ABSTRACT
China's Open Door and expanded economy have brought more than trade, tourists, technology, and expertise into the country. A contemporary popular culture that is shaped in part by foreign television, film, music, and other media material, has also developed during the modernization period. But China's contemporary cultural dynamics are not just the products of foreign influence. The artifacts and ideologies of Western popular culture were being imported into China at the same time that writers, TV producers, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists insidethe country were winning unprecedented freedom and having great impact themselves. These foreign and domestic influences have been unleashed under the terms of an ambiguous and inconsistently applied cultural policy — a situation that has fueled many hopes, dashed many dreams, and generally contributed to the great confusion of contemporary China. Furthermore, the turmoil of 1989 has notled to a thoroughgoing cultural crackdown. The cultural influences that helped stimulate unrest in the first place are still fundamentally in place.
