China’s Art Czar Tries to Relax Cultural Curbs : Ideology: Li Ruihuan attacks hard-line leftists, ‘biased views.’

China’s most influential advocate of a more relaxed approach to ideology and culture has lashed out at hard-line leftists and promised a loosening of controls, official newspapers reported Tuesday.

“For a long period, some people in China have held biased views about the functions, purposes and standards of literature and art due to the influence of leftist ideology,” Li Ruihuan, the Politburo member with top responsibility for ideological and cultural matters, said in a speech paraphrased by the official New China News Agency and published on the front page of major national newspapers.

Li declared that “works that are not politically harmful, that have artistic merits and are enjoyed by the people should not be banned so long as they do not violate the country’s constitution and laws.”

While falling far short of an endorsement of true cultural freedom, Li’s remarks authorize a significant relaxation of controls. They also constitute a bold attack on still-powerful ideological hard-liners who have opposed his views for several years.

Li, one of the most liberal-minded members of the policy-setting Politburo, has technically been in charge of ideological and cultural work for the past three years. In the immediate aftermath of the mid-1989 crackdown on China’s pro-democracy movement, Li’s main effort was to try to ease the harshness of controls imposed by the elderly and more powerful hard-liners.

As early as the fall of 1989, Li issued instructions that cultural works that are not anti-government or pornographic should be allowed. But for nearly three years, the main emphasis in film, television and government-approved literature has been glorification of the Communist Party.

There have been growing signs over the last few months that the iron grip of ideology on China’s cultural affairs is easing.

Authorities recently announced that three films by Zhang Yimou, one of China’s most important and controversial directors, have for the first time been approved for domestic release. Included are “Ju Dou” and “Raise the Red Lantern,” which won Academy Award nominations for best foreign films of 1990 and 1991. Li’s views almost certainly played a role in the approval of these films.

In the speech published Tuesday, which was delivered to an arts troupe, Li also attacked the idea of judging art as “socialist or capitalist. This practice, favored by hard-line Marxists, makes it very difficult to ‘make the past serve the present, and foreign things serve China,’ and therefore it is not favorable to developing the vivid and lively situation of a hundred flowers blooming,” he said.

“Literature and art have the functions of entertainment, aesthetics, understanding and education,” Li stressed. “We have always hoped and tried hard to give full play to the ideological and political education function of literature and art, but it is impossible to give every literature and art work a political education function.”

Li linked his remarks to a renewed emphasis on rapid economic reform.

“Since (senior leader) Deng Xiaoping made his south China tour early this year, the country has sped up its pace of reform and opening, and every sector of the country has been pushing ahead rapidly,” Li said. “Literature and art circles should take advantage of this extremely favorable situation so as to firmly serve economic construction--the country’s focus--and to create more and better works for the people.”