The Chinese author Kuo Mo-jo (1892-1978) was a Marxist interpreter of early Chinese society and thought and one of the major cultural figures of modern China.

In its early phase, modern Chinese literature was markedly romantic in its championship of the individual and its demand for the overthrow of the old society. Later, this dual passion was enlisted in the cause of communism, and a new literature was born that slights the romantic individual. Kuo Mo-jo is a representative figure in that, though an arch rebel and romantic in his early phase as a writer, he soon curbed his individualistic predilections to embrace Marxism and ended up after a long career in literature and politics as a sycophantic singer of praise of the Communist regime.

Early Career

Born into a gentry family in Loshan, Szechwan, Kuo Mo-jo early chafed under parental and school authority and was once expelled...