Morality Drive Muzzles Chinese Writer

Sitting in a cocktail lounge of a five-star hotel, chain-smoking American cigarettes and drinking coffee, novelist Wang Shuo managed a brave smile, though he hardly looked like one of the tough-guy characters in his popular fiction about China’s criminal underground.

One of this nation’s most successful writers--author of 20 best-selling books, a hit television series and several movies--Wang, 38, is one of the first casualties of a cultural cleansing campaign launched nationwide by the Chinese Communist Party.

In an interview here, Wang said publication of his collected works has been halted under orders from party propaganda officials. Two of his most recent film projects, including “Relations Between Man and Woman,” a movie about adultery, have also been banned by officials, he said.

Alarmed that China’s rapid economic development has been accompanied by a parallel moral decline, the party launched the first stages of its “spiritual civilization” cleanup campaign earlier this year. The campaign was formally endorsed at the plenary meeting of senior party officials in Beijing last week and detailed in a giant 15,000-character manifesto calling for increased political control of virtually all aspects of cultural life, including publishing, film, television and the press.

This crackdown is occurring at the same time as state police are conducting a roundup of China’s few remaining political dissidents. Wang Dan, a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations who is not related to the writer, is expected to go on trial sometime this week for the capital charge of plotting to overthrow the government.

As for the party document, released Sunday, it called for “macro-control over press and publishing circles.” Publications that do not toe the line, it warned, should be “earnestly overhauled and those which cannot meet the requirements should be closed.”

In effect, the campaign--known in Chinese as jingshen wenming jianshe and translated as “construction of spiritual civilization” or “socialist ethics and cultural progress”--is an attempt by the party to reassert its monopoly on the “correct view of the world, human life and values.”

*

The document, which the party leadership termed one of its most important position papers ever, is peppered with references to thought, morals and, particularly, civic virtues. Implicit, though never mentioned, is the example of Singapore, the conservative city-state that has employed draconian laws and strict moral codes to eliminate chaos, poor hygiene and corruption.

Without accepting any responsibility for current affairs, the party has made an effort through the document to address what opinion polls say is the top gripe of average citizens: the decay of China’s moral fabric. In taking its lofty moral stance, the leadership--under party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, who is also China’s president--is apparently hoping to revive the Confucian ideal of rulers who derive their mandate from their stature as moral exemplars and didacts.

The document, for example, warns against “pandering to low tastes, doing everything for the sake of money, despising revolutionary art traditions and holding in esteem the decadent trends of thought in literature and art.” The phrase “despising revolutionary art traditions” is a clear reference to younger Chinese artists’ works that parody traditional socialist realism and Chinese Communist icons.

Under the new moral guidelines, Wang’s early works--depicting the “hooligan culture” of ex-convicts and rootless petty criminals in Chinese cities--have been branded “decadent.” One of his most famous short stories, “Hot and Cold, Measure for Measure,” has as its hero an ex-convict who runs a blackmail racket, seduces a college coed and turns her into a prostitute.

Wang has also been criticized for his irreverent portrayals of Communist Party bureaucrats and the party-approved cultural elite. In his hit television series, “Tales From the Newsroom,” two of the most popular characters are aging party hacks who spout mindless political slogans popular in the Maoist era of China’s politics.

Similarly, “In the Heat of the Sun”--his recent film, based on his own life as a military dependent during the early days of the Cultural Revolution--was the smash in Beijing theaters last year. But its anti-establishment scenes of violence and sex would not be acceptable under the new moral code.

None of the themes in Wang’s works match the party call for literary and cinematic portrayals of worker-heroes and selfless servants of the public good.

“It’s hard to make one of these movies about Communist labor heroes,” Wang complained Monday. “I’d have to change my thinking around. Besides, these type of things don’t sell at the theaters. People won’t invest in it.”

Wang said the banning of “Relations Between Man and Woman” was exemplary of the unfair “double standard” of Communist censors.

“I thought the film was no worse than ‘Bridges of Madison County,’ ” Wang said, referring to the American film that played to packed theaters across China. “I even had the guy going back to his wife at the end of the film. But they made me stop making it. They were more lenient with the Americans.”

Ironically, the Beijing moral crackdown on Chinese films could make the industry even more dependent on U.S. imports. Last year, the 10 U.S. films permitted into China, including “Bridges,” were the top draws--ahead individually of any of their Chinese counterparts--and accounted for 40% of all Chinese movie theater receipts.

*

Sources in the Chinese film industry say the number of films being produced in the major studios has plummeted in recent months as producers and directors await a clearer view of what is acceptable under the new “spiritual civilization” policy.

“The . . . consensus is that China this year will produce about 70 feature films--about half its normal production,” said William Brent, publisher of China Entertainment, a newsletter that monitors the film and television industry. He said at least seven films have been banned by the newly installed, hard-line leadership in the propaganda and film industry.