New Enlightenment (China)

New Enlightenment (simplified Chinese: 新启蒙; traditional Chinese: 新啟蒙), or the New Enlightenment movement (simplified Chinese: 新启蒙运动; traditional Chinese: 新啟蒙運動), was a massive social and cultural movement in mainland China that originated in the late 1970s and lasted for over a decade. Growing out of the 1978 Truth Criterion Discussion during the Boluan Fanzheng period, the New Enlightenment is widely regarded as a new wave of enlightenment within Chinese society since the May Fourth Movement in 1919. The decade of the 1980s has thus been called the Age of New Enlightenment in China.

The theme of the New Enlightenment movement included promoting democracy and science, embracing humanism and universal values such as freedom, human rights and rule of law, while opposing the ideology of Cultural Revolution and feudalism. The movement gave rise to a number of new literature genres such as the scar literature and the misty poetry, meanwhile aesthetics also became a popular topic in society. In addition, the growth of the publication industry, the birth of new music genres such as Chinese rock, and the rise of the Chinese film industry all contributed significantly to the New Enlightenment. Notable leading figures of the movement included Fang Lizhi, Li Zehou, Wang Yuanhua.

The New Enlightenment movement ended due to the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. After Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in early 1992, however, the academic and intellectual circle in mainland China thrived again but became divided, forming two major schools of thought: the Liberalism and the New Left. On the other hand, as the capital market and market economy expanded in China, traditional intellectuals quickly lost their leadership role in social development which they enjoyed during the New Enlightenment in the 1980s, meanwhile entrepreneurs and business elites became increasingly influential.