ABSTRACT
This essay examines Chinese poetry from 1949 to 1966. The acquisition, maintenance and extension of political power have always been the overriding concern to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since its birth in 1921. For years, many Chinese writers and poets used their works of exposé to attack the previous Kuomintang (KMT) government for being corrupt and undemocratic. With the CCP victory in 1949 and the removal of the KMT government, the new regime stood exposed to the potential criticism of these writers. Hence, the CCP immediately established tight control over literature, art, publishing industry and media, allowing no dissent. The first years of the People’s Republic were also the period which came under tremendous Soviet influence. Following the Soviet model, Chinese society became extremely organized and Chinese people very highly political-minded. All literary works, including poetry, began to celebrate the transformation of the land and the people, proletarian heroism and socialist solidarity in the standard formula of socialist realism. Consequently, literary works published in that period were highly politicised. In this socialist era, individualism was no longer the central concern of poetry, and subjectivity had to submit to the collective consciousness, gradually succumbing to the national chant of the communist rhetoric.
