Journalists stand next to the 'Cao 2014' (grass 2014) by Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei... [+]
Last month China’s president Xi Jinping presented his pragmatic vision for China's arts and creative industries. He waxed lyrical. The mission of artists is the "pursuit of the true, good and beautiful.” Yet, they should keep it real: “art gives wings to imagination, but we must keep our feet firmly rooted to the ground.” Whereas his predecessor Hu Jintao saw culture as a means to boost China’s global prestige and soft power, Xi is as concerned with shaping China’s hearts and minds. Good art should "touch people, baptise their souls and enable them to find beauty in nature, life and their minds,” he said.
It's Art as national therapy. And 60 years since a similar presidential intervention, when Mao Zedong, no less, claimed artists were socialism’s “engineers of the soul.” Now arts are fodder for Xi’s signature Chinese Dream. And creativity like dreaming isn’t personal in modern China. It must “serve the people and socialism.”
In his speech on 16 October to an assembly of 72 of China’s cultural elite (Party-approved writers, artists and cultural officials), Xi came down hard on immoral influence: “sensual entertainment”, “vulgarity”, the overtly commercial and the overly Western. Artists should further “contemporary Chinese values, embody traditional culture and reflect Chinese people’s aesthetic tastes.” Chinese creatives are being set-up as secular priests, setting the nation’s moral compass and inspiring good behaviour. They should advocate, “integrity, merit and compassion.” With China’s contemporary values up for debate, and traditional culture a shell of what it once was, it’s a tough ball. According to Xi’s directives, the everyday person must also step up, because they (rather than the trained professional) are the true “connoisseur and critic.”
Why this renewed attention on arts and creativity? There’s a dawning realization among the Party’s top tier that there is more to life than money, or at least there should be. In his speech to UNESCO in March Xi explained “the Chinese dream will be realized through balanced development and mutual reinforcement of material and cultural progress.” And China’s cultural output, if it can be quantified, lags behind its economic success. Under the CPC, traditional culture was systematically dismantled and violently smashed up in the pre-reform era, but now the Party wants it back. Xi already advised Party officials to use culture to guide state governance. The turn-around began with the rehabilitation of Confucius, and the opening of educational institutes bearing his name in universities around the world. Culture could be a panacea for a clutch of problems: misplaced morality, national disunity, and wanting national pride.
The Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education and SAPPRFT, the regulatory board for radio, press film and TV, are already taking note. The Ministry of Education is laying groundwork to expand elementary and middle school teaching of Chinese philosophy and literature to give schoolchildren a firmer foundation in China’s pre-revolutionary cultural heritage. The move reflects thinking that traditional culture could be a lodestone for modern national identity..
Similarly, SAPPRFT is cracking down on streaming sites and cutting “lewd content": from the unsavoury (extramarital affairs, sexual abuse, prostitution, gambling, and violent murder) to the banal (masturbation, one-night stands). Weirder flights of the imagination are also under attack, including the supernatural (time travel, ghosts, zombies - not approved). Perhaps it’s hoped that these reforms will curb perceived anti-social behaviour. Meanwhile the Ministry of Culture is changing its funding criteria to favour projects that have “social benefit, high artistic standards, aesthetic taste and popular acclaim”, instead of pandering to "commercial success, critical acclaim and online popularity”. In this vein plans for a new art review system are due to be introduced next year and art critics will be trained to see them through.
Xi has been ruminating the role of civilization in national greatness for some time. In his address to UNESCO, which was typically high on lofty language, he noted that, “A civilization carries on its back the soul of a country or nation.” Yet prescriptive State diktats are unlikely to bolster creativity and innovation. Professor Tan Tian of Jinan University told the Global Times that the crackdown could hamper China’s developing creative industries. China’s efforts to boost its homegrown film industry have failed to get Chinese viewers interested let alone competing with Hollywood outside China.
The message is conservative, moralistic, nationalistic - and contradictory. Art and culture are being held up as a tonic to economics, to undo mechanized production and ‘fast-food’ consumption.” Arts should provide “spiritual elation” while avoiding commercial interests. “We cannot allow business standards to replace art standards,” said Xi. It’s a fair point, though artists weighing their own interests against regulations, need to make a living. And creative industries (gaming, TV, film, arch, animation, graphic design) are commercial enterprises.
Will state-endorsed cultural works be able to compete with market-driven output for people’s attention? And will they create an environment that encourages creativity? Xi also damned plagiarism and copycat works but ironically, in tech, the shanzhai culture of imitation has spawned some of China’ most interesting home-grown innovations and movements, such as Chinese Maker Culture. Artists and creative industry professionals have a tough task ahead if they can navigate these contradictory messages. Restoring China to its past cultural glory apparently lies within their imagination.
