Crises of Socialism in China and Chinese Rock in 1980s： The Case of CUI Jian

This paper focuses on CUI Jian and his rock music to examine the social complexity of the 1980s in China, which is much about the destructions brought by the Cultural Revolution and the economic reformation since 1978, as well as to investigate an alternative discourse that is different from mainstream in understanding the Chinese rock. Also, the paper through CUI＇s works tries to inquire the questions of how the ideal of socialism transforms after the fail of the revolution and how the disillusion connects the country＇s pursuit of the western modernization in music. Moreover, the paper asks how and by which CUI＇s songs associate themselves to the social transformation and in what way they root in the ＂socialistic personality＂ shaped by the socialist revolution since 1950s.