LEO LEE
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had a definite ideological line. But what can the present Party
leadership say about humanism other than that it lacks class con–
tent? The official clarion-calls for "four modernizations" could
be - and in fact have been - used by the advocates of modernism as
a pretext to rationalize their art and their demand for freedom of in–
dividual expression. Modernism in art and literature, so the argu–
ment goes, is the inevitable product of the cultural superstructure of
a modernizing Chinese society. While this argument had been called
into question during the height of the antispiritual pollution cam–
paign in late 1983, the modernist trend shows no signs of decline,
whereas its orthodox opponents - Deng Liqun in particular - are
again in disfavor, if not in total disgrace. Some avid young advocates
of modernism even go so far as to combine it with an added interest
in futurism and technological society. The Party, in its earlier
studied policy of relaxation, had unleashed a new "tiger" (to turn
Mao's famous metaphor around) and now finds it hard to dismount,
rein it in, or give it a specific direction.
Will China revert to a new Maoism in the future after Deng
dies? Most of my Chinese friends who are established intellectuals
assure me that this will never happen . I posed a similar question to
the two young writers. Both of them agreed that after Deng's death
there would very likely be new revolutionary chaos. (A story of
political fantasy on China in the year 2001 appeared some time ago
which gives precisely such a scenario - the return of Cultural
Revolution radicalism right after the death of "an important Chinese
leader.")
If
such a situation should arise, Mr. Yang answered that he
would have no other recourse but to fight the new-Maoist forces of
the left. Mr. Yin, on the other hand, considered my query rather ir–
relevant to his task at hand. As long as he can survive, his only mis–
sion in life, he said, is to attain a higher art and write good literature .
