The Nationalization of the Cultural Industry and “Institutional Accidents” around 1949

From 1948 to 1953, as the CPC achieved successive victories in the War of Liberation and replaced the KMT in taking over China’s mainland, China gradually entered a period of peaceful national construction. The domestic political and economic environment shifted from the civil war between the CPC and the KMT to comprehensive national construction in politics, economy, culture, and society. During this period, as the CPC took control of the original KMT-controlled areas and undertook the nationalization and collectivization of civilian cultural forces, the wartime cultural mobilization system (or “cultural front system”) formed in the Soviet bases and liberated areas spread rapidly across the country alongside military victories, completing the nationalization of the cultural mobilization system in the liberated areas.