Today, contemporary literature in China can be divided into five categories: literature in the early stage of socialism, literature in the new period after reform and opening up, avant-garde literature in China, liberal literature in China and popular literature.
Literature in the new period mainly criticizes and denies "Cultural Revolution Literature" and returns to "Seventeen-year Literature". In the 1980s, literature surpassed the "seventeen-year literature" and returned to the May 4th Movement to learn from the West, completing the unfinished "modernity" of the May 4th Movement, but the study of western literature was mainly limited to artistic forms.
In the 1990s, literature followed the May 4th Movement, fully borrowed from the West, inherited the tradition, and adopted a dual-track literary system, which diversified literary phenomena and fully developed popular literature. Literature in the new century no longer has the goal of learning, but develops independently, in a state of "freedom" and "independence". The literary phenomenon of contemporary writers in China is very complicated, and great changes have taken place in their writing style, writers' identity and readers' reading.
Characteristics of contemporary literature
Because writers have long carried out the party's literary direction and gone deep into the life of workers, peasants and soldiers, they are striving for the nationalization and popularization of literature from theory to creative practice. Critically absorbing and drawing lessons from the essence of China's traditional literature and art (including folk literature and art), reflecting the history and real life of China people, has become the center of artistic exploration of many writers, and has made considerable achievements.
Such as The History of Entrepreneurship, The Red Flag by Liang Bin, Li Zicheng (I) by Yao, Teahouse by Lao She, Guan Hanqing by Tian Han, poems by He Jingzhi, Guo Xiaochuan, essays by Ba Jin and Yang Shuo, etc., show the level of the new China people's artists in creating socialist literature and art with distinctive China characteristics.