Problem of relations between the government and intellectuals of China at the turn of 20th-21st centuries

The present article is devoted to the relations between the CPC leadership and intelligentsia in the late 20th - early 21st centuries. In the 1980s the Chinese intellectuals discussed widely if the undertaken reforms belonged to the socialist or capitalist type. Then, after the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 Deng Xiaoping banned public discussion. In cultural circles the national identity and awareness of the primary role of the party in the period of transition to market economy were redefining. Some Chinese intellectuals left the country. Some of them came back to art and teaching at universities. In the 1990s market began to determine the further development of the cultural sector in the PRC. The government sought to attract the creative intelligentsia to the construction of spiritual culture with Chinese characteristics. In October 1996 two papers that set the direction of further development of literature and art in China were published. The first of them was the decision on several important questions on strengthening the construction of socialist spiritual civilization, the second - resolutions of the CPC Central Committee regarding important questions on promoting socialist ethical and cultural progress, adopted at the 6th Plenum of the 14th CPC Central Committee on October 10, 1996. Although they allowed freedom of topics, trends and genres, the workers of art were to "take care of the social effect of their works." In addition, they were to oppose the influence of Western bourgeois culture. In the 21st century China's leaders realized that without the development of culture it is impossible to profound the market cooperation and the expansion of openness to the outside world. Hu Jintao, who came to power in 2002-2003, directed the country to the construction of a "socialist harmonious society", speaking for the harmonization of public relations. Chinese intellectuals were given the opportunity to discuss the course of reforms publicly. The position of "public intellectuals", desiring to influence public policy displeased the authorities. Thus, we can conclude that in the 21st century, China's new leadership uses intellectuals at different levels as consultants in their professional activities, not allowing to act as critics of government policy or the initiators of the new directions of reform.

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