Liu Jiming (born November 17, 1963) is a contemporary Chinese writer. He served as the Vice Chairman of the 5th and 6th terms of the Hubei Writers Association.[1]

Biography

Liu was born on November 17, 1963, in Shishou, Hubei Province.

In 1985, he published his debut fiction piece, Double-Barreled Shotgun, in Three Gorges Literature (Sanxia Wenxue).

In 1988, he was admitted as a transfer student to the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Wuhan University. Following graduation, he successively served as a playwright for the Hubei Provincial Opera Troupe (now the Hubei Provincial Opera and Dance Drama Theater); an editor and journalist for Hainan Legal Daily; director of the editorial office of Special Economic Zone Legal System; deputy editor-in-chief of Cultural Life Daily; editor of Yangtze River Literature and Art; and subsequently vice chairman and professional writer of the Hubei Writers Association, as well as editor-in-chief of Tianxia magazine.

In 1994, he published a succession of fictional works in Shanghai Literature, including Going to Huang Village, Subsea Village, and Heavy Snow Tomorrow. In the editor's notes, the journal’s editor-in-chief and prominent literary critic Zhou Jieren designated these works as "cultural concern fiction" (wenhua guanhuai xiaoshuo), which attracted widespread attention across the literary establishment.

In 2004, German Sinologist Thilo Diefenbach visited Liu in Wuhan and subsequently translated and published China Outside the Megacities: Stories and Essays by Liu Jiming, Zhang Wei, and Liu Qingbang (Europäischer Universitätsverlag, in German). Around 2005, Liu published novellas, short stories, and critical essays such as Mado Drowned in Beer, How Far Is the Way Home, Singing at the Top of One's Voice, Between Us Husband and Wife, and How Do We Narrate the Grassroots. He was widely recognized as a representative writer of "Grassroots Literature" (diceng wenxue). In 2007, he was elected Vice Chairman of the Hubei Writers Association at its 5th Congress, and was re-elected to the same post in 2012 at the 6th Congress.[2][3][4][5]

In 2013, he founded and served as editor-in-chief of Tianxia magazine and the Tianxia Ideological Library book series. Following its launch, Tianxia featured essays by leading figures from both the Chinese New Left and liberal intellectual spheres—including Wang Hui, Zhang Chengzhi, Li Tuo, Zhang Wei, Kong Qingdong, Cao Zhenglu, Li Yunlei, Qin Hui, and Xiao Gongqin—and was lauded as forming a intellectual triumvirate alongside Dushu and Tianya. The Tianxia Ideological Library, which anthologized essays by Zhang Wei, Zhu Dongli, Liu Hongbo, and others, was published by Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press.

In 2016, Liu published the novel Human Realm, which was selected for the Harvest Annual Novel Ranking, nominated for the Lu Yao Literary Award, and included in the list of "40 Important Novels of the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up." Critics acclaimed him as a "pioneer of new socialist literature." In 2017, he publicly reported Chen Yingsong, then Vice Chairman of the Hubei Writers Association and Dean of its Literary Academy, for alleged disciplinary violations, after which Chen filed a defamation lawsuit against him. In the same year, Fang Fang, then Chairwoman of the Hubei Writers Association, published posts on Weibo defending Chen, which Liu deemed defamatory, leading him to file a defamation lawsuit against her.

In 2018, Liu was named one of the "Top 50 Most Influential Progressive Intellectuals in China" in an online poll co-hosted by Progressive Culture Net, Australia's Panda Times, and Critics Weekly.

Infobox

Liu Jiming

Born

November 17, 1963

Shishou, Hubei, People's Republic of China

Nationality

Chinese (PRC)

Alma mater

Wuhan University

Occupation

Writer

Selected Bibliography

• I Love Maidong (China Overseas Chinese Publishing House, 1996)

• The Bionic Human (Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, 1998)

• Kirk, or Nine Cases I Experienced (Mass Publishing House, 1998)

• The Chinese Labyrinth (Shanhua Publishing House, 2000)

• The Sun Shines on Tian'ezhou (China Literature and Art Publishing House, 2003)

• The Awkward Year (Mass Publishing House, 2003)

• Literary Reader for Youth (China Literature and Art Publishing House, 2003)

• A Promise Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold (Huashan Publishing House, 2003)

• My Passionate Era (Shanghai Joint Publishing, 2003)

• The Dream Dam (Yunnan Publishing House, 2004)

• Sending You a Bouquet of Red Clover (Wuhan Publishing House, 2006)

• Heading Toward South Asia (People's Literature Publishing House, 2009)

• Rivers and Lakes (Yangtze River Literature and Art Publishing House, 2010)

• Selected Poems of Liu Jiming (Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, 2015)

• Hubei Writers Library: Liu Jiming Volume (Yangtze River Literature and Art Publishing House, 2015)

• Human Realm (The Writers Publishing House, 2016)

• Defense and Outcry (Taiwan Showwe Information, 2019)

Political Commentary & Views

On the leftist website Utopia (Wuyou Zhixiang), Liu Jiming cited commentary from the leftist media outlet Ji Liu Net, arguing that ZhinaWiki contributors were "hackers who unearth crucial information deliberately concealed by the ruling class" and characterizing them as "true heroes," drawing comparisons between ZhinaWiki, WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden.[6][7]

Zhou Ziheng · Posted on the WeChat account Forever the Red Streamer, May 31, 2026

On the map of contemporary Chinese left-wing culture, Liu Jiming is a figure all his own. He is at once a writer and an editor, a thinker and an organizer. From the avant-garde writing of the 1990s, to the narratives of the “bottom layer” of society in the new century, to his turn in recent years to “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,” his intellectual path has run clearly and steadily to the left. And one important thread running through that path is his persistent effort to build positions for left-wing culture: from founding the magazine Tianxia with money he raised himself, to founding and editing the Zhongliu Series, to running writing workshops and operating his own media, Liu Jiming has tried, by means of “guerrilla warfare,” to open up room to survive for marginalized left-wing voices. This process is at once a breakout attempt by left-wing culture in a “post-revolutionary” age and the transformation of an intellectual from “writer” into “fighter.”

1. The Tianxia Years: An Idealistic Experiment in “Going Beyond Left and Right”

In 2011, with funds he raised himself, Liu Jiming founded the magazine Tianxia (All Under Heaven). According to press reports at the time, it was hailed with the phrase: “In the north there is Dushu, in the south there is Tianya, and in the center there is Tianxia.”[1] The positioning itself reveals Liu Jiming’s ambition: he hoped to build a forum that could stand on equal footing with those two strongholds of ideas and culture in Beijing and Hainan.

The makeup of Tianxia’s contributors was distinctive. Its writers included leftists such as Wang Hui, Huang Jisu, and Kong Qingdong, and also figures of the right such as Xiao Gongqin, Qin Hui, and Xu Jilin.[2] This arrangement of “left and right governing together” embodied the idea Liu Jiming held at the time, “going beyond left and right to rebuild consensus”: in an age when the intellectual world was splitting ever more deeply, he tried to build a platform for pluralistic dialogue.

This idea fitted the stage his own writing had reached. Before the publication of The Human Realm, Liu Jiming was in transition from “cultural concern” to “narratives of the bottom layer.” Though he had already turned left, he still kept an open attitude toward “multiple perspectives.” The attempt to found Tianxia was more like a left-wing intellectual’s effort to realize the ideal of a “public forum”: he hoped that a platform led by the left could make room for dialogue between different positions.

This idealistic experiment, however, lasted less than two years before the magazine ceased publication. The reasons were partly external, such as money, but they also reflected the predicament of “going beyond left and right” itself: as the left and right camps grew ever more polarized, the room for a “middle ground” shrank drastically. There was an episode along the way. In 2012, when Tianxia was on the brink of closing for lack of funds, the US-based scholar Li Tuo put Liu Jiming in touch with Wang Hui, the Tsinghua University professor known as the leader of the New Left and director of its Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences,[3] and Liu traveled to Beijing specially to discuss running the magazine jointly. They had already reached agreement on cooperating when the publication number shared with a magazine in Guangxi was withdrawn, and a chance that might have brought Tianxia back to life came to nothing halfway.

The closing of Tianxia was an important “disenchantment” for Liu Jiming: at a time when “the literary world had degenerated into a sordid fair of fame and gain, even into part of an ‘iron triangle,’” trying to build “bridges” inside the system or on its edges was futile. This understanding laid the ground for the more radical “guerrilla warfare” that followed.

2. The Break: From Writer to “Guerrilla”

The year 2017 was the turning point in Liu Jiming’s thinking. That year he publicly reported online that Chen Yingsong, vice-chair of the Hubei Writers Association and head of its Literature Institute, was suspected of violating Party discipline, which led to a defamation suit with Fang Fang and Chen Yingsong.[4] The case ended with Liu Jiming losing. But for him, the meaning of the affair went far beyond winning or losing in court. He later wrote in “To You”: “When the literary world had degenerated into a sordid fair of fame and gain, even into part of an ‘iron triangle,’ I resolutely hurled the javelin in my hand. From that moment I was no longer merely a writer, but a fighter, or a guerrilla.”

The metaphor of the “guerrilla” came first from a piece by Zhang Chengzhi about Che Guevara.[5] It meant giving up the illusion of winning a voice inside the system, and turning instead to flexible, marginal, non-institutional ways of fighting. The change showed itself on several levels.

In his channels of communication, he no longer pinned his hopes on “those paper magazines inside the system,” but “mainly on the internet, as the main platform for publishing my work and related information; not only a platform, but a position, a trench.” He opened a Weibo account and a personal WeChat account, and spread his ideas through his Random Thoughts, a series of essays in the Weibo form, using “fragmentary, popular, and highly interactive forms” to lower the threshold for left-wing ideas.

In his place in the institutions, he broke openly with the mainstream literary world. In 2019, after he received an intra-Party warning for “improper exercise of the right to report,” he left Wuhan for Britain, shut himself away to write Black and White, and began a “period of intellectual self-exile and reconstruction.” In this period he was no longer vice-chair of the Hubei Writers Association. Though he still held his rank as a senior professional writer (grade two of the full-professor rank), in the stance of his writing he had already become an independent intellectual “outside the system.”

In his inner identity, he completed his transformation from “left-wing writer” to “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.” The Russia-Ukraine war was the “key catalyst,” which led him to “shake off entirely the influence of ‘pure literature’ and write explicitly from a proletarian standpoint.” He began a systematic critique of the “nationalist left,” which he held “obscured class essence,” and set about “rebuilding communist faith.”

This series of changes formed a “transition zone” between Tianxia and the Zhongliu Series. In the Tianxia period he was still seeking dialogue with the system and with the liberals; after the break, he was ready to “face the pack of wolves alone.” But how far can a lone, unsupported “guerrilla” go?

3. The Zhongliu Series: Carrying On a Tradition, Rebuilding a Position

In August 2020, the Zhongliu Series, a substantial journal of thought and the humanities, published its first issue. The timing is telling. Because of the pandemic, Liu Jiming was stranded in Britain, saying publicly that he was “writing in seclusion on an island far from Wuhan”; his lawsuit with Fang Fang and Chen Yingsong had only recently been settled; he had just finished the first part of Black and White; and it was the crucial period of his turn to the left.

The very name of the Zhongliu Series was a manifesto. Zhongliu (Midstream) was the name of the magazine Wei Wei founded in 1990, and before he died Wei Wei left the words “Continue the revolution; never surrender.”[6] By taking up the name, Liu Jiming plainly meant to carry on the tradition of the “old left” that Wei Wei represented, the tradition that held fast to the belief in “continuing the revolution” after the revolutionary tide had ebbed.

Unlike Tianxia’s “going beyond left and right,” the Zhongliu Series nailed its colors to the mast: “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its fundamental aim.” The schools its founding statement promised to embrace included “traditional Marxism, young Marxism, the Maoist left, the liberal left, statism, nationalism, democratic socialism, Trotskyism, and others.” This vision of a “left-wing united front” differed in essence from Tianxia’s “dialogue between left and right”: it no longer sought dialogue with the liberals, but tried to build a platform for pluralistic dialogue within the left.

