Lin Yahua: A Three-Dimensional Perspective on the Prosperity and Development of New Mass Literature and Art
In the long river of human civilization’s evolution, literature and art have always been important vehicles for reflecting the spirit of the times and shaping cultural identity. Entering the digital age, a form of art and literature termed "new mass literature and art" (新大众文艺) is reshaping our cultural landscape with unprecedented scale and vitality. Compared to the "commoner literature" [1] of the May Fourth period and the "people's literature and art" of the Yan'an period, new mass literature and art under internet conditions both continues the spiritual lineage of the popularization of art and forms a unique developmental logic across the dimensions of political leadership, technological empowerment, and emotional resonance.
Political Leadership: The Continuous Stimulation of People's Creativity
From the Marxist view of art and literature to the people-centered creative orientation in the New Era, the institutional mechanisms of Chinese literature and art have always explored how to stimulate the creative power of the masses and incorporate it into the framework of national cultural governance.
Looking at the historical context, since the May Fourth New Culture Movement, along with the development of modern printing and publishing technology, the wave of popularizing literature and art has allowed more and more ordinary people to enter the world of "the written word." During the "revolutionary literature" debates of the 1920s and 30s, left-wing intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai proposed "proletarian literature" (普罗文学), arguing that art should serve the worker and peasant masses. In 1942, Comrade Mao Zedong systematically elucidated the direction of "literature and art serving the workers, peasants, and soldiers" at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art, promoting artistic creation that "carried the fragrance of the soil" with a stronger aura of the "producer." Subsequently, a large amount of folk and popular art highly relevant to the production and life of the masses—including kuaiban [2], mass choruses, yangko [3] operas, and woodblock prints—flooded into and shaped the rich expression of "people's literature and art." These artistic forms not only met the aesthetic needs of the masses and reshaped their emotional worlds but also awakened a self-reliant, vigorous, and enterprising cultural impetus, greatly enhancing the people’s universal identification with the Party and the state, and promoting the prosperity and development of socialist literature and art.
Since the Reform and Opening-up, centered on the general deployment of economic construction, the reform of systems and mechanisms in the cultural field has progressed steadily, providing a solid institutional guarantee for the liberation and development of productive forces in literature and art. Along with the continuous release of these productive forces, various factors of artistic production have been effectively integrated; a standardized and large-scale cultural dissemination system has been constructed, moving step-by-step toward a path of marketization and industrialization.
In 2000, the concept of "cultural industries" was written into central documents for the first time. In 2002, the 16th National Congress of the CPC clarified the relationship between "cultural undertakings" (public cultural services) and "cultural industries." In 2011, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee passed the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Several Major Issues Concerning Deepening the Reform of the Cultural System and Promoting the Great Development and Prosperity of Socialist Culture, which proposed the goal of building a socialist cultural power and further stimulated the vitality of China’s cultural innovation and creation.
Entering the New Era, General Secretary Xi Jinping has proposed many times to prosper and develop cultural undertakings and cultural industries, empowering economic and social development through culture. He has emphasized "adhering to a people-centered creative orientation," driving the masses to transform from passive recipients into active participants and creators. In this process, the historical narrative of "people's literature and art" has once again found clear expression: art and literature are not merely objects of aesthetics, but more importantly, a vital means for shaping the subjectivity of the people and upholding the Party's cultural leadership. In new mass literature and art, the masses participate in the production and dissemination of art and literature with unprecedented scale and depth; this is precisely the echo and deepening of "people's literature and art" in the digital age. Now, our Party has included "prospering new mass literature and art under internet conditions" into the proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan, reflecting the foresight of top-level design and marking the ascent of new mass literature and art from a spontaneous cultural phenomenon to an important component of national cultural strategy.
Technological Empowerment: Morphological Transformation Under the Media Revolution
Technology is the driving force behind the rise of new mass literature and art. As Marx said: "Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press... become the means of the renaissance of science, the most powerful levers for creating the necessary prerequisites for intellectual development." The currently rapidly iterating digital technologies are reshaping the artistic ecosystem with the same power, driving the emergence of a wave of creation by the whole people.
First, digital media has broken down the professional barriers of artistic production. Traditional production relied on specific physical carriers (such as paper or the stage) and specialized skill training, but the popularization of the internet and the downward reach of smart terminals have moved artistic creation from "professionalization" toward "ubiquity." Platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Bilibili, and Douyin [4] have become low-threshold spaces for ordinary people to express themselves and participate in artistic creation. The rise of generative AI has further lowered the technical threshold for creation; ordinary people can use AI tools to conduct literary writing, image generation, and even video production without long-term artistic training. This technological empowerment has transformed art from "the aura of genius" into "the practice of the masses," and even into a more pervasive practice of human-machine collaboration.
