Echoing Mao, China's Xi Says Art Must Serve the People and the Socialist Cause

It was a gathering of China’s cultural elite, the likes of which had not been seen in decades. Chen Kaige, director of Farewell My Concubine, Nobel literature prize winner Mo Yan, and dozens of other luminaries from ballet, Chinese opera, theater, calligraphy, and other fine arts gathered in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Oct. 15 to hear Xi Jinping speak on the importance of art and literature—and the dire consequences for China if its culture falls prey to commercialization.

In a forum lasting more than two hours, China’s president and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party spoke of his appreciation for French masters Degas and Cézanne, and for Western classics by Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, and Mark Twain. Xi recalled how, as a youth sent to labor in the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution, he once walked 9 miles just to borrow Goethe’s Faust from a friend. He added, “Fine artworks should be like sunshine in a blue sky and a breeze in spring that will inspire minds.”