The two special sections of the first issue, “In Memory of Wei Wei” and “Back to Marx,” marked out the journal’s spiritual coordinates clearly. “In Memory of Wei Wei” paid tribute to the left-wing tradition and carried it forward; “Back to Marx” reaffirmed its theoretical foundations. The list of contributors to the first issue could fairly be called glittering: a posthumous work by Wei Wei, Samir Amin, Wang Hui, Zhang Chengzhi, Li Tuo, Cao Zhenglu, and Liu Jiming himself.[7] Zhang Chengzhi’s verdict was brief and to the point: “One more position. Wonderful!”

The word “position” appears again. From Tianxia to the Zhongliu Series, from “platform” to “position,” the change of vocabulary reflects Liu Jiming’s new understanding of the nature of left-wing cultural work: it was no longer a neutral “marketplace of ideas,” but a “front line of struggle” with a clear stance.

Although the Zhongliu Series published only four issues before it was ordered to close, and Liu Jiming received a second Party disciplinary sanction for it, the journal meant a great deal to him. It was with the Zhongliu Series that his influence broke out of the literary world in which it had been confined, and he became a left-wing public intellectual with a clear political stance, no longer merely a writer inside the system; in his own words, he became a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist.

4. From Position to “Lifeblood”: Writing Workshops and the Training of Red Writers

A position needs people to hold it; ideas need people to pass them on. If the Zhongliu Series was the cultural “fortress” Liu Jiming built, the writing workshops were the cultural “military academy” he founded.

Almost at the very moment Liu Jiming’s enemies were congratulating one another on his second sanction, Black and White was published, by a non-mainstream route. Soon afterward Liu Jiming founded and led a writing workshop, with the explicit aim of training “red writers.” At the opening of the third workshop, he set out his idea: “The students in our workshop should first of all be believers in Marxism, willing to use their writing to serve the proletariat and serve socialism, and not to make a name for themselves.”

He put forward his well-known “three passes of writing,” the pass of feeling, the pass of standpoint, and the pass of language, and asked his students “to unite these ‘three passes’ organically on the Marxist standpoint, and become true red writers who stand up for the proletariat and speak for the working people.” This systematic training stands in sharp contrast to conventional literary education: it no longer pursues professional standards such as “literariness” or “artistry,” but defines writing clearly as a form of “struggle”: “every writer worthy of the name of red writer is a fighter.” This means that Liu Jiming is not only fighting with his own pen to rebuild faith, but consciously training successors, turning his personal left-wing practice into an organized and sustainable cultural movement.

At the same time, he has been actively exploring new forms of writing and new channels of communication. His Random Thoughts series of Weibo-style essays, “short and pithy, in plain and stirring language, turns complex left-wing theory into texts readable in everyday life,” and has had considerable influence among young people. One commentator has argued that this writing, “through fragmentary, popular, and highly interactive forms, has markedly reshaped the paths and effects by which left-wing ideas spread.” In Liu Jiming’s own words, it is “writing in an entirely new sense,” in which “the manner of writing and the medium of communication” have “changed substantially” from traditional literary production.

5. Breaking Out and Its Predicaments: The Fate of Left-Wing Cultural Positions Today

From Tianxia to the Zhongliu Series, and on to the writing workshops and the cluster of self-run media, Liu Jiming’s building of left-wing cultural positions has gone through a clear process of “breaking out of the circle”:

In its carriers, it has moved from an elite magazine (Tianxia) to a popular journal (the Zhongliu Series), and on to online essays and social media; the threshold has kept falling and the audience has kept widening, a clear pattern of breaking out.

In its intellectual stance, it has moved from the liberal left of “going beyond left and right” to “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,” the stance ever clearer and ever more combative.

In its form of practice, it has moved from individual editorial work to organized writing workshops; left-wing cultural production is evolving from “guerrilla bands” into a “regular army.”

Yet whether in breaking his personal influence out of its circle or breaking his cultural positions out of theirs, Liu Jiming has had to face new predicaments. First is suppression by the system. The new work into which he poured enormous effort is banned at home and can circulate only “in electronic form and the like.” In April 2025, Black and White was published in the United States (a foreign outlet called it “a literary expedition of testimony to time”), and it began to enter the international field of vision. As Liu Jiming wrote in his afterword to the English edition: “Its circulation in the English-speaking world not only releases a literary work from a formatted space, but also means that a steadfast commitment to a plain class justice and humanist spirit can still win respect.” Even so, the novel’s reach remains essentially cut off from the mainstream domestic cultural market; it can only be passed “quietly from hand to hand” among ordinary people, through reading groups and other forms of private reading. But as Kong Qingdong has said, the novel is not only a major achievement of contemporary Chinese literature but “far surpasses most Nobel Prize-winning works in its excavation of history,” and the history of its publication, its reading, and its circulation forms a unique history of its own: a history of resistance, of breaking out through the cracks in mainstream culture.

Second is the “echo chamber” effect among its audience. Most readers of left-wing cultural positions are “our own people”; the ideas circulate mostly within the same bubble and find it hard to reach the wider public. Liu Jiming admits frankly in “To You” that his supporters may be “a tiny ‘handful of people,’” or may be “a huge group of astonishing size.” This uncertainty reflects the awkward position of left-wing culture in Chinese society today.

Last is the continuing high pressure from the system. Faced with suppression in the form of closed accounts, silencing, and Party disciplinary sanctions, Liu Jiming wrote in Random Thoughts: “Nothing but death can break me.” “For a writer who believes in communism, the right to express his thoughts is above everything; holding fast to one’s faith matters more than life itself.” This tragic, heroic declaration is at once a reply to power and a hint at how harsh the conditions of his existence are.

Conclusion: The Meaning and the Limits of a Position

From Tianxia to the Zhongliu Series and on to the program for training “red writers,” Liu Jiming’s persistent building of left-wing cultural positions makes up a distinctive and important chapter in the landscape of contemporary Chinese left-wing culture. It shows how, in an age of “farewell to revolution,” an intellectual has carried on the literary tradition of the League of Left-Wing Writers of the 1930s, led by Lu Xun,[8] and, by building cultural positions through magazines and books, has passed on the torch of progressive thought along a winding and even tragic road.

In a sense, Liu Jiming has taken a road much like Zhang Chengzhi’s. In his essay “The Seventy-Year-Old Sent-Down Youth, or the Rhetoric of the People,” he wrote that Zhang Chengzhi “gave up his post and salary and parted ways with the mainstream literary world at the very height of his reputation as a writer,” while his own choice “came too late, and had something of being ‘driven to join the rebels on Mount Liang.’”[9] Compared with Zhang Chengzhi’s lone-ranger “personal spiritual pilgrimage,” Liu Jiming lays more stress on building organized positions. From magazines to writing workshops, he has tried to turn left-wing cultural production from “individual action” into a “collective cause.”

Yet the meaning of a position and its limits are equally plain. It can give shelter to talent from the bottom and the margins; it can keep the left-wing intellectual tradition unbroken; it can open an alternative space outside the “mainstream.” But whether it can truly change the structure of power and reach the broader public remains a hard question. And all the while he must be ready to face the dirty water and the open spears and hidden arrows that power and his enemies keep hurling at him.

At the end of “To You,” Liu Jiming wrote: “I have spoken, I have acted, I have saved my own soul.”[10] These words reveal the deeper motive of his writing and of his building of cultural positions: what matters is not victory, but the very act of rowing on “on a rising sea.” As he says in his long 2021 essay “A Brief History of Ideas: The Metamorphosis of an Era (2001–2021)”: “The goals the left is striving for remain far out of reach, but their meaning lies in existence itself. Struggle may not change reality in the short term, but it can keep society from being captured entirely by capitalist groups and driven to extremes, and so win more time and space for the proletariat to grow and gather strength.”

In this sense, the very process of building left-wing cultural positions is itself a form of resistance: resistance to forgetting, resistance to assimilation, resistance to the narrative of the end of history and to a unipolar social order.

Notes

[1] Dushu (Reading), published in Beijing since 1979, and Tianya (Frontiers), published in Haikou, Hainan, were the two most influential journals of ideas in China in the 1990s and 2000s.

[2] Wang Hui, the historian Huang Jisu, and Kong Qingdong are prominent figures of the Chinese left; the political scientist Xiao Gongqin and the historians Qin Hui and Xu Jilin are leading liberal or conservative-liberal voices.

[3] Li Tuo (b. 1939), writer and critic, long resident in the United States. Wang Hui (b. 1959), intellectual historian at Tsinghua University, is widely regarded as the leading figure of China’s “New Left.”

[4] Fang Fang, novelist and former chair of the Hubei Writers Association, later known worldwide for her Wuhan Diary (2020). Chen Yingsong is a Hubei novelist.

[5] Zhang Chengzhi (b. 1948), novelist and essayist, coined the term “Red Guards” in 1966 and later broke with the literary establishment to write as an independent.

[6] Wei Wei (1920–2008), author of the Korean War reportage “Who Are the Most Beloved People?” Zhongliu (1990–2001) was the leading journal of the old Maoist left in the 1990s.

[7] Samir Amin (1931–2018), the Egyptian-French Marxist economist and theorist of world-systems and “delinking.” Cao Zhenglu (b. 1949) is a novelist known for his fiction about laid-off state-enterprise workers.

[8] The League of Left-Wing Writers was founded in Shanghai in 1930 with Lu Xun as its leading figure.

[9] “Driven to join the rebels on Mount Liang” (逼上梁山), from the classic novel Water Margin: to be forced into rebellion by persecution.

[10] An echo of Marx’s closing words in the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875): Dixi et salvavi animam meam, “I have spoken and saved my soul.”

Interviewee: Liu Jiming

Interviewer: "Progressive Interviews" Reporting Team

Date of Interview: September 25, 2020

Progressive Culture: Hello, Teacher Liu! Following the publication of your novel Human Realm, it was selected for the Harvest 2016 Annual Novel Rankings, listed among the "40 Important Novels of the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up," and nominated for the Lu Yao Literary Award. Many critics consider it a crowning achievement of your career, comparing it to classics such as Midnight, The Builders, Bright Sunny Days, and Ordinary World, hailing it as a groundbreaking work of "New Socialist Literature." Yet the mainstream literary establishment seems to have largely overlooked it. How do you view this phenomenon?

Liu Jiming: Once a work enters the world, it is completely natural for people to offer praise or criticism, to like or dislike it, or to attach great importance to it or ignore it entirely. As you noted, some critics have indeed discussed Human Realm alongside socialist and left-wing literary classics like Midnight, The Builders, and Bright Sunny Days. Over the past forty years, however, these very classics have been consistently diminished, if not actively stigmatized, by China’s mainstream literary establishment. If an author or a text is placed in that lineage today, it brings no institutional accolades; instead, it invites marginalization and derision.

Progressive Culture: The prominent critic Mr. Li Jingze once described you as a "formidable thinker." He has repeatedly praised the "ideological power" in your works, while simultaneously observing that "it is precisely this power that carries him beyond the borders of literature itself." How do you interpret his assessment?

Liu Jiming: Li Jingze possesses refined literary taste and keen critical insight. Several novellas I published in People’s Literature during the mid-to-late 1990s were edited directly by him. As an editor, his perspective is generous and inclusive; as a critic, he has long held a clear affinity for the avant-garde and "pure literature." Not long ago, in his preface to young critic Li Yunlei’s essay collection How to Tell New Chinese Stories, Li Jingze wrote: "Yunlei’s realm was orderly and clear in purpose from the very outset, built upon an interconnected set of commitments: an affirmation of China’s historical path in the modern era, an affirmation of the Chinese revolution and socialism, and an embrace of modern Chinese literature's progressive and left-wing traditions. Consequently, he maintains a reflective, critical stance toward mainstream literary doctrines that have held sway since the 1980s. He firmly believes in literature's duty to the modern nation-state, regarding this as literature's supreme glory..." He fully endorsed Li Yunlei's critical practice and even shared positive reflections on re-reading Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art. This indicates that Li Jingze's literary outlook is not rigid, but continues to evolve.

To my mind, the boundary drawn by advocates of "pure literature" might well serve as the precise departure point for "another kind of literature." In that sense, literature possesses no uniform border, nor any absolute divide between an "inside" and an "outside." Even if such a line exists, it lives only within an individual’s internal conscience or ideological framework. Take Tolstoy and Nabokov, for instance—who could ever definitively delineate where the boundary of literature lay in their respective minds?