Second, media convergence has catalyzed the cross-border expansion of artistic forms. New mass literature and art is no longer limited to traditional categories such as literature, fine arts, and theater, but presents a high degree of trans-mediality and fusion. The domestic game Black Myth: Wukong and the animated film Ne Zha: Beyond the Seas have elevated entertainment forms from niche subcultures into cultural phenomena with widespread influence; short videos, micro-dramas, and stand-up comedy have become the new normal of contemporary cultural life due to their intuitive and easily disseminable characteristics. These new forms not only expand the extension of art and literature but also reconstruct their narrative logic and aesthetic standards—moving from "text-centered" to "experience-centered," and from "contemplative aesthetics" to "participatory aesthetics." This interactive and symbiotic dissemination model enhances the vitality and influence of artistic works, driving the continuous prosperity of new mass literature and art.
Finally, algorithmic recommendation and traffic mechanisms have reshaped the mechanisms of dissemination and reception. In the traditional ecosystem, the dissemination of works relied on the screening of professional critics, publishing institutions, and authoritative media; under internet conditions, algorithms have become the "gatekeepers," and traffic has become the key indicator for measuring a work's influence. Audiences are no longer passive recipients but can participate in dissemination through instant interactions such as "bullet comments" (弹幕), secondary creations [5], and plot voting. It is worth noting that while this mechanism gives many amateur authors the opportunity to "be seen," it may also lead to "algorithmic monopoly" and "traffic monopoly" by platforms, triggering homogeneity of content and shallow aesthetics. Moreover, it may distort the values of artistic works and weaken the spiritual leadership and responsibility for consensus that art and literature should possess. To this end, ethical supervision and effective governance of platform algorithms should be strengthened.
Emotional Resonance: Return of "Experience" and the Reconstruction of Identity
Emotion constitutes the core field for the generation of meaning in new mass literature and art. In other words, the most moving power of new mass literature and art lies in its ability to truly return art and literature to daily life, making them carriers of mass emotional expression and cultural identity.
In artistic forms such as amateur writing, short videos, and stand-up comedy, the author’s personal history, professional identity, and life experience directly constitute the work itself. These works can trigger widespread resonance because they present the life textures of countless "invisible people" in urban and rural life in a vivid, concrete, and unpolished manner. This poignant "first-hand experience" has a dual characteristic: on the one hand, it displays the writer's unique life history, presenting the rough but real traces of the modern individual; on the other hand, it possesses a public nature by touching on universal topics ranging from rural revitalization to urban development, and from individual struggle to social progress. While watching the "life experience" of others, readers step out of their own "life experience," forming an internal emotional resonance and an external social connection with one another.
Furthermore, new mass literature and art activates the code of cultural innovation and creation through the fusion of contemporary experience and cultural memory. Represented by "Li Ziqi," a large group of disseminators of "images" of excellent traditional Chinese culture have succeeded not only because they showcase a lifestyle of "returning to basics," but because they transform the spiritual core of traditional culture into cultural symbols that contemporary youth can perceive and empathize with. Their works break boundaries and innovate boldly, cleverly transforming traditional cultural memories into vivid contemporary experiences, thereby awakening the shared cultural nostalgia of people in the era of economic globalization. This cultural spirit—which upholds the Chinese cultural position, transcends time and space, crosses national borders, and possesses eternal charm and contemporary value—constitutes an important symbol of China's cultural soft power today, achieving an effective link between local expression and global aesthetics.
As AI increasingly penetrates artistic production today, the creation of art and literature is seeing explosive growth. Although AI can mass-produce texts that are grammatically correct, well-structured, and even similar in style, it can hardly replace the breathing and heartbeat that originate from a body of flesh and blood, and it cannot provide a truly meaningful supply of "experience." This is because the "embodied" collision and coupling with the surrounding world, which ultimately generates "experience" carrying body temperature and pain, is something AI cannot touch. In this sense, amidst the surging wave of new mass literature and art, the uniqueness and scarcity of "embodied experience" are highlighted as never before. Those works of new mass literature and art that can embody the "experience" of historical development and social emotions, and which produce creations akin to the "crying blood of Emperor Wang" [6], will bring unique humanistic care and truly realize the "modernization of man" rather than the "modernization of things."
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Artistic works are not the product of mysterious inspiration; their artistry, thought, and value orientation are always reflected through the writer’s and artist’s grasp of history, the times, society, life, and people." New mass literature and art is precisely a way for our era to observe and express the world. It allows millions of ordinary people to become "storytellers," letting their experiences be seen, heard, and remembered. In this sense, new mass literature and art is an innovation in artistic form that highlights the Chinese spirit, the atmosphere of the times, and the power of the people; it will surely contribute unique Chinese wisdom to human civilization.