Quiet Retreat

End to a zealous campaign

First the authorities described it as "moral pollution." Then it was "spiritual pollution." Finally, "cultural contamination." From the moment Communist Party officials began a program last October opposing alleged "bourgeois" influences, they had trouble defining the threat. Worse, the program met with hostility from much of the Chinese public.

Now, barely three months after the effort was announced, the government has quietly sounded a retreat. So many restrictions have been imposed on the campaign that it seems certain to fade away.

The Chinese are accustomed to periodic drives to curb foreign influences. The latest effort was aimed at stemming the perceived dangers of Western mores at a time of increased contacts between Chinese citizens and Westerners. Officials raged against the "rotten" ideology, which "crumbles our faith [and] messes our thinking." Zealous party censors combed school and university libraries for polluting material. In parts of China, authorities ordered women to forgo cosmetics or to cut their hair short. One young worker was castigated for owning an art book that included a print of Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

Absurd though they seemed, such incidents ominously recalled the notorious Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s. This time, however, the Chinese responded with unexpected hostility. Intellectuals either passively resisted or openly condemned the government's efforts. Peasants, who account for 80% of the country's 1 billion or so people and who have benefited in recent years from reforms that allow them to accumulate wealth in return for higher productivity, scorned charges that their rising living standard was evidence of moral decay.

In the face of such reactions, the government backed down. Thanks to the new guidelines, only two vices remain acceptable targets for the reform effort: pornography and "distrust of socialism."