Progressive Culture: In 2017, you publicly reported Chen Yingsong, former Vice Chairman of the Hubei Writers Association and Dean of its Literary Academy, for alleged misconduct, after which he sued you for defamation. Meanwhile, Fang Fang, then Chairwoman of the Hubei Writers Association, came out in strong defense of Chen, leading you to file a defamation lawsuit against her as well. More than two years have passed. What are the outcomes of these two legal disputes? Could you walk our readers through the genesis and development of the situation?

Liu Jiming: Regarding the origins of the matter, I provided an exhaustive account in my essay "Why I Reported Chen Yingsong—Along with a Rebuttal to Fang Fang", so there is no need to repeat the details here.

In the defamation lawsuit between Chen Yingsong and me, the court ruled against me on the grounds that "Liu Jiming’s choice to publicly report Chen Yingsong online before relevant authorities had completed an investigation and made a lawful determination constituted a patently improper exercise of rights." This ruling was thoroughly absurd, collapsing under both legal logic and factual scrutiny. Had the relevant authorities already conducted an investigation and made a lawful determination, there would have been no need for a public report in the first place. It was precisely because authorities remained passive in response to whistleblowing from myself and others that I was compelled to report Chen online—an exercise of legitimate rights guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution. In reality, countless corruption cases have seen investigative intervention only after being exposed publicly on the internet.

The verdict in my lawsuit against Fang Fang was even more ludicrous. She repeatedly posted on Weibo and WeChat to whitewash Chen's actions, blur right and wrong, and slander me. Yet in court, she argued that her words were not directed at any "specific individual." Astonishingly, despite the undeniable evidence of defamation, the court of first instance, the appellate court, and the Provincial Higher People's Court all accepted her sophistry.

Progressive Culture: Rumors online indicate that the Hubei Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection issued you an "intra-Party warning" while subjecting Chen Yingsong merely to "criticism, education, and admonitory talks." Yet Chen denies having received any disciplinary action whatsoever. What actually transpired?

Liu Jiming: On April 1, 2019, officers from the Discipline Inspection Team stationed at the Provincial Publicity Department convened in the second-floor conference room of the Hubei Writers Association to announce two decisions. First, they issued me an "intra-Party warning" on the grounds of "violating organizational principles and exercising whistleblowing rights in an improper manner." I immediately voiced my objection and reserved the right to appeal to higher disciplinary bodies. Second, they briefed me on the decision regarding Chen Yingsong. The disciplinary investigation confirmed that Chen had indeed committed disciplinary violations. However, citing the refusal of certain female workshop attendees to cooperate with the inquiry and the passing of another involved individual, Liu Yiyang, the Commission hastily closed the case despite numerous unresolved questions, concluding with mere "criticism, education, and admonitory talks." Reacting to this decision—which plainly shielded Chen—one netizen remarked: "Issuing an intra-Party warning to the whistleblower while offering mere 'criticism and education' to the wrongdoer—has the Hubei Disciplinary Commission lost its mind?" That captures just how preposterous the outcome was.

Afterward, Chen went about spreading word of my disciplinary sanction. When news broke online that he had also been penalized, he flatly denied it, threatened legal action against websites hosting the reports, and churned out long screeds attacking and smearing me in a fit of rage—fabricating claims that I suffered from severe clinical depression, was "threatening to jump from buildings," and had "earnestly admitted fault multiple times."

Simultaneously, after all four tires of my car were slashed, the vehicle was defaced with spray paint, and I even received direct death threats. Prior to this, a middle school teacher in Qianjiang, Hubei, who had forwarded my whistleblowing letter and publicly criticized Chen, had his front door chopped seven times with a cleaver in the dead of night, followed by administrative pressure from local propaganda cadres...

Unbelievably, the authorities turned a blind eye to these underworld-style retaliations. Furthermore, after issuing the rulings against Chen and me, they dragged their feet on administering Chen's formal "criticism and admonishment." When I challenged the official in charge of the case, he offered evasive answers and flew into a temper. The underlying reasons speak for themselves.

Progressive Culture: Whistleblowing, whether real-name or anonymous, has always carried grave risks. Many have faced vindictive retaliation—being "disappeared," forcibly institutionalized under the guise of mental illness, driven to suicide, or paying with their lives. As an established writer, you must have shouldered far more psychological pressure than ordinary citizens, with your personal rights and reputation deeply harmed. Did you foresee these consequences? Did you ever contemplate compromising or pulling back?

Liu Jiming: Not long ago, media outlets reported that several citizens in Longquan, Zhejiang, who reported local officials for corruption, were subjected to "counter-investigations" by public security authorities while the accused went unexamined. In Xinhuang County, Hunan, schoolteacher Deng Shiping was murdered by the principal's nephew and buried beneath the school running track for resisting and exposing embezzlement; the perpetrators fabricated rumors that Deng had fled with public funds, and his remains were uncovered only sixteen years later. Similar instances abound. In comparison, my plight has not been as grim; at least for now, I have not been silenced permanently. Over these two-plus years, I have seen firsthand how shameless and ruthless retaliators can be. But their slander, the court's absurd rulings, and the administrative injustice meted out to me will never force me to compromise. If anything, they have only hardened my resolve to fight to the end.

Progressive Culture: Online essayist Shesui Nongfu wrote in "There Is a Glory Called 'Defamation'": "Liu Jiming took these monumental risks not out of naive blindness, but because steadfast inner convictions impelled him to stand courageously against ugliness and injustice, even at the cost of his own fame and fortune... This is neither an isolated occurrence nor a trivial clash; it lays bare the fractures within contemporary Chinese society and the intellectual class. It cuts to the question of which 'hide' intellectuals choose to attach their 'hair' to: Will they attach themselves to the hide of entrenched interest groups to become cynical lackeys devoid of an autonomous soul, or will they root themselves in the hide of the working masses to serve the vast majority?" As the person at the center of this storm, how do you see this issue?

Liu Jiming: Shesui Nongfu’s observation captures only half the reality. In the minds of those individuals, there are no "ideological principles"—there are only material "interests." That is why Chen Yingsong collaborated with Fang Fang: on the one hand twisting facts to smear my whistleblowing as "framed slander" and "transgressing basic human decency," while on the other directing subordinates to send anonymous letters to the provincial discipline inspection commission to frame me. Every sign points to a deeply entangled nexus of interests spanning the judiciary, disciplinary organs, and the literary establishment, potentially with underworld elements in the mix. To ensure a thorough investigation of Chen's alleged violations and the protective umbrella behind him, I have submitted petitions and charges to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and other organs. Furthermore, in light of the court's erroneous rulings in my defamation suit against Fang Fang, I am lodging a protest with the Hubei Provincial People’s Procuratorate. This is not merely about personal rights; I simply want to see the extent to which public authority has been corrupted by those self-serving opportunists.

Progressive Culture: Last year, your essay collection Defense and Outcry was published in Taiwan. In his preface, "An Outcry Born of Conscience," prominent scholar Kong Qingdong wrote: "From Lu Xun and Guo Moruo, to Ding Ling and Yao Xueyin, down to Wei Wei, Hao Ran, and Chen Yingzhen... all held aloft the heavy gates of darkness to rebuild the conscience of the Chinese people... Yet these representative figures of a century of conscience were defamed one after another, subjected to the fates of Bruno and Galileo. The sheer vulgarity of the tactics and absurdity of the logic deployed against them stand as proof of an era where conscience risks extinction once more. Liu Jiming’s evolution from an author of 'cultural concern' into an outcry-raiser 'awakening conscience' is merely the mournful cry of a cuckoo that sees reality with lucid clarity yet cannot stem the raging tide alone." Were you looking to channel your own indignation through the profiles of these "figures of conscience"?

Liu Jiming: As the ancient adage goes, "Essays are composed to answer the times; poems are crafted to speak to events." Using another's cup to pour out the wine of one's own grievances has been a constant throughout history. By reflecting on these historical figures, I systematically ordered my own intellectual trajectory and drew profound inspiration. Mr. Zhang Chengzhi once observed: "Amid this global discursive violence where black is made white, only those who dare to say 'I am not' are truly courageous." I may not qualify as a "truly courageous person," but while I may fall short of that ideal, striving toward it remains my enduring aspiration.

Progressive Culture: From your "cultural concern" fiction of the mid-1990s to the Grassroots Literature movement of the early 2000s, from self-funding Tianxia magazine to your recent battles against institutional corruption, you have consistently intervened in and critiqued reality as a "dissident." You have always insisted that this critique must stand with the vast majority of the people rather than an elite minority. Consequently, many praise you as an authentic "people’s intellectual." Readers frequently leave comments on your public account: "You are a banner among contemporary Chinese writers, an uncompromising figure who defies power to honor conscience and calling! You have sounded the clarion call against evil, and every conscientious Chinese stands behind you!" or "We stand with you, Teacher Liu! You are the conscience of intellectuals, a brave fighter pursuing justice and light!" Yet in sharp contrast to the support you enjoy among ordinary readers and netizens, you appear isolated within the literary establishment. As Shesui Nongfu observed, many within literary circles view you with misunderstanding or open hostility. What are your thoughts on this?

Liu Jiming: Today, once certain intellectual elites embed themselves as a cornerstone within the iron triangle of power and wealth, their hubris in manipulating political, economic, and cultural resources reaches absolute heights. The literary world is no exception. The maxim of "taking sides while ignoring truth" is on full display among them. The "moral baselines" they loudly preach are nothing more than self-serving covers to protect cronies, collude, and run closed circles. Facts have shown that the ones who have truly abandoned basic human decency are none other than themselves. To manufacture moral legitimacy, they deliberately blur the distinction between civic reporting and treacherous informing, concocting absurd dictums like "the basic human baseline is never to report or inform." Yet even in Western legal traditions, reporting illegal and corrupt conduct is an established civic responsibility, backed by strict whistleblower protections. In their inverted logic, the whistleblower becomes the "villain," while the corrupt actor is championed as a "good person." This inversion of good and evil and brazen disregard for public justice is staggering. It reveals how severely elite interest groups have fractured social ethics, moral integrity, and the wider social fabric. It is hardly surprising, then, that I face hostility and exclusion from establishment literary circles. But this entire ordeal has helped me see through opportunistic flatterers. We were never cut from the same cloth; parting ways is a welcome outcome.

Progressive Culture: In your early cultural concern stories, you often featured solitary, alienated intellectuals who clashed with reality—such as Huang Mao in Going to Huang Village or Ouyang Yuqiu in Subsea Village. Later, in Singing at the Top of One's Voice, you portrayed the folk singer Qian Gaoliang, who, finding all doors closed in his suit against an unscrupulous boss, climbed the courthouse roof to belt out local ballads. In your novella Enlightenment, you recounted how the celebrated writer Qu Bo'an degenerated from an intellectual who "suffered for the people" into an oligarchic insider; after being reported by native villagers of Chunshu Island, Qu dispatched underworld enforcers to make them disappear, and once hauled into court, easily leveraged personal connections to have the charges dropped. There are striking parallels between these characters, these fictional plots, and your personal experiences in recent years. This could be coincidence, but it looks far more like prophecy. You have also published essays supporting labor strikes and progressive student movements. Does this signal that you have transformed from an armchair theorist into an "action-oriented intellectual" committed to direct social practice? Looking back at this whistleblowing saga, what is your deepest takeaway?

Liu Jiming: If I harbored doubts about whether I had acted mistakenly when the whistleblowing first unfolded, more than two years of relentless retaliation have scrubbed every trace of that doubt away. Today, I am convinced that my actions were not only justified, but necessary. Confronted with corruption and foul deeds, I cannot remain silent as so many choose to do. As Tolstoy declared in I Cannot Be Silent: "I hope that my exposure of these people will somehow lead to what I so desire—my expulsion from the circle of these men, among whom I now live and cannot help feeling myself a participant in the crimes committed around me."

