Zhou Yang (politician)

Zhou Yang
Traditional Chinese周揚
Simplified Chinese周扬
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZhōu Yáng
Wade–GilesChou Yang
In this Chinese name, the family name is Zhou.

Zhou Yang or Chou Yang (November 7, 1908 – July 31, 1989), courtesy name Qiying (起应), was a Chinese literary theorist, translator and Marxist thinker, and Communist Party official, active from the founding of the League of the Left-Wing Writers in 1930. In the 1930s he was notable for his sharp disagreements with other leftist writers, including Lu Xun, concerning leftist literary theory.[1] Zhou also translated the works of Leo Tolstoy and other Russian writers into Chinese.

Zhou Yang had a long career as a leading member of the Chinese Communist Party and a high-level government official in the People's Republic of China, being the Deputy Head of the Party's Propaganda Department as well as Deputy Minister of Culture in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution, and then as a member of the Party's Central Committee following the end of that period. During the Cultural Revolution itself Zhou Yang was denounced and stripped of his posts: the campaign against him was kicked off by attacks on his 1930s era concept of "literature for national defense", which was judged to be revisionist.[2]

History

Zhou also translated the works of Leo Tolstoy and other Russian writers into Chinese.[3] Shortly before the Yan'an Forum in 1942, he translated Nikolai Chernyshevsky's The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality into Chinese.[4]: 23  Zhou described himself as being a "loyal follower" of Chernyshevsky, stating that Chernyshevsky's "famous formula of 'beauty is life' carries a fundamental truth."[4]: 26  Zhou praised Soviet writers, such Alexander Fadeyev and his novel The Young Guard, for presenting "totally new characters of a kind unprecedented in human history, a kind of character possessed of the highest communist spirit and moral qualities. In their work in creating typical images of positive characters according to the conditions of actual life, beloved Soviet writers have completed their most glorious task of serving as 'engineers of the human soul.'"[4]: 68 

Zhou's 1941 essay A Casual Discussion on Art and Life addressed the relationship between art and life through the idea of cultural practice.[4]: 26  It examined the dialectical relationship between art and life in what Zhou referred to as "the practice of life" and "the practice of creation".[4]: 26 

Zhou's view was that writers must learn from the masses, rather than position themselves as attempting to reform the masses from above.[4]: 27 

After the People's Republic of China was declared in 1949, Zhou became one of Mao Zedong's most-supported literary theorists, and has been referred to as the Party's "literary czar".[1][2] This was alongside his leading role in the Central Committee's influential Department of Propaganda and as Deputy Minister of Culture: in these roles he presided over the various campaigns against literary and artistic figures judged to be counterrevolutionary or bourgeois, for example the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign which came in response to the backlash against the criticism the Party faced during the Hundred Flowers Campaign[5].

In August 1956, Ding Ling was accused during the Sufan Movement of forming an anti-party clique.[6]: 24–25  As part of her response to the allegations, she criticized Zhou for his extramarital affair.[6]: 25  Ding's criticism of Zhou was widely circulated among Communist Party Officials.[6]: 25  In response, Zhou alleged that Ding was unchaste and not loyal to the Communist Party.[6]: 25  Although in 1957 Zhou apologized for going too far in his allegations, he remained a lifelong political opponent and critic of Ding.[6]: 25–26 

Beginning in the middle of 1958, the new folk song movement sought to compile folk songs and poetry.[4]: 101  Among the major compendiums of these folk works was Red Flag Ballads, compiled by Zhou and Guo Moruo, which presented the works of amateur poets anonymously as part of an effort to develop the figure of the mass writer in communist art and literature.[4]: 101 

Zhou's report, On the Military Tasks of Philosophy and Social Science Workers, delivered to Mao in 1963, was one of the catalysts for the Cultural Revolution.[7] However, during the late stage of the Cultural Revolution Zhou was himself imprisoned after falling out of favor due to differing view points on the importance of art in politics.[8]

After the Cultural Revolution ended, he was rehabilitated and given new political offices, being elected to the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee at the party's Eleventh National Congress. At that time he apologized to victims of past campaigns. He also advocated the humanist aspects of Marxism within the Communist Party near the end of his life, and was criticized again for such views.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b Lovell, Julia. "Introduction". In Lu Xun: The Real story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China, The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. England: Penguin Classics. 2009. ISBN 978-0-140-45548-9. p.xxxii
  2. ^ a b MacFarquhar, Roderick (1997), The origins of the cultural revolution. 3: The coming of the cataclysm, 1961 - 1966 / Roderick MacFarquhar, Studies of the East Asian Institute, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press [u.a.], p. 452, ISBN 978-0-231-11083-9 {{citation}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  3. ^ Dillon, Michael, ed. (1998). China: A Cultural and Historical Dictionary. London: Curzon Press. pp. 386. ISBN 0-7007-0439-6.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Kindler, Benjamin (2025). Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942-1976. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-21932-7.
  5. ^ MacFarquhar, Roderick, ed. (1991), The Cambridge history of China. 15: The People's Republic: Pt. 2, revolutions within the Chinese Revolution, 1966 - 1982 / ed. by Roderick MacFarquhar, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, p. 613, ISBN 978-0-521-24337-7 {{citation}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  6. ^ a b c d e Wang, Xian (2025). Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs. China Understandings Today series. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-05719-1.
  7. ^ John J. (1995). Science, Politics, and Social Practice. Springer. p. 18. ISBN 0-7923-2989-9.
  8. ^ MacKerras, Colin (1973). "Chinese Opera after the Cultural Revolution (1970-72)". The China Quarterly. 55 (55): 478–510. doi:10.1017/S0305741000009139. JSTOR 652056.
  9. ^ Lei, Letian (2025-11-03). "Identifying China's Long 1980s". The China Quarterly: 1–18. doi:10.1017/S0305741025101471. ISSN 0305-7410.


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