protests and their violent suppression on June 4, 1989. The events of 1989 marked a turning point in the cultural history of the reform era: the idealistic, politically engaged cultural activism of the 1980s gave way to a more cautious, commercially oriented, and politically circumspect cultural landscape in the 1990s and beyond.

3. The Revival of Traditional Culture

One of the most significant cultural developments of the reform era has been the revival of traditional Chinese culture — a revival that encompasses religion, philosophy, the classical arts, folk practices, and the material culture of traditional Chinese civilization.

The revival of religion has been particularly striking. Buddhism, Daoism, folk religion, Islam, and Christianity have all experienced dramatic growth since the end of the Mao era, as hundreds of millions of Chinese have returned to — or discovered for the first time — the religious traditions that the Communist revolution had sought to eradicate. Temples and monasteries destroyed during the Cultural Revolution have been rebuilt, often with government support; religious festivals and rituals that had been suppressed have been revived; and new forms of religious practice — combining traditional elements with modern media and organizational methods — have emerged. Buddhism, in particular, has experienced a remarkable resurgence: Buddhist temples have become major tourist destinations and sites of popular worship, Buddhist charitable organizations have grown rapidly, and Buddhist meditation practices have been embraced by a wide segment of the urban middle class as a means of coping with the stresses of modern life.

The revival of Confucianism — discussed in greater detail below — has been equally significant. After decades of official condemnation, Confucian philosophy has been rehabilitated and is now promoted by the Chinese government as a source of social stability and cultural identity. Classical Confucian texts are once again being taught in schools, Confucian ceremonies are being revived, and the figure of Confucius himself has been transformed from a symbol of "feudal" oppression into a national cultural icon.

The revival of traditional arts — classical painting, calligraphy, guqin music, tea ceremony, martial arts, traditional medicine, and handicrafts — has been facilitated by both government patronage and market demand. The designation of traditional cultural practices as "intangible cultural heritage" (非物质文化遗产, feiwuzhi wenhua yichan) — a concept adopted from UNESCO — has provided institutional support and public recognition for traditions that were on the verge of disappearing. Masters of traditional arts have been designated as "representative inheritors" (代表性传承人, daibiaoxing chuanchengren) and given public support to train successors and preserve their knowledge.

The revival of traditional architecture and urban design has been more ambivalent. While the reform era has seen the restoration of many historical sites and the construction of new buildings in traditional styles, it has also witnessed the wholesale destruction of traditional urban neighborhoods (胡同, hutong, in Beijing; longtang 弄堂 in Shanghai; liwan 里弄 in other cities) to make way for modern development — a destruction that has provoked growing public protest and that poses one of the most pressing cultural challenges of contemporary China.

4. The Commercialization of Culture

The transition from a planned economy to a market economy has transformed every aspect of Chinese cultural life. Culture in reform-era China has become a commodity — produced, distributed, and consumed within a market system that subjects artistic and cultural production to the logic of supply and demand, profit and loss, audience ratings and box office returns.

The commercialization of culture has had both liberating and constraining effects. On the one hand, the market has created new opportunities for cultural producers — writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, game designers, content creators — who can now reach audiences of unprecedented size and earn incomes that were unimaginable during the Mao era. The emergence of a private publishing industry, a commercial film industry, a commercial art market, and a vast entertainment industry has created a cultural landscape of extraordinary diversity and dynamism. On the other hand, the market has also imposed new constraints: the pressure to produce commercially viable work can be as stifling to artistic creativity as the political censorship of the Mao era, and the commodification of culture has generated anxieties about cultural quality, spiritual values, and the relationship between art and money that echo the anxieties of the late Ming consumerism discussed in Chapter 9.

The scale of China's cultural market is staggering. China's film industry, which produced fewer than a dozen films per year during the Cultural Revolution, now produces hundreds of films annually and has the second-largest box office market in the world (and is projected to become the largest). China's publishing industry produces more titles per year than any other country. China's art market — centered on auction houses, galleries, and art fairs in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong — has become one of the largest and most dynamic in the world. And China's digital entertainment industry — encompassing online gaming, streaming video, social media content, and e-commerce — is among the most innovative and commercially successful in the world.

5. Contemporary Chinese Art

Contemporary Chinese art — a term that encompasses the visual art produced in China from the late 1970s to the present — has become one of the most creative, diverse, and internationally influential art scenes in the world, and it constitutes one of the most significant Chinese cultural achievements of the reform era.

The origins of the contemporary Chinese art movement can be traced to the "Stars Group" (星星画会, Xingxing huahui), an informal collective of young artists who organized an unauthorized outdoor exhibition near the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in September 1979. The exhibition — which included abstract, expressionist, and politically provocative works that violated every principle of Socialist Realist orthodoxy — was shut down by the authorities but reopened after public protests, and it signaled the emergence of a new generation of Chinese artists who were determined to pursue creative freedom.

