Chinas Lost Decade Cultural Politics And Poetics 19781990 In Place Of History

Gregory B. Lee

"The period in China's recent history between the death of Mao and the debacle of 1989 can be seen as a long decade, but also historically as a "lost" decade. It is "lost" in the sense that the political engagement of intellectuals and makers of culture has been occulted by official history-telling; it is also "lost" in that its memory had been abandoned even by many who lived through it; "lost" also in the embarrassed silence of those who prefer to focus on the subsequent economic miracle of the 1990's that gave rise to today's more prosperous China; and "lost" as a time of opportunity for cultural and political change that ultimately did not happen.