Not long ago, I read an essay on Ji Liu Net analyzing the May Fourth Movement. The author asked: "Who are the heroes capable of awakening the mass spirit of struggle today? How can ordinary people exercise their heroism? Who is a true hero, and who is merely posturing? The whistleblowers and accusers in anti-harassment movements are true heroes—they risk public exposure to uncover sexual assault by those in power and demand justice. The hackers who unearth crucial truths deliberately concealed by the ruling class are true heroes—figures like Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and ZhinaWiki. Those who turn state's evidence against ruling-class crimes are true heroes, like Edward Snowden and John Perkins... In short, any act that exposes the abuses of the powerful against the vulnerable is heroic. The ancients noted: The scholar disrupts laws with text; the knight-errant defies prohibitions with force. While the knight-errant exited the historical stage with the close of the cold-weapon era, the modern intellectual has gained an expansive arena through the internet. Stripping bare the lies and misdeeds of interest groups is not an esoteric cultural movement; it is a civic struggle open to every commoner. Every member and accomplice of these cabals is a legitimate target of public scrutiny. Exposing scandals, examining them, and analyzing their systemic roots is the first step toward social progress—and awakened intellectuals today must begin precisely from this first step..."

Through a turn of events that appeared accidental on the surface, I achieved a definitive break from a literary circle that is decaying and degenerating at breakneck speed. Knowing that I am free from the pervasive entanglements of fame and self-interest inherent to the establishment, and can now write and live freely, brings a deep sense of deliverance. To those who spend their lives scrambling for position within the institutional apparatus, this feeling is entirely incomprehensible.

I have spoken, I have acted, and I have saved my own soul. As for victory or defeat, or how others judge me, that is beyond my concern. Justice may be delayed, but it can never be denied forever.

Progressive Culture: Within contemporary Chinese letters, you are viewed as one of the very few authentic left-wing writers. Some have even labeled you "ultra-left." Do you accept this label?

Liu Jiming: In Western political discourse, "far-left" and "far-right" are neutral descriptors carrying equal formal rights; in contemporary China, however, it is deployed by right-wing public intellectuals to stigmatize the Left. Under China's current political climate, dividing groups strictly along conventional "left" and "right" lines struggles to capture real value orientations. Speaking for myself, while I might have accepted labels like "left-wing" or "leftist" a couple of years ago, through this crucible of struggle I have become a Marxist. Saying this will lead fools to accuse me of being "self-anointed"—especially since claiming "Marxism," much like claiming the "Left" in China’s current discourse, earns no official credit and is instead treated as ideological heresy. To me, this outcome has been an unexpected reward. The Marxism I speak of is neither Western Marxism nor Bernsteinian revisionism dressed in Marxist slogans, but rather what Samir Amin termed "a Marxism of struggle." In my view, the lines from The Internationale—"Free our minds from their prison; we must fight for truth"—remain the living objective for every genuine Marxist.

In that light, I owe a debt of gratitude to Fang Fang, Chen Yingsong, and the interest groups they represent. Their ruthless retaliation could never break me; instead, it propelled me onto the path of "inheriting justice." As I wrote in "The Seventy-Year-Old Educated Youth, or the 'Rhetoric of the People'—Reading Notes on Zhang Chengzhi": "Born in the 1960s, a generation after Zhang Chengzhi, I managed to avoid the cynicism, cowardice, and snobbery so pervasive among my contemporaries. Put differently, I retain the capacity for empathy, anger, and decisive action. This, perhaps, is the enduring legacy bestowed upon me by the great 1960s."

Progressive Culture: After completing your novel Human Realm, you once remarked that you intended to put down your pen for good. Do you still hold that intention today?

Liu Jiming: I did hold that thought at the time. I felt I had completed the most significant work of my life, and that further writing would be redundant. Today, my view has changed entirely. Writing, for me, is no longer merely a vehicle for contemplation; it is a weapon of struggle. As Albert Camus noted, we find ourselves upon "a rising sea"; as long as we live, we must pull the oars alongside everyone else. "It is not a matter of whether we choose to commit ourselves; it is a compulsory military service."

Progressive Culture: In closing, could you share a few words about your current writing projects?

Liu Jiming: I am working on a major novel. Since the latter half of 2019, I have been living and writing in seclusion on an island far away from Wuhan. While I cannot disclose specifics just yet, I can share that its scope far exceeds that of Human Realm. It has proved to be another "unexpected reward" in my journey.

Progressive Culture: We eagerly anticipate the publication of your masterpiece. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us!

By Tai Zuo · September 16, 2026 · Source: Toutiao

In the long river of contemporary Chinese left-wing culture, Wei Wei and Liu Jiming stand out: one a veteran writer who personally experienced the flames of revolution, the other a contemporary writer who transformed amidst the era of the market economy. One founded the print journal Mainstream (Zhongliu) during the high tide of paper media; the other established the website Human Realm (Renjing.net) in the digital age. Across two generations, divided by medium and distinct in circumstance, they shared the exact same cultural mission: when mainstream cultural spaces could no longer accommodate critical voices from the standpoint of the people, they carved out their own cultural redoubts to realize a spiritual breakthrough in their respective times.

I. Wei Wei: A Breakthrough to Defend Ground Amidst the Market Tide

In the 1990s, the surging tide of the market economy swept across society, churning deep currents in ideological and cultural spheres. Neoliberal currents spread, historical nihilism gained traction, and revolutionary narratives were relentlessly dissolved. Having once served in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea and authored Who Are the Most Beloved People?, Wei Wei was keenly attuned to this crisis on the cultural front. Joining forces with Lin Mohan and a cadre of veteran comrades and writers, he founded the journal Mainstream.

The inaugural issue stated its founding mission in unmistakable terms:

"Mainstream will strive, guided by Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought, to deploy diverse forms in researching, exploring, and reflecting new conditions and new dilemmas under the current landscape, with the goal of expanding and consolidating socialist ideological positions, developing and flourishing socialist culture, artistic creation, and cultural endeavors, and advancing the solidarity of the literary and artistic community on the basis of Marxism and the Party's guidelines. It advocates diversity in content and form, encourages exploration and contention, and promotes a style of writing that seeks truth from facts, targets real problems, and remains fresh and vibrant."

The very choice of the name "Mainstream" (Zhongliu, alluding to the rock standing firm amid raging currents) was an act of holding the line. At that time, the traditional system of literary periodicals remained largely intact, yet mass media and the cultural market were tilting ever more decisively toward the logic of capital. The breakthrough of Wei Wei's generation was, at its heart, about defending established ground. Relying on print periodicals, they published literary and historical reviews, critical essays, and reflections to defend revolutionary history, critique the cultural alienation bred by capital logic, and reaffirm the fundamental compass of literature and art serving the people.

The contributors to Mainstream were largely veteran revolutionaries and literati who had braved historical tempests. Their writings carried the sediment of authentic revolutionary memory, driven by the goal of holding fast to a red ideological bastion so that revolutionary ideals would not drown beneath the clamor of marketization.

Print media carries natural constraints: publication approvals are strict, and distribution scope is limited. Ultimately, Mainstream was forced to cease publication. Yet the articles it carried did not vanish; they gradually migrated to early internet platforms to continue circulating. The breakthrough of Wei Wei's generation was about preserving the sparks of ideological fire during an intellectual low tide, leaving a vital spiritual reference for those who followed.

II. Liu Jiming: Exploring Left-Wing Cultural Bastions in the Digital Era

History advanced into the internet era. The literary landscape and media ecology underwent staggering transformations. Liu Jiming was originally an established author within the official system, having written many influential works; he gained wide acclaim in the 1990s with his "cultural concern" fiction, and in the new century transformed from an avant-garde writer toward the grassroots, emerging as a leading figure of New Left literature. Following a 2016 whistleblowing incident and subsequent defamation disputes, he faced persistent suppression and exclusion, making it virtually impossible to speak through mainstream channels. This catalyzed a spiritual breakthrough unique to his generation of left-wing cultural figures.

In succession, he founded Mainstream Papers (Zhongliu Congkan), Left-Wing Literary Review, and Human Realm Net. Guided by the missions of "inheriting red classics, carrying forward revolutionary culture" and "standing firmly with the proletariat, speaking out for the working masses," he established writing workshops that formed a complete closed loop of "intensive reading, creative writing, publication, and debate." These initiatives sought to discover and cultivate red writers, constructing an intergenerational transmission system for left-wing literary forces.

Online media has low dissemination thresholds and can assemble authors and readers across vast geographies—a monumental advantage over print periodicals. However, digital bastions are also far more fragile: transmission is swift, public opinion amplifies rapidly, and platforms remain subject to internet content regulations. Human Realm Net was eventually shut down, bringing an end to this integrated experiment combining "website, periodical, and workshop."

Yet even as the institutional bastion disappeared, the community never completely dispersed. Workshop activities shifted into smaller circles, and writers dispersed across diverse platforms to continue their work. Liu Jiming's breakthrough was a digital-era endeavor: using literature as a bridge to engage younger generations in carrying forward a critical tradition of writing, providing invaluable lessons for left-wing cultural practice in the internet age.

III. Breakthroughs Across Two Generations: Shared Spirit, Divergent Paths

Shared Common Ground

1. Shared Foundational Standpoint: Both adhered to a Marxist standpoint rooted in the people, remained vigilant against capital's encroachment upon the cultural sphere, and maintained that literature and art must address the lives of ordinary working people.

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3. Identical Bastion Consciousness: Both recognized the critical importance of cultural struggle; as public discursive space shrank, both took the initiative to build their own independent platforms and assemble kindred spirits.

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5. Non-Profit, Idealistic Endeavors: Neither Mainstream nor Human Realm Net pursued profit; both were sustained entirely by the intellectual commitment and idealism of their creators.

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Fundamental Distinctions

1. Differing Historical Missions: In Wei Wei's era, the primary struggle was resisting the ideological fallout from the early stages of marketization, with the core task being the defense of revolutionary history and ideals. Liu Jiming faced the internet age, where the priority shifted toward nurturing young creators and bridging the intergenerational rupture in intellectual continuity.

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3. Differing Media Carriers: Wei Wei relied on print journals, which offered stability in circulation but reached a circumscribed audience. Liu Jiming relied on the internet, which enabled rapid dissemination but proved far more fragile and vulnerable to sudden erasure.

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5. Differing Strategic Emphases: Mainstream focused primarily on historical-literary critique and ideological debates; Human Realm Net took literature as its primary point of departure to unfold broader social critiques and cultural deliberations.

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Conclusion

From Wei Wei founding Mainstream to Liu Jiming establishing Human Realm Net, these two generations of writers carried out two historic spiritual breakthroughs. In the print era, Wei Wei stood firm as a rock amid the torrent, preserving the ideals passed down from the revolutionary era; in the internet age, Liu Jiming carved out new ground, seeking young successors to inherit those very ideals.

This intergenerational relay of the ideological flame leaves enduring questions for those who come after: In an ever-shifting digital landscape, in what forms should left-wing literature and thought manifest? Faced with an increasingly constricted discursive space, how can sustainable ground be secured?

Wei Wei and Liu Jiming charted the spiritual breakthroughs of two generations. The road ahead now lies beneath the feet of a new generation.

By Na Wu Na Shi · August 24, 2026 · Source: Human Realm Net

The divergence between Liu Jiming and Lao Tian reflects an enduring contradiction within socialist political theory: How are revolutionary gains to be consolidated? How is mass mobilization to be sustained? The true value of this dialogue lies in making us realize that preserving dialogue and productive tension between differing theoretical frameworks is far more vital than hastily taking sides.

I. The Obscured Premise: Two Divergent Conceptions of the State

Liu Jiming’s essay "Why Did the Cultural Revolution Fail?" and Lao Tian’s response constitute an extraordinarily illuminating theoretical dialogue. On the surface, their disagreement turns on the underlying causes of the Cultural Revolution’s defeat and the concrete pathways for institutionalizing bourgeois rights/proletarian rights (bourgeois right / proletarian legal rights). At a deeper level, however, it exposes a fundamental, previously under-theorized divergence: the two thinkers operate from radically distinct conceptions of the nature of the state.

Liu Jiming’s argument rests upon an explicit premise: China during the decade of the Cultural Revolution was a state under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Consequently, designing institutional structures within that state framework to realize and consolidate proletarian rights was theoretically viable and practically indispensable. He champions institutionalization, arguing for translating episodic mass democratic mobilization into enduring institutional arrangements, and advocates drawing insights from the separation of powers to refine mechanisms that check and balance power within a proletarian state. All of these propositions presuppose a shared assumption: the state itself is not inherently the problem; rather, the state can serve as the legitimate institutional vessel for proletarian rights.

