Mo Luo's article "Demonizing society doesn't solve any problem," published on May 29 by the Global Times, criticized what he called intellectuals' self-denying mindset by assuming that today's intellectuals are still addicted to the cynical mood of the 1980s.

Such criticism obviously ignores the historical impact left by the cultural enlightenment in the 1980s.

In the 1980s, books written by Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Enst Cassirer, Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu were extraordinary bestsellers. At that time, lectures given by poets, writers, and philosophers were packed with listeners. After experiencing the absurdities of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), people especially valued reason, truth, and the world of the mind.

Doubt, inquiry and criticism became typical intellectual attitudes.

Although the period of intense reading in the 1980s was short, it created a bright spiritual memory. After the precious things in the 1980s disappeared, we were faced with a huge spiritual emptiness. The things such as literature and philosophy have been snubbed and the intellectuals have been accustomed to the noise brought by the market-oriented economy.

The outburst of a passion to call out, as a result of longtime suppression, was overly idealistic, inheriting the Romantic spirit of the new literature promoted, originally, by the May 4th student movement in 1919. It promoted unabashed individuality and creative stimulation, but could also be empty and shallow. The 1980s attitude came, in large part, from the May 4th Movement thinkers.

Mo Luo thinks that ideas about the poor quality of the Chinese character were deliberately forged by the Western colonists and imposed by the thinkers around the May 4th Movement on Chinese people. This is a hasty and over-judgmental assessment of the thinkers associated with the May 4th Movement. The thinkers felt bitter about China's weak status at that time but their deliberation over China's national character was very different from the foreign missionaries' demonized descriptions.

The Western countries' discourse hegemony is based on their great military might. The enlightenment thinkers' self-analysis was out of their need to survive in the crisis. Influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution, some scholars, such as Yan Fu, decided that the West was civilized and advanced while China was brutal and backward.

Today the judgement actually seems a rash conclusion but it was an authentic one at that time.

The great Chinese writer Lu Xun was stirred by a slideshow he watched in class in Japan in 1904. One slide showed Chinese people screened on the lantern slide numbly crowded around one Chinese man about to have his head chopped off by Japanese imperial soldiers.
"The people of a weak and backward country ... could only serve to be made examples of or as witnesses of such futile spectacles," Lu concluded.

In today's China, we still see crowds gathered around incidents of disaster or injustice, "come to enjoy the spectacle," as Lu acerbically put it. Lu's criticism of China's national character remains a penetrating one. The counter-tradition in the May 4th Movement shook the millenniums-old despotic culture and also began the enlightenment for the arrival of a more humane age.

Mo Luo ignored that the role of the writers of the May 4th Movement weren't absent from the national crisis. Writers like Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao showed their supportive attitudes toward the student activities which strove for national sovereignty and looked to eliminate those they saw as national traitors. The May 4th Movement began a newly humane trend and the people began to voluntarily cast off slavish attitudes. People were aware that a modern country needed responsible citizens instead of flunkeys.

The intellectual elites proposed the issue of national character under a history background when China was poor, weak, lagging behind and vulnerable to attacks in 1919. Their suggestion was not a surrender to colonialism, instead, it was intended to be a process of spiritual purgatory, struggling with ideals, self defeat and self transcendence.

China's economy and national strength are growing but it is also confronted with a series of problems including lack of faith, abdication of responsibility, anemic thought and degenerated morality. Without solving these internal problems, "China stands up" is just an empty slogan.

The believers in the market principles seemingly disdain talking about culture, which is actually a kind of outdated thinking. It comes from the marginalization of intellectuals' roles and enlightenment discourse. By contrast, intellectuals' senses of mission in the 1980s was stronger and their sense of humanity stronger. It was an age filled with romance and dreams.

Blaming some extremists on the spirit of the 1980s is entirely unfair.

The author is a civil servant based in Beijing. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn