Mao Zedong Literature

Another tool of propaganda that was in the hands of the Party was literature. The role of literature and art was established by Mao Zedong during the 1942 Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. In the two speeches the Chairman gave during this conference, he defined the relations between the literature and the politics (Mao 1975). According to Mao, in the new communist China, literature had to serve the political goal and promote the Party’s ideology among the masses. Mao also determined the new audience of literature and art. Literary works were to be created for peasants, workers and soldiers, as well as Party cadres and new kind of students, who were studying in order to join the Party cadres. The Chairman also said that the works of fiction

It meant that, while portraying real events or real revolutionary or class struggle, the literature ought to be enthusiastic and optimistic. The characters were supposed to be model workers or peasants, who, when faced with a real issue, always make the right decision. That served the educational function of Maoist literature, as the readers were to be inspired by the heroes’ actions and willing to emulate their behaviors (Bi

Even though it was not a new type in Chinese literature, the rural area fiction of the Maoist period was much different than the ‘native soil fiction’ popular in the May 4th literary tradition (Hong 2007). The new kind of rural area fiction was above all supposed to focus on reflecting the drastic changes happening in the Chinese countryside, mainly the campaigns and reforms conducted by the communist government. The most important and most commonly chosen topics were the land reform and collectivization (Hong 2007). Secondly, the writers of the Maoist period were expected to write from the standpoint of the peasants, not the intellectuals as it was before. As Hong Zicheng points out “so that descriptions “enter deep to the core,” the writer’s class stand, opinions, and emotions had to be as one with those of their subject (the farmers)” (Hong 2007: 104-105). Many scholars distinguish the land reform fiction as a subcategory of the rural area fiction (Yeh