Zhou Yang; Marxist Theoretician, Literary Arbiter

Zhou Yang, 81, one of the Chinese Communist Party’s leading literary arbiters for nearly 60 years and most recently a champion of artistic freedom. From his youth as a leftist literary critic in wartime Shanghai, through the Cultural Revolution and other political campaigns, Zhou was a key player in the ideological battles that divided modern Chinese artists, such as the purpose of art and whether it should serve the party. In his youth, he came down on the side of strong party control, but as chairman of the state-sponsored China Federation of Literary and Art Circles from 1979 until this year, he advocated greater artistic freedom. In 1983, he aroused controversy with an essay entitled “Alienation,” in which he said it is possible for people in a socialist society to feel socially and politically alienated, and that socialist leaders could become alienated from the people they were to represent. He was harshly criticized when party conservatives launched a campaign later that year against “spiritual pollution,” or alleged bourgeois ideas. He was forced to write a public self-criticism in which he said his essay could have led people to lose confidence in the future of socialism. He was restored to favor in 1984 when the party newspaper, the People’s Daily, said that despite his mistakes, Zhou was “an outstanding Marxist theoretician.” In Beijing on Monday of unspecified causes.