Modern China's Long Decade

Gregory Lee (1)

1 IETT - Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles

Nowadays, if the 1980s are mentioned at all, and they rarely are in China, it is as a moment of hesitant transition, or a period of missed opportunities, at best a period of preparation for real wide-ranging economic reforms of a hitherto socialist economy. But the 1980s constituted not merely an interval, the middle card of a three card trick in which the first and third cards were respectively the Revolutionary period, and the post-modernist capitalist era, but a major moment in China's recent cultural history, the last, so far, period of an intellectual and cultural activity that was defined by an engagement with, or contestation of, national, state-dominated political life.

Mots clés: China; history; 1980s; literature; politics; poetry

Mots clés: Chine; histoire; années 1980; littérature; politique; poésie

Domaines: Littératures

Gregory Lee. Modern China's Long Decade. Wasafiri, 2008, 23 (3), pp.5-12. ⟨10.1080/02690050802205118⟩. ⟨halshs-00266407⟩