Taiwan's “Cultural Renaissance”: A Preliminary View

Traditional Chinese culture may be facing extinction. In the last two decades, since Mao Tse-tung's capture of the Mainland and Chiang Kai-shek's withdrawal to Taiwan, Chinese culture has been subjected to intense stress, not only in Communist China but on Taiwan as well. On the Mainland the Chinese tradition has been under attack from the government, the most recent and most violent assault being the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The Communists under the leadership of Mao have consciously sought to destroy the old ways and to rebuild society and culture along new lines. The threat to traditional Chinese culture on Taiwan is more subtle, but none the less real. Cut off from its mainland base, Chinese tradition on Taiwan has been threatened from within by popular indifference and from without by strong western influences. The Nationalists, however, under the leadership of Chiang have inaugurated the Cultural Renaissance Movement on Taiwan for the avowed purpose of saving China's culture.