Lao Tian’s critique, by contrast, is anchored in an entirely different conception of the state. He repeatedly stresses that "the administrative state possesses an inherent tendency to oppose popular sovereignty," that an entrenched "filtering mechanism" inside bureaucratic apparatuses ensures that "counterfeits are welcomed over the genuine," and that establishing proletarian rights at the state administrative level is a sheer "illusion." The logic underpinning these assertions is unmistakable: the state apparatus—and the bureaucracy in particular—exerts an institutional inertia wholly autonomous from class will. It instinctively resists mass participation and systematically depoliticizes political struggles into technical administrative problems. Attempting to anchor proletarian rights through the state administrative machinery is therefore tantamount to tasking the institutional carrier of the old order with constructing the new—an insoluble internal contradiction.

This divergence is far from accidental. It reflects a divide in the theoretical resources upon which each author relies: Liu Jiming’s analytical framework aligns closely with classical Marxist state theory—the state is an instrument of class rule; once the proletariat seizes power, the fundamental nature of this instrument changes, enabling it to serve new class imperatives. Lao Tian’s critique, meanwhile, bears the unmistakable imprint of Western Marxism, particularly Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. Here, the state is not merely an apparatus of violence and coercion, but a terrain of cultural and ideological contestation. Ruling-class hegemony is maintained not only through legal and bureaucratic apparatuses, but fundamentally through cultural dominance across "civil society." In this view, even when the declared class character of a regime shifts, the inertia of traditional cultural hegemony and bureaucratic structures can still transform the state apparatus into an engine of resistance against revolutionary change.

II. The Specter of Gramsci: Hegemonic Theory and the Trap of "State Neutralization"

Lao Tian’s core concept—the "construction of hegemony"—is itself intensely Gramscian. Gramsci famously distinguished hegemony from mere domination: domination is exercised through coercion, whereas hegemony is secured through consent—a dynamic wherein the ruling class exercises cultural and ideological leadership, leading the ruled classes to "voluntarily" consent to the existing social order. Authentic revolution, therefore, cannot stop at seizing political power (domination); it demands the painstaking construction of an alternative counter-hegemony within civil society—a process far more protracted and complex than the mere capture of state power.

Lao Tian applies this reasoning directly to the question of proletarian rights: the Sanwan Reorganization (1927) succeeded not because an administrative system was decreed from above, but because the Party representative system was deployed "to identify and activate the most politically conscious advanced elements among the rank-and-file soldiers," "enabling them to serve as organizational cores and combat bastions among the masses." This was precisely the practical enactment of establishing political and cultural hegemony at the grassroots. For Lao Tian, absent this foundational "hegemonic construction," any formal institutional design remains an empty vessel, destined to be neutralized and digested by bureaucratic culture.

Yet while Gramsci’s theory lends analytical depth to Lao Tian's critique, it also leads him into a theoretical trap. When Lao Tian insists that "the administrative state possesses an inherent tendency to oppose popular sovereignty," he effectively treats the state apparatus—specifically the bureaucracy—as an autonomous, self-perpetuating force that transcends class determinations. Logically, this slides toward a position of "state neutralization"—framing the state as if it were merely a neutral arena contested by diverse social forces, rather than an instrument of class rule.

This tendency toward "state neutralization" stands in direct contradiction to Lao Tian’s own left-wing commitments. If the state machinery is autonomous and neutral, what is the revolutionary significance of the proletariat seizing power? If the inertia of bureaucratic institutions is so insurmountable that any state-level institutionalization is doomed from the start, how are we to understand the Paris Commune’s foundational heritage of "smashing the ready-made state machinery"? Marx and Engels defined the state as the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, and "the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests." The state is never class-neutral; it is determined by class power.

Crucially, "state neutralization" logically dissolves the qualitative distinction between a socialist state under the dictatorship of the proletariat and a bourgeois state. If all state machines harbor an "inherent tendency to oppose popular sovereignty," the distinction between a proletarian dictatorship and a bourgeois dictatorship collapses into a matter of degree rather than essence. This not only departs from Marxist state theory, but also risks fatalistic political conclusions: if state-level administrative institutionalization is deemed an impossibility, all transformative politics must retreat into localized grassroots pockets, denying the necessity and feasibility of building proletarian rights at the level of the socialist state.

III. Liu Jiming’s Conception of the State and Its Unfinished Dimensions

By contrast, although Liu Jiming does not fully elaborate his state theory in the text, his underlying premise adheres closely to classical Marxist state theory. When he speaks of institutionalization "under the premise of a state under the dictatorship of the proletariat," he acknowledges a decisive shift: once the proletariat commands state power, the state machinery ceases to function purely as an instrument of class repression; it must also serve as the institutional vehicle through which the proletariat realizes its own emancipation.

Proceeding from this premise, Liu Jiming’s conception of "institutionalization" acquires clear direction. It is not an attempt to graft decorative democratic procedures onto a hostile, bureaucratic machine. Rather, it represents the transformation of episodic mass democratic mobilizations into enduring institutional forms within a socialist state whose class character has fundamentally changed. If practices like "speaking out freely, airing views fully, writing big-character posters, and holding great debates" (daming, dafang, dazibao, dabianlun) exist solely as mass political campaigns, their survival hinges entirely on specific political climates and the personal charisma of revolutionary leaders. But if they can be codified into normalized institutional mechanisms for "the selection, recall, and supervision of cadres," they acquire enduring vitality beyond any single historical moment.

This orientation aligns organically with the principles of the Paris Commune. The historic achievement of the Commune lay not merely in establishing proletarian power, but in creating durable institutional forms—popularly elected delegates subject to immediate recall, and public officials receiving ordinary workers' wages. These innovations regularized and institutionalized mass participation. As Marx observed, the Commune was "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor"—not a one-off mobilization, but a sustainable institutional architecture.

When Liu Jiming refers to the "scientific character" of the bourgeois separation of powers, this is his underlying intent: he is not proposing an uncritical imitation of capitalist checks and balances, but pointing to a universal principle of political science—namely, that any power architecture intended to operate with long-term stability requires institutionalized oversight mechanisms. Rather than evading this question, a socialist state must confront it, pioneering democratic institutional forms that are more thorough and genuine than those of capitalism.

Nevertheless, an unresolved question remains in Liu Jiming’s formulation: What specific level of institutionalization is being proposed? Does it refer to constitutional state-structure arrangements, or procedural administrative rules? Does it mean institutionalizing inner-Party democracy, or institutionalizing broader national political life? And how do these distinct tiers interface with one another? Without clarifying these concrete dimensions, "institutionalization" remains an overly broad concept. Yet generality should not be mistaken for error—it simply marks a theoretical frontier awaiting further thought and practice.

IV. The Misapplication of "Hegemony": Returning from Gramsci to Marxism

Lao Tian’s deployment of Gramsci’s concept of "hegemony" to dissect proletarian rights provides undeniable analytical utility. It serves as a necessary reminder that the vitality of any institution resides in the conscious human subjects who practice it; absent politically conscious cadres and organized grassroots cores, any formal institution risks degenerating into empty formalism.

Yet when the concept of "hegemony" is marshaled to argue that "institutionalization at the state level is impossible," the concept is pushed beyond its legitimate bounds. Gramsci himself never dismissed the imperative of state-level institutional construction. His point was that state-level measures alone are insufficient without establishing cultural and moral hegemony across civil society. These two dimensions are not mutually exclusive; they are dialectically complementary. Gramsci’s famous distinction between the "war of movement" and the "war of position" demonstrates that socialist transformation must advance simultaneously at the state level (the war of movement: capturing power) and within civil society (the war of position: establishing hegemony).

By setting "political hegemony" (mass mobilization, ideological awakening) in absolute opposition to "administrative institutionalization" (rule design, procedural arrangements), Lao Tian misconstrues the full scope of hegemony. Genuine hegemonic construction requires both cultivating conscious revolutionary cadres among the masses and codifying the democratic practices forged by those cadres into durable institutions. The enduring vitality of the Sanwan Reorganization lay not only in awakening the political consciousness of soldiers at that specific moment, but in preserving institutional innovations—such as the Party representative system and the Soldiers' Committees—which became the institutional DNA of the People's Liberation Army. Lao Tian leaves a crucial question unanswered: If proletarian rights can develop only through localized, grassroots mass struggles, how can grassroots experience transcend local limitations in a continental-scale state to become a systemic, nationwide institutional reality?

V. Returning to Historical Complexity

This dialogue ultimately points to a fundamental question of historical evaluation. Toward the end of his critique, Lao Tian writes: "The reason the Cultural Revolution had to mobilize the masses from the bottom up to expose the dark side, rather than accomplishing this through state administrative design or personnel selection, is precisely where this gulf lies." This formulation recognizes an essential historical truth: the Cultural Revolution embraced bottom-up mass mobilization precisely because institutional reform encountered fierce resistance within the state apparatus—the bureaucratic "filtering mechanism" made it exceptionally difficult for genuine proletarian revolutionaries to sustain ground inside the state machinery.

Yet acknowledging this structural resistance is not equivalent to abandoning state-level institutional efforts. On the contrary, precisely because that resistance exists, we must confront the critical challenge: How do we advance state-level institutionalization while fully recognizing the structural inertia of the administrative machinery? How do we preserve the dynamic vitality of mass mobilization while elevating grassroots breakthroughs—such as the Sanwan Reorganization—into nationwide institutional frameworks that command systemic authority?

Liu Jiming does not offer a complete programmatic answer, but he poses the essential question. Lao Tian illuminates the profound complexity of the dilemma, yet his "state pessimism" risks leading to paralyzing political conclusions—especially if institutionalization at the state level is dismissed from the outset as mere "illusion."

Here lies the most profound takeaway of this exchange: the construction of proletarian rights and hegemony must not be framed as an exclusionary choice between mass mobilization and state institutionalization. It requires a dialectical perspective—one that grasps both the class character of the state apparatus and the necessity of institutional construction, while remaining fully cognizant of bureaucratic inertia and the protracted nature of hegemonic struggles; one that maintains the resolve to advance institutional transformations at the state level, while continually nourishing the grassroots political agency of the masses.

The divergence between Liu Jiming and Lao Tian reflects an enduring contradiction within socialist political theory: How are revolutionary gains to be consolidated? How is mass mobilization to be sustained? The true value of this dialogue lies in making us realize that preserving dialogue and productive tension between differing theoretical frameworks is far more vital than hastily taking sides. The sheer complexity of history has never been contained within any single theoretical mold.

Blazing a Trail for "New People's Literature and Art": A Review of Vocal Album of Liu Jiming’s Lyric Works

By Yan Hen · July 14, 2026 · Source: Worker Poetry WeChat Official Account

The posture of "standing upright," rooted in the conviction of "standing with the overwhelming majority of the laboring people," offers the most unvarnished definition of the "New People’s Literature and Art." The twenty songs collected across the Vocal Album of Liu Jiming’s Lyric Works serve as an authentic chorus of this "standing" posture. They blaze an initial path forward—a trail that ultimately demands more companions to travel together.

Original Editor's Note: A reader submission. The core topic holds profound weight, though the prose style could adopt an even simpler register. The officially sponsored "New Mass Literature and Art" undoubtedly advances a depoliticized agenda of social "governance." Liu Jiming, by contrast, seeks to return to a class-conscious trajectory through the "New People's Literature and Art." Historically, terms like "the masses" and "the people" once functioned as progressive rhetoric oriented toward an egalitarian society. Later, just as the "Fourth Estate" (the working class) rose from beneath the Third Estate of the French Revolution... the working-class struggle for its own material interests demanded a far more rigorous class vocabulary. While we may broadly deploy terms like "the masses" or "the people" on occasion, it is the "working class"—and ultimately the "working masses"—that embodies our most precise language.

The lyrics gathered in the Vocal Album of Liu Jiming’s Lyric Works reflect both admirable conviction and remarkable literary depth. The sole regret lies in the reality that both melodic composition and vocal performance rely entirely on artificial intelligence; as of today, AI still faces distinct aesthetic boundaries in artistic creation, with Chinese-language AI musical production lagging far behind its English counterparts. Should real human collaborators join in, these works could scale even greater heights.

On May 20, 2026, the prominent author Liu Jiming delivered a lecture at Shanghai University titled "The Possibility of 'New Mass Literature and Art' and 'New People's Literature and Art'". During his address, he posed a fundamental interrogation: Against a backdrop where "New Mass Literature and Art" has been codified into the government work report and elevated to a national cultural strategy, how can a substantive transition from "New Mass Literature and Art" toward "New People's Literature and Art" truly become possible?

