Yan'an Forum

Previous 20th century cultural movements in mainland China, such as the New Culture Movement, presumed a hierarchical relation between intellectuals and the masses. During the Long March (1934–1935), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People's Liberation Army (PLA) used song, drama, and dance to appeal to the civilian population, but did not have a unified cultural policy. For three years after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the main message of the CCP art organizations, such as the Chinese People's Anti-Japanese Drama Society, was to "oppose Japan" (, fǎnrì) or "resist Japan" (, kàngrì). In 1938, the CCP established the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Yan'an (Yenan), which was to train people in literature, music, fine arts, and drama. In April 1942, Mao announced that the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art would convene the next month. The "Talks" consists of Mao's speech at the 2 May opening session and the 23 May closing session of the Yan'an Forum. ==Content==

The Yan'an Talks outlined the CCP's policy on "mass culture" () in China, which was to be "revolutionary culture" (). The core concept of the Yan'an Talks was that art should translate the ideas of the Chinese Communist Revolution for rural peasants. This was an effort to reconfigure the social relationship in China between those who worked with their hands and those who wrote. Mao scolded artists for neglecting "The cadres, party workers of all types, fighters in the army, workers in the factories and peasants in the villages" as audiences, just because they were illiterate. He was particularly critical of Chinese opera as a courtly art form, rather than one directed towards the masses. However, he encouraged artists to draw from China's artistic legacy as well as international art forms in order to further socialism. and to study the popular music and folk culture of the areas, incorporating both into their works. In this view, socialist literature should not merely reflect existing culture, but should help culturally produce the consciousness of a new society. In this view, there is no such thing as art-for-art's-sake. ==Legacy==

The Talks became the most important guiding document of the Yan'an Rectification Movement. Throughout the rest of 1942, the content of the Talks and texts arising from the Rectification movement became a focus. Implementing the principles of the Yan'an Talks involved the creation of new literary forms and content tailored to the socialist transformation of China and its culture, an endeavor that was much more complex than applying ideological standards to measure existing artistic forms. Key quotations from Yan'an Talks form the basis of the section on "Culture and Art" in the Maoist text Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. The Gang of Four's dramatic interpretation of the Yan'an Talks during the Cultural Revolution led to a new CCP-sanctioned form of political art, revolutionary opera. Conversely, certain forms of art, such as the works of Beethoven, Respighi, Dvorak, and Chopin, were condemned in CCP papers as "bourgeois decadence". 21st century For the 70th anniversary of the Yan'an Talks in May 2012, a group of 100 Chinese writers and artists including Mo Yan participated in hand-copying the text of the Yan'an Talks as a celebration. On 15 October 2014, General Secretary XI Jinping emulated the Yan'an Talks with his Speech at the Forum on Literature and Art. ==See also==