The '85 New Wave movement (八五新潮, Bawu xinchao, 1985–1989) was the first major avant-garde art movement in Chinese history. Inspired by Western modernism and post-modernism (which Chinese artists were encountering for the first time through imported art books, exhibitions, and visits abroad), the '85 New Wave encompassed a bewildering diversity of styles and approaches — abstract painting, conceptual art, performance art, installation art, video art — and was characterized by a spirit of radical experimentation and iconoclastic energy. The movement culminated in the landmark "China/Avant-Garde" exhibition (中国现代艺术展, Zhongguo xiandai yishu zhan) at the National Art Museum in February 1989 — an exhibition that was closed twice by police after an artist fired a pistol at her own installation — and that has been described as the founding moment of contemporary Chinese art.

The art of the 1990s was shaped by the aftermath of the events of 1989 and by the accelerating commercialization of Chinese society. "Political Pop" (政治波普, zhengzhi bopu) — exemplified by the work of Wang Guangyi (王广义, b. 1957), whose "Great Criticism" series juxtaposed Cultural Revolution propaganda imagery with Western brand logos — used the visual language of pop art to comment on the surreal conjunction of Communist ideology and consumer capitalism that characterized contemporary China. "Cynical Realism" (玩世现实主义, wanshi xianshi zhuyi) — represented by artists like Fang Lijun (方力钧, b. 1963) and Yue Minjun (岳敏君, b. 1962), whose paintings depicted laughing, yawning, or drowning figures in a style of deliberate banality — expressed the disillusionment and ironic detachment of a generation that had lost its political idealism.

The international breakthrough of contemporary Chinese art came in the 2000s, when Chinese artists gained unprecedented visibility in the global art world — exhibiting at major international exhibitions (the Venice Biennale, Documenta, the Whitney Biennial), achieving record prices at international auction houses, and establishing a presence in major museum collections worldwide. Artists such as Ai Weiwei (艾未未, b. 1957), Xu Bing (徐冰, b. 1955), Cai Guo-Qiang (蔡国强, b. 1957), and Zhang Xiaogang (张晓刚, b. 1958) became internationally recognized figures whose work addressed themes of cultural identity, historical memory, political power, and the relationship between tradition and modernity in ways that resonated with global audiences.

6. Chinese Cinema

Chinese cinema in the reform era has produced some of the most acclaimed and culturally significant films of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and it has become one of the most important vehicles for the expression and exploration of Chinese cultural identity in the modern world.

The "Fifth Generation" (第五代, di wu dai) of Chinese filmmakers — directors who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, the first class to complete their education after the Cultural Revolution — created a body of work that transformed Chinese cinema and gained international recognition for Chinese filmmaking for the first time. Chen Kaige's (陈凯歌, b. 1952) Huang tudi (黄土地, Yellow Earth, 1984), with its stunning cinematography of the barren Shaanxi landscape and its implicit critique of revolutionary promises, is often cited as the foundational work of the Fifth Generation. Zhang Yimou (张艺谋, b. 1950) achieved international fame with films like Hong gaoliang (红高粱, Red Sorghum, 1987), Judou (菊豆, 1990), and Dahong denglong gaogao gua (大红灯笼高高挂, Raise the Red Lantern, 1991) — visually ravishing films that used stories set in pre-revolutionary China to explore themes of desire, power, tradition, and female oppression.

The "Sixth Generation" (第六代, di liu dai) of filmmakers — directors who came of age in the 1990s and 2000s — turned their cameras on contemporary urban China, depicting the lives of ordinary people struggling with the dislocations, inequalities, and moral ambiguities of a society in rapid transition. Jia Zhangke (贾樟柯, b. 1970), the most internationally celebrated of the Sixth Generation directors, has created a body of work — including Xiao Wu (小武, Pickpocket, 1997), Zhantai (站台, Platform, 2000), Sanxia haoren (三峡好人, Still Life, 2006), and Jianghu ernv (江湖儿女, Ash Is Purest White, 2018) — that documents the transformation of Chinese society with extraordinary sensitivity and artistic integrity.

The commercial Chinese film industry has also grown dramatically. The emergence of the Chinese "blockbuster" — big-budget, visually spectacular films aimed at a mass domestic audience — has transformed the Chinese box office into one of the largest in the world. Films like Zhang Yimou's martial arts epic Yingxiong (英雄, Hero, 2002), the animated fantasy Nezha (哪吒之魔童降世, 2019), and the science fiction epic Liulang diqiu (流浪地球, The Wandering Earth, 2019) have demonstrated the commercial and creative potential of Chinese cinema on a global scale.

