News / Brèves Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente Xi Jinping Feature in Party Theoretical Journal Stresses Role of Morality in Art and Culture 17 April 2019 EIRNS—A much-awaited article by China’s President Xi Jinping entitled “A Country, or a Nation, Cannot Be Devoid of Soul” was published yesterday in Qiushi Journal the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Xi’s article is intended to mobilize the powers of the nation in this critical moment when the People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 70th anniversary and is looking toward the realization of its final rejuvenation from the long period of stagnation that resulted from its “century of humiliation” beginning with the Opium Wars and ending with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and the initiation of the policy of “reform and opening up” by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. The article points to the fundamental role of the Communist Party of China in realizing that development. And Xi is calling on the artists and writers to create a new culture, to reflect the lives of the people, and to devote their art to the progress of the nation. “Effecting radical reforms and preserving creativity, a country, a nation cannot be devoid of a soul, and as a spiritual undertaking, culture, literature, philosophy and social science is of course a form of soul-creation which one cannot be without and which dispels confusion,” Xi writes. The cultural workers should also strive to give the people great works, referring to the great accomplishments of Chinese thinkers like Confucius and Mencius, poets like Tao Yuanming, Du Fu and Li Bai, or Western giants like Plato and Shakespeare. “All that has value and meaning in literary and artistic creations, has to reflect reality, illuminate reality, all for the benefit of solving real problems or of providing an answer to real questions,” Xi writes. “I hope that they have a firm footing in Chinese reality, take root in Chinese soil, grasp the progress of contemporary China, and reveal and show the splendid life of the Chinese people today, and expound well on China’s spirit, China’s values and China’s strengths.” Culture must also have the function of strengthening the power of virtue in the people. “They must understand the quality of virtue, seek to establish virtue. Cultural, literary and art workers in the new era must have faith, sentiment and responsibility, establish lofty ideals, pursuing and deepening the sentiments of the nation. In pursuing his artistic goals, his academic ideals and the future of the nation are intertwined with the destiny of the national groups and the happiness of the people.”