New Enlightenment (China)

New Enlightenment (simplified Chinese: 新启蒙; traditional Chinese: 新啟蒙), or the New Enlightenment movement (simplified Chinese: 新启蒙运动; traditional Chinese: 新啟蒙運動), was a massive social and cultural movement in mainland China that originated in the late 1970s and lasted for over a decade. Growing out of the 1978 Truth Criterion Discussion during the Boluan Fanzheng period, the New Enlightenment is widely regarded as a new wave of enlightenment within Chinese society since the May Fourth Movement in 1919. The decade of the 1980s has thus been called the Age of New Enlightenment in China.

The theme of the New Enlightenment movement included promoting democracy and science, embracing humanism and universal values such as freedom, human rights and rule of law, while opposing the ideology of Cultural Revolution and feudalism. The movement gave rise to a number of new literature genres such as the scar literature and the misty poetry, meanwhile aesthetics also became a popular topic in society. In addition, the growth of the publication industry, the birth of new music genres such as Chinese rock, and the rise of the Chinese film industry all contributed significantly to the New Enlightenment. Notable leading figures of the movement included Fang Lizhi, Li Zehou, Wang Yuanhua.

The New Enlightenment movement ended due to the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. After Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in early 1992, however, the academic and intellectual circle in mainland China thrived again but became divided, forming two major schools of thought: the Liberals and the New Left. On the other hand, as the capital market and market economy expanded in China, traditional intellectuals quickly lost their leadership role in social development which they enjoyed during the New Enlightenment in the 1980s, meanwhile entrepreneurs and business elites became increasingly influential.

After the Chinese Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, Deng Xiaoping and his allies launched the Boluan Fanzheng program in 1977 to correct the mistakes of Cultural Revolution and, by the end of 1978, Deng replaced Hua Guofeng as the paramount leader of China. During the power struggle with Hua, Deng and his allies started the Truth Criterion Discussion in May 1978, which not only helped Deng win the power struggle over Hua, but also became the origin of the New Enlightenment movement in mainland China.

Wang Yuanhua, a notable scholar who was often credited for coining the term "New Enlightenment" in the 1980s, founded the journal New Enlightenment in Shanghai in 1988. Wang himself participated in a short-lived Enlightenment movement initiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1930s, and in the 1980s he called on renewal of the enlightenment philosophy from the May Fourth Movement in 1919, which included promoting democracy and science. Li Rui, Wang Ruoshui, Liu Xiaobo, Gu Zhun and a number of other CCP officials and notable scholars published articles in the New Enlightenment journal. However, the journal soon ceased its operation in 1989 due to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

In fact, the publication industry in mainland China already began to thrive during the early phase of the Boluan Fanzheng period. As early as in March 1979, Li Honglin, known as the "flag bearer for New Enlightenment", published an article titled "No Forbidden Areas for Reading Books" in the founding issue of Dushu magazine, calling for elimination of all restrictions on reading books. In 1980, Qin Benli founded the World Economic Herald, which later became the forefront for promoting and defending freedom of the press as well as freedom of speech in mainland China, earning its reputation as China's most liberal and forthright newspaper. In 1984, Jin Guantao and others began to publish the Toward the Future Book Series, which played a major role in introducing "universal values" and a variety of other modern concepts to the Chinese public. Even though both the Herald and the Book Series were banned due to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, the ban of the latter was lifted after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992. Other important newspapers, journals and book series included Economics Weekly (经济学周报), Dushu magazine (读书), Culture: China and the World (文化: 中国与世界) edited by Gan Yang, and so on.

A spectrum of activists and social groups with different thoughts became active in the 1980s, from further developing traditional Chinese culture by learning from the western civilization, to embracing Total Westernization. For example, Liu Xiaobo, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, once said in an interview in 1988, that "it had taken 100 years of [British] colonialism to bring Hong Kong up to what it is, and given the size of China, it would certainly need 300 years of colonization for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough." The TV documentary River Elegy in 1988 was another well-known example of making self-criticism over traditional Chinese culture. On the other hand, a number of leading Chinese philosophers including Liang Shuming, Feng Youlan, Ji Xianlin, Zhang Dainian (张岱年), and Tang Yijie founded the Academy of Chinese Culture (中国文化书院) in Beijing in 1984, which organized numerous seminars and classes studying and comparing Chinese and western cultures, in the hope of further developing traditional Chinese culture.

Meanwhile, Fang Lizhi, then vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China, was an influential figure in promoting democracy and universal human rights. In his famous speeches in 1986, Fang noted that "Democracy is not a favor bestowed from above; it should be won through people's own efforts." Fang said publicly, that "We should not place our hope on grants from the top leadership. Democracy granted from above is not democracy in a real sense. It is relaxation of control". In January 1989, in memory of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution as well as the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, Fang wrote an open letter to Deng Xiaoping, then paramount leader of China, calling for amnesty and release of Wei Jingsheng and other similar political prisoners. The letter inspired other intellectuals and scientists to follow suit with open letters in support.