7. Popular Music

The development of Chinese popular music since the end of the Mao era has been one of the most dynamic and culturally significant aspects of the reform era — a development that reflects the broader transformations of Chinese society and culture with particular directness and emotional immediacy.

The pioneering figure of Chinese rock music was Cui Jian (崔健, b. 1961), whose song "Yiwu suoyou" (一无所有, "Nothing to My Name," 1986) — a raw, emotionally powerful anthem of alienation and longing — became the unofficial soundtrack of the democracy movement of the late 1980s and established rock music as a medium of cultural dissent and generational identity. Cui Jian's music, which combined Western rock with Chinese folk melodies and instruments, demonstrated that Chinese musicians could create original, culturally authentic work within a Western musical framework — a synthesis that would be explored and developed by subsequent generations of Chinese musicians.

The 1990s saw the diversification of the Chinese popular music scene, as rock gave way to a wider range of genres — pop, hip-hop, electronic music, folk, and indie rock. The rise of "Cantopop" (粤语流行音乐, Yueyu liuxing yinyue) — Cantonese-language popular music from Hong Kong — and "Mandopop" (华语流行音乐, Huayu liuxing yinyue) — Mandarin-language popular music from Taiwan and mainland China — created a pan-Chinese popular music culture that transcended political boundaries and that reached audiences of hundreds of millions across the Chinese-speaking world. Stars like Teresa Teng (邓丽君, Deng Lijun, 1953–1995), Jay Chou (周杰伦, Zhou Jielun, b. 1979), and Faye Wong (王菲, Wang Fei, b. 1969) became cultural icons whose music defined the emotional landscape of their generation.

The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a vibrant independent music scene in China, with genres ranging from punk and metal to experimental electronic music and neo-folk. The development of digital music platforms — particularly the Chinese streaming services that have replaced physical media as the primary means of music distribution — has transformed the economics and accessibility of popular music, making it possible for independent artists to reach audiences without the support of major record labels.

8. Television, Internet, and Social Media

The transformation of Chinese media — from the state-controlled newspapers, radio, and television of the Mao era to the vast, complex, and partially commercialized media landscape of the twenty-first century — has been one of the most consequential cultural developments of the reform era.

Television, which became a mass medium in China during the 1980s, has been the dominant entertainment and information medium for the majority of the Chinese population. The annual Spring Festival Gala (春节联欢晚会, Chunjie lianhuan wanhui), broadcast by CCTV on the eve of the Lunar New Year, is the most-watched television program in the world, with an audience estimated at 700 million or more. Television dramas — historical epics, romantic comedies, family sagas, crime thrillers, and political dramas — have become the most popular form of narrative entertainment in China, and some of the best Chinese television dramas have achieved a level of artistic quality and cultural significance comparable to the best work in cinema and literature.

The internet, which became widely accessible in China in the early 2000s, has transformed Chinese culture in ways that are still unfolding. China now has more internet users than any other country — over one billion — and the Chinese internet has developed a distinctive ecosystem of platforms, applications, and cultural practices that is in many respects independent of the global internet. WeChat (微信, Weixin), the super-app developed by Tencent, has become the primary platform for social communication, content sharing, mobile payment, and daily life management for hundreds of millions of Chinese users. Weibo (微博), the microblogging platform, has become the primary forum for public debate and the expression of public opinion. Douyin (抖音, the Chinese version of TikTok), Bilibili (哔哩哔哩, a video-sharing platform), and Xiaohongshu (小红书, "Little Red Book," a lifestyle-sharing platform) have become major cultural platforms that shape the tastes, opinions, and cultural practices of hundreds of millions of Chinese — particularly the younger generation.

The cultural implications of China's digital transformation are vast and complex. The internet has democratized cultural production and consumption, giving millions of ordinary Chinese the tools to create and share content — videos, music, writing, art, commentary — and to participate in cultural conversations that were previously the preserve of professionals and elites. At the same time, the Chinese internet operates within a system of censorship and surveillance — the so-called "Great Firewall" (防火长城, Fanghu changcheng) and the extensive apparatus of online content regulation — that restricts access to foreign websites and platforms and that limits the range of permissible expression.

9. The "Confucius Revival" and the Guoxue Movement

One of the most striking cultural developments of the twenty-first century has been the revival of Confucianism and the broader movement known as guoxue (国学, "national learning" or "national studies") — a term that encompasses the study and promotion of China's classical intellectual heritage, including Confucian philosophy, classical literature, traditional history, and the arts of Chinese civilization.

