The Threshhold of a New Beginning

China's new-found intellectual freedom has failed to establish a clear path for the future of the nation's scholarly work, a panel of three Harvard-trained China experts said yesterday.

The attempt to incorporate Western ideology while retaining a sense of national identity will confront the world's largest nation in the upcoming years, the panelists concluded at the symposium "Contemporary China: Intellectual and Literary Issues."

"The relaxation of controls in China has brought to the fore a number of problems which Marxism had buried," moderator Patrick D. Hanan '68 said.

With the lifting of many restrictions on scholarly work in recent years, "there is now a place for entertainment literature, fiction magazines, and Kung-fu movies which are wildly popular," said Hanan, a professor of Chinese literature at Harvard.

"But, the question is, are Western values suitable in neo-China?" he said.

Wei-Ming Tu '63 said the debate over these issues is itself a "mixed blessing." On the positive side, a "united front for Westernization has been created, but there has also been a backlash by traditionalists based on xenophobic, anti-foreign feelings."

Chinese intellectual thought will now be guided by the desire to "fight against tradition, but also to restore a sense of community," Tu, a Harvard Chinese history professor, said.

The future of Chinese literature seems no more clear.

"Literary issues are very much a counterpart to intellectual issues," said Leo Ou-fan Lee '70, "and, in fact, literature as a vehicle of social reform is very much alive."

"But, more Chinese writers are getting away from being dominated by social issues and are writing literature for the sake of literature itself," said Lee, a University of Chicago Chinese literature professor.

Said Lee, "We are at a threshhold of a new beginning. We no longer face the old issues of political controls."