ABSTRACT
Writers dared to touch on hitherto taboo subjects, ranging from the bureaucratization of the Leninist one-party system and the rise of new privileged elite, to discussions of increasing juvenile delinquency, of love, and even sex. “Spiritual pollution,” in the broadest sense, included everything from pornography, to cadres’ corruption, to undue Westernization, to sympathy toward humanist Marxism. The same old methods of political and social control are still in use: criticism and self-criticism to enforce conformity, and imprisonment of anyone considered a threat to the Party. No wonder that a rising mood of cynicism and mistrust in the Party has culminated in what Chinese call “a crisis of confidence.” As China modernizes the number of Chinese with an understanding of Western industrial society will increase, reducing any bureaucratic nostalgia for the Maoist xenophobia or for the Soviet-influenced political dogmas of the 1950s.
