Xi Jinping Calls for Artists to Spread ‘Chinese Values’

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President Xi Jinping of China.Credit Jorge Silva/Reuters

What makes art great? Xi Jinping, president of China and general secretary of the Communist Party, has weighed in with his view at a symposium in Beijing:

“Fine art works should be like sunshine from blue sky and breeze in spring that will inspire minds, warm hearts, cultivate taste and clean up undesirable work styles,” Mr. Xi told a delegation of prominent actors, dancers and writers on Wednesday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Chinese leaders have often given direction on what paths creative works should follow. In 1942, Mao Zedong delivered his Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art, which declared that creative ambitions must first answer to the goal of building a socialist state. Deng Xiaoping later quoted with approval Stalin’s line that writers and other artists could be “engineers of the human soul,” and said that people in cultural fields should study Marx, Lenin and Mao to understand just how their audience’s souls should be engineered.

Since economic reforms began in China in the late 1970s, artists have been less compelled to match their output with the ideological demands of the state. Still, having a successful public career in China requires gestures in support of official guidance. Hundreds of stars had roles in “The Founding of a Republic” in 2009 and “Beginning of the Great Revival” in 2011, two government-backed propaganda films on the history of modern China. Two years ago, on the 70th anniversary of Mao’s Yan’an talks, 100 Chinese artists copied his text by hand for a commemorative edition. The contribution of several top writers, including Mo Yan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature later that year, prompted criticism that they were endorsing an assault on artistic freedom.

While none has carried the same force as Mao, Chinese leaders have continued to offer direction on what course culture should follow. Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, spoke of the arts as a vehicle to increase national prestige and soft power. He spoke of the need for Chinese works to compete with movies and music from overseas that had found eager audiences in China.

“The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak,” Mr Hu wrote in a 2012 essay.

Mr. Xi also described art in terms of a competition of cultures.

“Chinese art will further develop only when we make foreign things serve China, and bring Chinese and Western arts together via thorough understanding,” he said on Wednesday, adding that art should “ disseminate contemporary Chinese values, embody traditional Chinese culture and reflect Chinese people’s aesthetic pursuit.”

But he put less emphasis on commercial success, saying artists should not be “slaves” of the market or “lose themselves in the tide of market economy nor go astray while answering the question of whom to serve. Otherwise their works will lack vitality.” Artists should serve ordinary citizens, Mr. Xi said, an idea that follows from Mao’s comments 70 years ago that artists and the masses “must be completely integrated.” Xinhua quoted two participants at the meeting, Yan Su, a playwright, and Tie Ning, chairwoman of the China Writers Association, who said the meeting recalled the spirit of Mao’s Yan’an talks.

Mr. Xi also offered criticism of some of the radical architectural designs that have come with China’s construction boom, calling for an end to “strange buildings,” People’s Daily Online reported. And he took China’s entertainment industry to task, saying that while production volumes have reached unprecedented highs, the industry has problems of “plagiarism, mechanization and fast-food style consumption,” according to a People’s Daily Online paraphrase. Some recent, unspecified works, he said, appealed to base interests and “distorted the classics, toppled history, failed to distinguish right from wrong or good from evil.”

Mr. Xi’s comments reflected as well his wide-ranging crackdown on corruption, which has seen 51 officials at provincial or ministerial levels or higher removed from office as of August. His statement that art should inspire audiences to “clean up undesirable work styles” reflects a continuing demand for officials to cut down on waste, extravagance and bureaucracy.

Not, perhaps, the stuff to make hearts and minds soar. But Mr. Xi warned that any lofty ambitions of art should be grounded in reality.

“The creation of art can fly with the wings of imagination,” he said, “but make sure art workers tread on solid earth.”