ABSTRACT
Culture has been the responsibility of the bureaucracy. Each province has a culture department, usually staffed by 5,000 or more. But, as in industry and agriculture, there has been a tendency for culture in China to be commercialized. People’s Daily also said that use of materials from Hong Kong must stop. Books on martial arts or with sexually explicit themes had been smuggled into China and avidly read by young people who found the locally available moralistic fare dull. During the campaign against spiritual pollution, China’s independent-minded poets came under attack. Even after the pollution campaign died down, Chinese opera productions came under criticism for being “unrealistic” and failing to reflect the “spirit of the times.” Unauthorized theatrical performances have been common, but with the pollution campaign it appeared that they were generally suppressed. For example, according to a Ningxia decree: “It is strictly forbidden to organize performers to give private shows.