This is no frivolous wordplay, but an interrogation striking directly at the nature of contemporary culture. While official channels define "New Mass Literature and Art" as "a profound transformation underpinned by new media technologies and changing social structures"—applauded as having realized a paradigm shift from "writing for the masses" to "written by the masses and shared by all"—Liu Jiming discerned a deep crisis beneath this façade of prosperity. Within capitalist relations of production, "the masses" exist fundamentally as consuming subjects, dictated and shaped by market imperatives and ideological control, manifesting a clear condition of "depoliticized politics."

Shortly thereafter, songs featuring lyrics penned by Liu Jiming began circulating across the web, compiled into the two-part album Singing and Weeping for the People. The twenty songs constitute an authentic aesthetic realization of Liu Jiming’s vision for the "New People’s Literature and Art." Taking his Shanghai University lecture as a theoretical anchor, this essay explores how this lyric album blazes a pioneering path for "New People's Literature and Art."

1

The sharpest theoretical edge of Liu Jiming’s Shanghai address lies in his rigorous demarcation between "the masses" (dazhong) and "the people" (renmin). As he stated plainly:

"Unlike 'the masses,' 'the people' is an inherently political concept charged with distinct ideological orientation. Workers, peasants, and the lower petty bourgeoisie occupy its core, operating as the historical subjects driving society forward. Socialist literature and art demand standing firmly with the overwhelming majority of the people, mirroring real-life conditions alongside the hardships and cries of the laboring masses."

This distinction cuts straight to the blind spot of mainstream "New Mass Literature and Art" rhetoric. Contemporary narratives celebrate technological empowerment, universal creativity, and collective sharing: tens of millions of daily short-video updates, food-delivery couriers publishing verse anthologies, and sanitarians drafting non-fiction memoirs. On the surface, this offers a moving tableau of cultural democratization. Yet Liu Jiming asks: As barriers to entry vanish and cultural producers expand without limit, does the substantive "people's character" (renminxing) of art risk being diluted into an empty, statistical "mass character" (dazhongxing)?

"The masses" are consumer subjects shaped by market logic; "the people" constitute a class subject endowed with historical consciousness and political agency. The former answers to algorithms and traffic metrics; the latter anchors itself in a class standpoint. The former settles for subjective catharsis; the latter strives toward collective liberation. While "New Mass Literature and Art" may achieve the outward form of being "written by the masses and shared by all," it fails to guarantee the material reality of "created by the people, shared by the people."

Herein lies the structural significance of Liu Jiming’s lyric album beyond individual creative output. The song The People offers an uncompromising response to this conceptual debate:

Who are the people? Who is remembered, only to be cast into oblivion?

Whose names are buried deep in the mud, whose carved upon the pyramid’s peak?

Jack Ma and I do not belong to the same people:

His people are chives for harvest; my people are drops of sweat.

"Jack Ma and I do not belong to the same people"—this declaration provides a visceral, musical formulation of the divide between "the masses" and "the people." Jack Ma embodies the personification of capital, while "chives" represent the commodified reification of the masses under market logic; "sweat," by contrast, stands as the corporeal imprint of the laboring class—the material foundation of "the people." The verse refuses to assimilate capitalist titans into the category of "the people," rejecting the false consensus of a depoliticized social body.

Ballad of Cattle and Horses responds in kind to Liu Jiming’s critique of the consumerist trap. In the line "They say we are cattle and horses / so we become cattle and horses", where does this authoritative "saying" derive from? It stems directly from the disciplinary apparatus of capitalist discourse over the working class. Yet the lines "Cattle and horses are not born that way / they are broken and tamed / cattle and horses are not born mute / they are frightened into silence" lay bare the subjective awakening from "being spoken for" to "speaking for oneself"—the vital awakening from "masses" to "people."

The defining mark of the "New People's Literature and Art" is its grounding of aesthetic experience in the materiality of the class body. "Class" is no bloodless abstraction; it is lived physical reality—calloused palms, aching cervical vertebrae, leaking breast milk, shattered bones, and foreheads veiled in coal dust. The recurrent motifs of physical agony across Liu Jiming’s lyrics function not as sentimental tropes, but as cognitive instruments: through concrete bodily experience, the macro-concept of "class" transforms into an immediate, emotionally charged reality.

Worker Brothers in the Mining Disaster serves as a classic embodiment of this class-body writing. Taking a mining catastrophe as its lens, the collective destiny of the working class crystallizes into raw corporeal imagery:

Darkness creeps beneath the earth,

Falling rock shatters time.

Your palm still bears a trace of warmth,

I hear the final drift of smoke.

"Your palm still bears a trace of warmth"—the verb "bears" (ke, etched/engraved) evokes the indelible seal labor leaves upon the body, while "warmth" marks the final fading vital sign of human life. The miner’s palm is both an organ of labor and the final threshold between life and death. In "I hear the final drift of smoke", smoke—ordinarily a visual phenomenon—is "heard"; this synesthetic choice conveys an experience beyond ordinary senses: in absolute subterranean darkness, hearing replaces sight, turning "the final smoke" into the acoustic imprint of a dying life.

The headlamp cannot light the passage home,

Breath snaps within the fissure.

Mother stands waiting at the pithead,

For a goodnight left unsaid.

"Breath snaps within the fissure"—respiration is the most fundamental bodily rhythm of existence, while the "fissure" spans both geological fracture and the chasm between life and death. "Mother stands waiting at the pithead / for a goodnight left unsaid" uses tender, everyday domestic language to capture death's violent interruption of life. The mother’s posture—"standing"—is a state of agonizing suspension: suspended between awaiting a return and dreading the worst, an uncertainty that is itself a form of torture.

Your name is so light,

Yet it crushes an entire mountain.

When the shift foreman calls the roll,

One man is forever missing.

That uneaten meal of dumplings

Still rests inside the tin.

"Your name is so light / yet it crushes an entire mountain" sets up a stark paradox: in capital's ledgers, miners weigh lighter than a feather; in the memory of kin, they weigh heavier than Mount Tai. The daily routine of roll call contrasted with the void of "forever missing," alongside the material detail of the "uneaten dumplings," anchors mortality in the abrupt rupture of everyday life—the dumplings remain in the tin, but the person is gone. This writing rejects sentimental aestheticization or heroization, relying on direct realism (baimiao) to let the brutality of death stand bare.

Significantly, from mourning, the song pivots into militant class mobilization:

Brothers, oh my worker brothers,

In this life we cannot live as cattle and horses!

We must become the masters of the world,

Unite together for tomorrow!

Brothers, oh my worker brothers,

The road across the human realm is steep and rough,

The Internationale

Must surely be realized!

This leap from lamentation to mobilization distinguishes the "New People's Literature and Art" from mass culture's consumption of private suffering: it refuses to dwell in misery, choosing instead to nurture class consciousness and active political will out of grief.

"In this life we cannot live as cattle and horses" dialogues directly with Ballad of Cattle and Horses, yet carries a grimmer weight: it serves as an indictment of the miner’s existential condition—if living means existing merely as beast of burden, mortality becomes the ultimate charge against such inhumanity. Closing with "The Internationale must surely be realized" lifts individual tragedy into the historical horizon of worldwide proletarian liberation, endowing an elegy with transcendent political scope.

While Worker Brothers in the Mining Disaster moves through collective grief and militant mobilization born at the scene of disaster, Why Are My Eyes Often Filled with Tears: To My Class Brothers articulates an introspective, lyrical class solidarity. Borrowing its title from Ai Qing’s famous line in I Love This Land ("Why are my eyes often filled with tears? Because I love this land so deeply"), Liu Jiming substitutes Ai Qing’s "land" with "class brothers," completing an affective pivot from nationalist lyricism to class solidarity. Ai Qing wept out of love for the land; Liu Jiming weeps out of aching empathy for his class kin.

The plow and harrow wear thin the coarse homespun,

The mining pit swallows youth whole.

Bearing wind and frost together, sharing common hunger,

Roots anchored in the earth, never to part.

"The plow and harrow wear thin the coarse homespun" depicts the physical wear of peasant bodies; "the mining pit swallows youth whole" laments the consumption of miners' lives. Juxtaposing these images binds agrarian labor and industrial toil into a unified class lineage, where the repeated "together" acts as an emotional affirmation of class solidarity. In "roots anchored in the earth, never to part," the root symbolizes both the peasant's tie to the land and the flesh-and-blood bonds between class comrades.

The chorus answers the title directly:

Why are my eyes often filled with tears?

For class brothers fighting side by side to survive.

Sharing bitter cold, defending justice together,

Bound by blood, through life and death.

Why are my eyes often filled with tears?

For class brothers upon this land of suffering.

Clenching our fists to greet the morning light,

A wholehearted resolve, unswerving unto death.

"Fighting side by side to survive" (bingjian qiusheng) diagnoses the working-class condition—not "entrepreneurial hustle," not "career building," but sheer survival. It names an existential reality: beneath capital's pressure, every working day is an effort to secure bare life. The corporeal gesture of "clenching our fists" echoes the line "gripping the wrench tight" in Ballad of Cattle and Horses—fists and wrenches are material markers of class bodies at the moment of political awakening. "Unswerving unto death" grants this class bond an endurance transcending the individual lifecycle.

The second stanza broadens the spatial scope of this identity:

We drink from the same muddy river,

We tread upon the same barren soil.

North and south, east and west,

Proletarians are fundamentally one.

Tears are no feeble sigh,

They are deep heartache for one another,

An unquenched fire within the chest,

To carve out an egalitarian world.

"Drinking from the same muddy river / treading upon the same barren soil"—muddy waters and barren soil are not romanticized pastoral tropes, but the shared material terrain of labor. "North and south, east and west / proletarians are fundamentally one" echoes the internationalist horizon of The New Internationale, yet speaks in a warmer, more visceral register. In "tears are no feeble sigh / they are deep heartache for one another / an unquenched fire within the chest," tears undergo a class reinterpretation: they are no marker of passivity, but a synthesis of aching empathy and incandescent rage, the twin pillars of working-class affective life.

Juxtaposing these two songs reveals twin dimensions in Liu Jiming’s writing of the class body: Worker Brothers in the Mining Disaster is narrative-driven, moving from disaster to collective mourning and political mobilization; Why Are My Eyes Often Filled with Tears is lyrical and contemplative, taking tears as a somatic motif that travels from personal vulnerability to collective solidarity. The former directs its gaze outward toward systemic reality and political action; the latter turns inward toward the formation of the political subject. Operating in tandem, they compose a comprehensive map of class embodiment for the "New People's Literature and Art."

2

The opening section of Liu Jiming’s Shanghai University lecture systematically surveyed three historical stages of modern China's people's cultural tradition: the left-wing literature and cultural popularization movements of the 1930s, the Yan'an cultural tradition, and the socialist literature of workers, peasants, and soldiers from the 1950s through the 1970s. He underscored that "New Mass Literature and Art" cannot be understood as an isolated byproduct of new technologies, but must be situated within this century-long tradition.

This historical framework provides an essential reference point for analyzing Liu’s lyrics. Many songs derive their aesthetic power precisely from an ongoing dialogue with this lineage.

The New Internationale revitalizes the heritage of The Internationale. Retaining the transliterated term Yingtènàxióngnài'ěr, its spatial imagination—"From Detroit to Dongguan / assembly lines stretch into an alliance"—translates the classic battle cry "Workers of the world, unite!" into the realities of 21st-century global capitalism. While honoring the traditional left-wing mandate of depicting the plight of the insulted and injured, it expands the geographic horizon from the nation-state to the global system.

Not a Single One Shall Be Pardoned pays direct homage to the militant left-wing ethos personified by Lu Xun. The lines "Let them resent me / I shall not pardon a single one" reclaim Lu Xun’s uncompromising posture, while "The hypocrisy of the intellectual class / the running dogs of capital / the braids of the Qing Dynasty were severed / yet the braids in their hearts remain untouched" sustains Lu Xun’s critique of liberal hypocrisy and servility. Emerging alongside the 90th anniversary of Lu Xun's passing and the 90th anniversary of the dissolution of the League of Left-Wing Writers, the historical resonance of this piece carries particular weight.

