Contemporary Appropriation of Confucian Aesthetics in China: Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping’s Political Discourses on Art and Morality

Authors

• Eva Kit Wah Man, Hong Kong Metropolitan UniversityFollow

Abstract

Mao Zedong’s thoughts on art and society delivered at the Yan’an Talks in the 1940s had a significant impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s art policies for decades. In 2014, Xi Jinping delivered the “Speech at the Forum on Literature and Art” in Beijing, which echoed Mao’s Yan’an Talks but was arrogated and idealized to emphasize the development of a strong China. His speech focused on boosting artists to celebrate Party-sanctioned morality, cultural heritage, and nationalist sentiment, and he stated that the main purpose of art was to infuse reality with optimism for the future. The ways both leaders appropriated Chinese traditional Confucian aesthetics and related art to social reality have not been well examined. This article reviews the development of the discourses and how both leaders appropriate the Confucian utilitarian approach to art and claim Confucian aesthetics to be the spiritual lifeline of China in facing cultural globalism.