ABSTRACT
The relationship of the artist to society has been a thorny problem in modern China. As in most other civilizations, tensions exist between those who advocate the philosophy of art for the sake of art and those who believe in art as social criticism. The communist party, believing that Marxist orthodoxy could succeed in strengthening China where Confucianism had failed, courted these writers and artists. Within the Chinese population itself, there were stirrings of dissent. Artists saw their criticism as constructive, since they were trying to correct defects in the system. However, party leaders regarded critical works as destructive, since they might undermine the masses’ faith in the party and its infallibility. The Cultural Revolution’s answer to the century-old problem of how to import Western technical knowledge without eroding Chinese values in the process was to detach European musical instruments and their techniques from the context in which they had been created.