I Am an Old Gun of the Post-Revolutionary Era (adapted from the preface to the English edition of Black and White) adopts the form of family history: "Great-grandfather’s petition yellowed in the Republican rain / Grandfather’s pipe snuffed out its final ember / Uncle’s New Fourth Army uniform hung from the old rafters / The steelyard of Land Reform weighed rice alongside historical vicissitudes." These material objects delineate a family genealogy while serving as physical vessels of the people’s cultural tradition from the Republican era into the socialist epoch.

Importantly, Liu Jiming did not propose an uncritical, nostalgic retreat into the past during his lecture. He acknowledged that cultural forms inevitably mutate alongside changing times; the imperative is to defend the foundational "people's standpoint" rather than woodenly replicate outdated models. This dialectical stance shapes his lyrics: honoring tradition without mechanical mimicry, and taking up the historic mandate through contemporary forms.

The sharpest critical edge of Liu's Shanghai address targeted the structural impasses of "New Mass Literature and Art." Analyzing grassroots writing by ordinary citizens (sùrén xiězuò), he observed that as these works are co-opted by the mainstream, "their subversive edge and critical power steadily wither away, resulting in a condition marked by absent values, vacated class consciousness, and muted systemic critique." They are remodeled into heartwarming "inspirational tales of perseverance," wherein working-class writers "ascend from the grassroots into the middle class," held up as textbook paradigms of proletarians morphing into petty bourgeois success stories through solitary striving.

This diagnosis strikes at the core infirmity of contemporary mass entertainment. Liu Jiming’s album offers an alternative path for "New People's Literature and Art" by systematically refusing this pacifying, inspirational packaging.

A-Ying offers a clear paradigm. Adapted from his 2018 narrative poem The Nursing Factory Woman, the text adopts the detached precision of documentary film. A-Ying simply "sought an explanation for a coworker’s severed hand," only to be hauled from the workshop floor into an interrogation room. Physical details—"milk seeped out / staining the front of her shirt"—refuse sentimental embellishment. The concluding lines—"A-Ying’s breasts ached and swelled once more / her child / nowhere to be found"—offer no dramatic reversals and no heroic salvation, leaving behind only unresolved bodily pain. By refusing cheap catharsis, this writing actively resists the clichéd tropes of individualist uplift.

How Far Is the Way Home similarly breaks with the narrative framework of personal meritocracy. "The doctor said to vacate the bed if funds ran dry / the police rolled down the car window, looking away"—injured working-class subjects are simultaneously abandoned by both healthcare and regulatory systems. "I remember the Monkey King quenching the Flaming Mountains with a fan / yet who will shoulder my agony?" The gulf between mythological resolution and worldly abandonment remains unbridgeable. This unyielding indignation directly counters contemporary culture's retreat into political neutrality.

Folk and Kin: To My Empty Village expands its critique from individual plight to collective historical destiny. "During the days of collectivization / we ate from a single common pot / now there are pots in abundance / yet each eats alone / the food growing cold." Interrogating "at which step / did we take the wrong turn", the song rejects the administrative tendency to reduce structural social crises into mere technical economic matters, laboring instead to recover a grasp of societal contradictions as a structural totality.

3

While Liu Jiming did not devote an isolated section of his lecture to formal questions, his three pathways for constructing a "New People's Literature and Art"—rebuilding a class standpoint, awakening class consciousness, and recovering systemic critique—provide the theoretical architecture for interpreting his aesthetic choices.

Song of the Online Left captures the lived condition of contemporary progressive youth through an interplay of irony and lucid awareness: "At two in the morning I am still reading the Manifesto / every word striking like a hammer / against my knuckle joints"—intellectual study is translated into raw somatic sensation. "At daybreak I close every window / walking toward my cubicle / as if advancing toward a combat trench." Cyberspace and material reality are not disconnected realms, but two sides of the same coin. Juxtaposing political economy concepts ("surplus value formulas," "dialectics") with mundane daily details ("assembly line screws," "workshop fluorescent lights") domesticates revolutionary discourse into everyday life while politicizing the mundane—embodying how class consciousness is awakened through form.

Drinking Tea employs restrained metaphorical narrative to address realities that cannot be spoken plainly. The mundane act of "drinking tea" transforms into an emblem of institutional discipline: "Drink it down, it is the rule / spit it out, it is the past" and "Swallowed down, it is tea / spewed forth, it is boiling magma." The closing line, "like that unfinished word / forever / impossible to swallow," elevates the piece into an existential register. This strategy of speaking through structured silence constitutes a necessary method for "New People's Literature and Art" within contemporary constraints.

Ballad of Lying Flat introduces a male-female duet to explore the gendered facets of "lying flat" (tangping): men confront predatory workplace cultures; women face the commodification of homes and cars within the marriage market. "Back then they sang: / My home is upon the Songhua River; / Today we sing: / My dream hangs far above housing prices." Juxtaposing phrases from wartime resistance ballads against contemporary housing dilemmas produces biting historical irony. The declaration "Lying flat / is no surrender / it is our final trench; / Lying flat / is not laziness / it is a protest against absurdity" reinterprets a seemingly passive choice as an act of resistance against an irrational order, demonstrating how everyday acts can be reclaimed politically.

Lament for Qu Yuan holds a singular position across the album, operating both as an elegy for historical tragedy and as an elaboration of the affective architecture of "New People's Literature and Art."

Generation after generation of King Huai, generation after generation of Jin Shang,

Generation after generation of upright souls driven from the royal court.

Your tragedy has played out for two thousand three hundred years;

The stage has shifted, yet the lines remain unchanged.

These lines elevate Qu Yuan’s suffering from a personal misadventure into an enduring historical-structural tragedy. Yet the song refuses to surrender to historical pessimism:

You questioned Heaven, yet Heaven stayed silent;

This mortal world is scarcely worth it,

Yet you still could not bear to let it go.

"Could not bear to let it go" (shebude) forms the emotional bedrock that separates the "New People's Literature and Art" from nihilism. Even after acknowledging the cruelty of historical cycles, the poet still cannot bear to abandon this world, nor forsake the laboring people who continue to endure hardship. The refusal to let go in Lament for Qu Yuan dialogues with the refusal to forget ("we still remember") in Not a Single One Shall Be Pardoned: the former provides the affective impulse that refuses abandonment; the latter forms the ethical choice that rejects amnesia. Together they articulate the logic of "singing and weeping" (gēkū) as method: "singing" is song born of deep devotion; "weeping" is grief for human suffering. United, singing and weeping constitute the way "New People's Literature and Art" preserves its existence during historical low tides.

That Year, I Was Thirteen: Written for the 50th Anniversary of Mao Zedong’s Passing deploys the framework of personal coming-of-age to map how class consciousness takes root. It represents both Liu Jiming’s memory of a revolutionary leader and an oath to stand with the oppressed. Spanning the naive comprehension of youth to the mature realizations forged after "walking through factories / walking through villages / walking through historical transformations," the text marks the path from reciting revolutionary verse to understanding its class stakes. The line "Not because you stood upon the highest mountain / but because you bent low / to clasp the hands of workers and peasants" mirrors the refusal to abandon the world in Lament for Qu Yuan and the definition of the sweat-stained people in The People: a consistent ethic of solidarity with the vulnerable.

4

In his Shanghai lecture, Liu Jiming offered no rigid, prescriptive blueprint for the "New People's Literature and Art." Instead, he issued an open-ended proposition: "A new era inevitably produces a new mass public; a new mass public inevitably demands a new literature and art; and this new mass literature and art must fundamentally become a new literature and art of the people."

His lyric album serves as a concrete working model of this practice. Within a cultural environment where "the people" has often been hollowed into an empty signifier and class language actively marginalized, these songs retrieve forgotten questions through melody: Who are the people? Who sings for whom? Whose voices are heard, and whose are abandoned at the bottom of the well?

Across the collection, Black Is Black, White Is White functions as an ethical anchor through its austere diction and resolute value judgments.

The opening verses deploy antithetical imagery to delineate an inverted world:

Residual kiln fires cool, fading yesterday’s generosity;

Banquets in gilded halls weave cords of wealth and fame.

How many original aspirations are bought and sold for a price?

How much wholehearted devotion is buried beneath worldly dust?

"Residual kiln fires" evokes the dying embers of past ideals, while "banquets in gilded halls" sketches the pleasures born of power-capital collusion. In "Original aspirations bought and sold / wholehearted devotion buried beneath worldly dust", the spirit of the post-revolutionary era is laid bare: values once held sacred are given price tags, and revolutionary ardor is buried by commercial imperatives. The lines "Tattered scrolls lie open / the interrogations of time / a single written plea / unheeded by all" capture historical remnants and present struggles left hanging in silence.

Amidst this world where "turbulent waves invert black and white," the chorus delivers its value judgment:

Black is black, no mud can wash it clean;

White is white, pure frost unsullied by dust.

Let vanity weave its thousandfold maze,

Not an inch of moral spine shall ever bend.

Black is black, deceit will show its form;

White is white, original resolve ever anew.

"Black is black / white is white"—this seemingly simple declaration carries startling force in an age steeped in moral relativism. When principled distinctions are dissolved into discursive constructs and truth is reduced to subjective perspective, reasserting the divide between black and white reclaims the ground of critique. The contrast between mud and pure frost represents an ontological distinction rather than a semantic quibble. The metric balance of "not an inch of moral spine shall ever bend" emphasizes an uncompromising posture where even the slightest capitulation compromises integrity.

The second stanza broadens the tension between integrity and sycophancy:

Blast furnaces stand dormant, yesterday’s passion quieted;

Beneath the lamp by cold windows, ideals take root.

Some chase shortcuts to currying favor with power;

Others stand upright, braving the dust and wind.

"Blast furnaces stand dormant" evokes the collective labor of the industrial era, while "the lamp by cold windows" marks the solitary persistence of the intellectual. Even after factories go quiet, individuals remain beneath cold windowpanes letting ideals take root—holding fast during historical ebbs. The contrast between "chasing shortcuts" and "standing upright" sets up opposed physical orientations: the former a servile crouch, the latter an upright stance facing the elements. In "Humble dwellings preserve / burning conviction; / Faint outcries / keep watch for truth", the modest room stands against the banquet hall, its spiritual conviction transcending material privation.

The song concludes by lifting personal persistence into historical testimony:

A century-long road writes testimony for time,

Unquenched sparks advance toward the dawn.

...

A single banquet conceals ten thousand threads of power;

All manifold luxuries return to dust.

Good and evil find proof in the passage of years;

Right and wrong brook no blurring.

The "century-long road" situates individual moral choices within an expansive historical horizon: "testimony for time" affirms that while present commitments may go unacknowledged, they will claim their rightful place in the historical ledger. "Unquenched sparks" echoes the anxiety in That Year, I Was Thirteen ("fearful that the sparks you left behind / might die out") and the pledge in Not a Single One Shall Be Pardoned ("we still remember"). Sustaining the flame relies not on tempestuous winds, but on individuals tending the hearth with unbroken moral courage.

Within the architecture of the album, Black Is Black, White Is White provides the ethical foundation for social critique. If black and white can be conflated, and good and evil dissolved into subjective outlooks, the denunciation of class oppression in The People, the indictment of injustice in A-Ying, and the critique of capital in Ballad of Cattle and Horses lose their analytical footing. This song serves not as a direct attack on immediate reality, but as a reinforcement of the normative bedrock that makes critique possible: answering why, amidst moral disorientation, we can affirm that certain conditions are fundamentally wrong.

If Black Is Black, White Is White offers unbending fortitude, Destination (Guichu, theme song for the film adaptation of Human Realm) provides quiet spiritual solace. One resolute and outward-looking, the other gentle and contemplative, they form two complementary poles of "New People's Literature and Art": ethical judgment and spiritual homecoming.

Destination contrasts with the militant tone of the broader collection, returning to an understated aesthetic reminiscent of classical verse:

The sound of river waters overflows the path by which we came;

Whose footsteps linger in the midst of wind and rain?

That year's diary, written in hasty strokes,

Recorded an unfinished history.

The "sound of river waters" acts as a metaphor for time and a geographic marker (the Yangtze River). "The path by which we came" and "footsteps in wind and rain" establish a retrospective perspective—looking back along the trail rather than charging headlong. "That year's diary, written in hasty strokes" marks the material survival of personal memory, while the "unfinished history" speaks to unresolved missions. This state of incompletion aligns with the pledge to "keep walking"—pressing onward within an ongoing historical trajectory.