The Confucius revival has been driven by multiple forces: the search for moral and spiritual values in a society that has experienced rapid economic growth but also growing inequality, corruption, and social dislocation; the desire to define a distinctive Chinese cultural identity in a globalized world; and the Chinese government's strategic promotion of Confucianism as a source of social harmony and national cohesion. The government has funded the construction of Confucius Institutes (孔子学院, Kongzi xueyuan) around the world — there are now several hundred in more than 140 countries — as vehicles for the promotion of Chinese language and culture. The figure of Confucius has been rehabilitated from the villain of Maoist propaganda to a national cultural icon: a statue of Confucius was erected near Tiananmen Square in 2011 (though it was later moved to a less prominent location), and the Confucian birthday celebration (September 28) has been revived as a public ceremony.

The guoxue movement has manifested itself in numerous ways: the inclusion of classical Chinese texts in the school curriculum; the proliferation of private "classical academies" (书院, shuyuan) that teach the Confucian classics; the popularity of television programs on classical culture (such as Yu Dan's 于丹 widely watched lectures on the Lunyu, Analerta of Confucius, in 2006); the boom in publications on Chinese classical thought, art, and history; and the growing interest in traditional cultural practices — calligraphy, tea ceremony, guqin music, traditional dress (汉服, hanfu) — among young Chinese people.

The Confucius revival and the guoxue movement are not without their critics. Some scholars argue that the government's promotion of Confucianism is a cynical attempt to use traditional culture as an instrument of political legitimation and social control — a replacement of Marxist ideology with a sanitized version of Confucianism that strips the tradition of its critical and subversive potential. Others argue that the popular interest in traditional culture is superficial and consumerist — a form of cultural nostalgia that romanticizes the past without engaging seriously with the philosophical substance of the classical tradition. Still others point to the tension between the Confucian values of hierarchy, obedience, and social harmony promoted by the government and the Confucian values of moral courage, remonstrance, and critical independence that are equally central to the tradition.

10. Architecture and Urban Transformation

The physical transformation of China's cities during the reform era has been the most rapid and comprehensive in human history. In the space of four decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese have moved from the countryside to the cities, and the cities themselves have been rebuilt from the ground up — a process of demolition and construction that has simultaneously created some of the most spectacular architecture in the world and destroyed vast quantities of irreplaceable historical urban fabric.

The architecture of reform-era China reflects the contradictions and aspirations of a society in rapid transition. The skylines of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and dozens of other Chinese cities are dominated by towers of glass and steel designed by both Chinese and international architects — including some of the most celebrated names in world architecture. Rem Koolhaas's CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Zaha Hadid's Galaxy Soho in Beijing (2012), the Shanghai Tower (上海中心大厦, 2015, the second-tallest building in the world), and Wang Shu's (王澍, b. 1963) Ningbo History Museum (2008) — which used recycled bricks and tiles from demolished traditional buildings — represent the range and ambition of contemporary Chinese architecture.

Yet the transformation of Chinese cities has also involved the destruction of traditional urban neighborhoods on a massive scale. The hutong neighborhoods of Beijing, the lilong alley houses of Shanghai, the traditional townscapes of countless smaller cities and towns — the accumulated architectural heritage of centuries — have been demolished to make way for modern development. The cultural loss represented by this destruction is immense, and it has generated a growing movement for architectural preservation and heritage conservation that draws on both Chinese and international models.

11. Conclusion: Chinese Culture in the Twenty-First Century

The cultural trajectory of China in the twenty-first century remains one of the most consequential and unpredictable developments in world civilization. China's reform era has produced a cultural landscape of extraordinary dynamism, diversity, and complexity — a landscape shaped by the revival of ancient traditions, the creation of new art forms, the globalization of Chinese culture, the commercialization of every dimension of cultural life, and the ongoing tension between creative freedom and political control.

The fundamental questions that have driven the cultural debates of the modern era — Can Chinese culture modernize without losing its distinctive identity? Can traditional values and practices coexist with — or be integrated into — a modern, globalized society? What is the relationship between Chinese civilization and Western civilization? What does it mean to be Chinese in the twenty-first century? — remain as urgent and as unresolved as ever. The answers to these questions will be shaped not by intellectuals, politicians, or cultural theorists alone, but by the choices, practices, and creative expressions of the 1.4 billion people who constitute the living carriers of Chinese civilization — a civilization that, after five thousand years of continuous development, transformation, and renewal, shows no signs of exhausting its creative potential.

The story of Chinese culture is, in the deepest sense, a story of resilience — the capacity of a civilization to survive invasion and revolution, to absorb foreign influences without losing its essential character, to destroy and rebuild, to forget and remember, to face the future without abandoning the past. That resilience, tested as never before in the modern era, remains the most impressive and most hopeful feature of Chinese civilization — and the surest guarantee that the story of Chinese culture, far from ending, is entering a new and unpredictable chapter.