ABSTRACT
The Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. The post-Cultural Revolution period ‘witnessed the continuation of intensive eff orts to rebuild the country and to make up for the self-infl icted damage of the tragic decade from 1966 to 1976’.2 The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, which was held in Beijing in September 1978, turned a new page in Chinese history. Mao Zedong’s ‘class struggle-oriented’ political policy was replaced by economic reform and Deng Xiaoping’s ‘open-door’ policy. Thereafter, ‘economy construction-oriented’ domestic and foreign policies were adopted to achieve the goal of modernization.3 The 1980s was not only an era of economic reform but also an age of liberation-the liberation of people’s minds and lives. Alongside academia’s criticism of the Cultural Revolution and of Mao Zedong’s extreme left-wing ideology, interest in liberalism, individualism and the idea of democracy began to rise.4 Enlightened articles tried to liberate people’s thoughts from the old socialist, collectivistic and egalitarian ways of thinking.5 At the same time, the transition to a free market economy paved the way for individual freedoms. The rising number of privately-owned enterprises changed people’s way of life. More and more people quit their Danwei (ऩԡ: work unit) and state-owned enterprises. They began to travel and work freely around the country, building their own businesses and careers.6 They could now make their own decisions about their own futures. As a result of these new-found freedoms, transformations began to take place in Chinese society, which had formerly been fully under the control of the government.