Sunlight and shadow upon the muddy road,

Someone looks up to count the stars.

Who buried the seeds into the earth,

Yet held the torch above the rolling hills?

The "muddy road" captures the hardships of grassroots life, while "counting stars" symbolizes the search for light amid adversity. "Burying seeds into the earth" and "holding the torch above the rolling hills" work in balanced tension: seeds root downward while flame illuminates upward, both marking perseverance in the dark. The "seeds" dialogue with the line "the seeds you sowed" in That Year, I Was Thirteen, while the "torch" harmonizes with the motifs of enduring sparks in Lament for Qu Yuan and Black Is Black, White Is White.

The chorus expands personal fortune into a broader life horizon:

How many ebbs and flows across the mortal realm?

Who sowed hope into the soil?

Through the long night, holding fast to the dream in hand,

Awaiting redemption like spring rain reviving life.

"Holding fast to the dream in hand" joins a constellation of gripping physical motifs across the album: "gripping the wrench tight" in Ballad of Cattle and Horses and "clenching our fists" in Why Are My Eyes Often Filled with Tears. Yet while the clenched fist in Ballad of Cattle and Horses heralds resistance, holding fast in Destination signifies enduring patience. This tension captures the double register of "singing and weeping": gripping tools to transform reality, while holding fast to ideals through waiting.

Black and white entwine across the human realm;

Pain itself bears witness to time.

Regardless of triumph or defeat, walking against the tide,

Only because, where lantern lights grow dim, someone sings and weeps.

"Black and white entwine" returns to the core dilemma: within chaotic ambiguity, the clarity of Black Is Black, White Is White remains vital. In "pain itself bears witness to time," personal suffering transforms into historical testimony. "Regardless of triumph or defeat, walking against the tide" rejects utilitarian calculations, embracing solitary perseverance outside the mainstream current. "Where lantern lights grow dim, someone sings and weeps" states the album’s overarching motif: the dimming light marks the marginalized space of the forgotten, while singing and weeping embodies the refusal to fall silent.

Raging waves, a solitary skiff;

Spine of iron, silence is an outcry.

At the crossroad tangled with thorns,

Original aspiration is the sole North Star.

The "solitary skiff" amidst "raging waves" reflects the precarious position of "New People's Literature and Art"—vulnerable and isolated, yet refusing to abandon its voyage. In "silence is an outcry," quietness—often mistaken for passivity—is reasserted as resistance. This echoes the imagery of swallowed truth in Drinking Tea: under constrained conditions, silence itself operates as dissent. "Original aspiration is the sole North Star" anchors navigation through ideological confusion.

The song concludes by returning to the river imagery, completing an organic circle:

Looking back along the rugged path we traveled,

The green hills filling the gaze are home.

The river waters flow east as ever;

The traveler upon the bank has turned gray.

"The green hills filling the gaze are home" provides the song's philosophical resolution. The "green hills" signify both physical landscape and an uncommodified spiritual sanctuary. "Home" (guichu) is no mere geographic origin, but a spiritual harbor: having traveled the rugged path, finding green hills upon looking back constitutes arriving home. While individual aging contrasts with the eternal eastward flow of the river, the enduring waters suggest an overarching continuity—the history of class struggles, unfinished dreams, and the river formed by footsteps pressing forward.

Viewed together, Black Is Black, White Is White and Destination reveal a coherent architecture: the former addresses how to judge—holding to core distinctions in a compromised world; the latter addresses where to find peace—securing spiritual belonging amidst isolation. One provides an outward critical weapon, the other an inward sanctuary. Together they complete the subjective posture of "New People's Literature and Art": possessing both unbending resolve and serene composure.

Crucially, both pieces establish intertextual ties across the album. The unquenched sparks of Black Is Black, White Is White answer the revolutionary fire in That Year, I Was Thirteen and the ethical memory in Not a Single One Shall Be Pardoned. The figure who "sings and weeps" in Destination illuminates the album's title, while its buried seeds mirror the line "seeds growing in bone and blood" from That Year, I Was Thirteen. The North Star of original aspiration gives orientation to the social critiques of The People, A-Ying, and Ballad of Cattle and Horses: without steadfast aspiration, critique loses direction; without an envisioned home, wandering yields only exhaustion.

These songs demonstrate that the "New People's Literature and Art" is not exclusively an art of social critique, but equally one of spiritual construction; it aims toward collective class liberation while attending to the sanctuary of the soul. This directly answers the dilemma of absent values in contemporary mass culture: the "New People's Literature and Art" possesses both critical sharpness and ethical substance, combining fierce outcries with quiet belonging.

5

Beyond rebuilding class vision in content, the "New People's Literature and Art" faces the task of formal innovation—avoiding mechanical replicas of old agitprop while remaining aesthetically adventurous alongside its class commitments. The album illustrates several productive formal paths.

Ballad of Lying Flat deploys a duet to capture gendered dimensions of modern alienation: men confronting predatory corporate pressures, women facing commodification across marriage and property markets. Setting the phrasing of wartime ballads alongside modern rent and housing crises generates sharp historical resonance, politicizing "lying flat" from passive exhaustion into a critique of systemic absurdity.

Song of the Online Left approaches progressive youth experience through a blend of self-deprecation and political awareness. Lines like "We calculate this world with surplus value formulas / and the answers we find / are covered in the wounds of class" fuse academic terminology with physical pain into an uncommon theoretical lyricism. Weaving online platforms, daily labor, theoretical study, and historical laws together, the piece bridges revolutionary discourse with everyday experience.

Drinking Tea relies on restrained allegorical narrative to articulate unmentionable experiences. The keyboard, the screen, the knock at the door, and the euphemism of "having a chat" delineate the lived reality of contemporary intellectual workers. The tension between tea and magma, swallowing down and spewing forth, suppressed words and driving nails, constructs a sustained metaphor for institutional discipline and resistance. The closing motif of an unfinished word that can never be swallowed elevates the song into an existential reflection on silencing and unyielding conscience.

Finally, I Am Willing..., which opens the first half of the album, holds unique significance. Adapted from an earlier, widely circulated poem by Liu Jiming, its fourfold repetition of "I am willing" maps his spiritual commitments with lucidity and courage. The contrarian mast transforms solitude into an existential posture; the martyr's phosphorescent glow turns sacrifice into illumination for others. Its third stanza—defending the dignity of a class when flattering the rich has become fashionable—reclaims historical agency as an ethical imperative. Invoking Andersen's fairy tale grounds political defiance in the innocence of truth-telling. Progressing from personal courage to class solidarity, from faint light to waking cries, the poem provides an emotional and intellectual foundation for the entire collection.

It bears emphasizing that the entire album's musical arrangements and vocal performances were generated by artificial intelligence. Realizing a synthesis of literature, music, and AI, it displays a distinct aesthetic texture that warrants focused scholarly study within popular music and digital cultural production.

The trajectory of the "New People's Literature and Art"—currently torn and obscured by competing cultural discourses—faces an arduous path. It commands neither institutional support from official cultural bodies nor privileged standing within capital-driven markets. Yet as the verse in That Year, I Was Thirteen affirms:

Fifty years have passed, and some have long forgotten you,

Yet the seeds you sowed grow inside my bones and blood.

I have nothing to offer you

Except to stand upright as you did,

Standing with the overwhelming majority of the laboring people.

The posture of "standing upright," rooted in the conviction of "standing with the overwhelming majority of the laboring people," provides the most authentic definition of the "New People's Literature and Art." The twenty songs in Liu Jiming’s album give voice to this upright stance. They blaze an initial path—a road that ultimately calls for more travelers to walk together:

Let me live out the rest of my days as a fighter,

Carrying the unfinished road onward, walking onward...

August 4, 2025 · Author: Left Review (Zuo Ping) · Source: Left Review WeChat Official Account

Through fragmentary, accessible, and highly interactive forms, Liu Jiming’s Weibo-style essay writing has significantly reshaped the pathways and efficacy of disseminating left-wing ideas. This innovative mode of articulation lowers the barriers to engaging with left-wing theory while sharpening its capacity for direct social intervention, granting it heightened resonance in the digital era. Below is a multidimensional analysis of its concrete impact, grounded in key developments and structural logic:

1. Lowering Barriers to Engagement and Expanding Audience Reach

Liu Jiming’s Weibo-style essay series, Reflections (Sui Xiang Lu), employs a concise, accessible, and evocative voice, translating intricate left-wing theory into texts readable in everyday contexts. This format transcends the constraints of conventional left-wing literature that relies heavily on long-form treatises, enabling ordinary demographics—such as factory workers and young students—to participate more readily in deliberations on social issues. Anchored in a core ethos of "tenacious combat," his fragmentary commentaries engage immediate realities (such as critiques of class polarization and structural injustice) to attract non-specialist readers, markedly boosting the reach of left-wing thought. The instantaneous nature of microblogging also accelerates viral circulation, forging visceral resonance among grassroots working people and reinforcing his standing as a "people's writer."

2. Driving a Paradigm Shift in Left-Wing Literature: From "Trauma Response" to "Systemic Reconstruction"

Traditional left-wing literature frequently concentrates on sorrowful narratives of historical trauma (such as the harrowing working-class chronicles depicted by Cao Zhenglu). Liu Jiming, however, mobilizes microblog essays to relocate left-wing thought onto an expansive historical and discursive battleground. He supplants isolated incident-based responses with a systemic critical architecture—embedding structural interrogations of capitalist globalization and neoliberalism directly into short posts, prompting readers to advance from personal misfortune to institutional reflection. This shift prevents left-wing thought from lapsing into nostalgia or fatalistic pathos; instead, it becomes a dynamic "intellectual engine" continuously intervening in reality, inspiring broader public imagination toward alternative social systems.

3. Enhancing Discursive Interactivity and Mobilizing Agency

Liu transforms the interactive features of microblogging platforms—such as comments, reposts, and quote-tweets—into an open public forum for ideological debate. His posts frequently conclude with probing questions, inviting readers to join the discourse and transition into conscious social agents. This heightened interactivity bolsters communicative power while nurturing grassroots offline initiatives—inspiring readers to participate in labor rights advocacy and left-wing reading groups. Concurrently, Liu’s principled "grassroots standpoint" fosters an affective community across digital spaces, grounding abstract theory in concrete social solidarity and amplifying its moral appeal.

4. Blending Romanticism with Materialist Critique to Broaden Left-Wing Aesthetics

Liu Jiming’s Weibo-style essays interweave idealistic resolve with incisive realist critique, appealing not only to literary audiences but also enriching the aesthetic vitality of left-wing thought. By capturing grassroots existence through poetic resonance, he dispels the didactic stereotypes often associated with left-wing polemics, making core socialist values of egalitarianism and justice accessible to younger generations. This aesthetic innovation represents an important effort to elevate left-wing literature from a marginal niche into the public cultural domain.

5. Contesting Mainstream Hegemony Amid Institutional Complexities and Medium Constraints

While microblog writing enhances the velocity and efficiency of left-wing discourse, it introduces distinct medium-specific challenges:

• Risk of Simplification: Fragmentary delivery can oversimplify multifaceted societal contradictions, occasionally drawing criticism for superficial polemics.

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• Algorithmic Reductionism: Platform algorithms prioritize sensational friction, often stereotyping Liu's nuanced arguments under polarising "radical left" labels that risk flattening his ideological breadth.

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• Interpretation and Authority: Digital discourse generated across informal accounts (such as characterizing him as a "systemic reconstructor") requires critical reading, as uncurated commentary may contain subjective overinterpretations.

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Nonetheless, the essential value of this practice lies in utilizing digital infrastructure to reclaim the public character of left-wing thought, carving out an alternative redoubt for marginalized perspectives.

Conclusion

Liu Jiming’s Weibo-style essay writing is far more than a technical adaptation to new media; it marks a transformation in cultural dissemination. By deploying accessible vernacular to deconstruct elitist narratives, it revitalizes left-wing thought within the digital public sphere. While this practice reshapes the broader ecology of contemporary left-wing culture, it remains essential to guard against the medium's inherent tendency to dilute theoretical depth.

(Source: Cao Zhenglu – Liu Jiming Research Center; synthesized via Weibo Intelligent Search based on user queries, with minor editorial revisions.)