Narrating the underclass: Politics and representation in Cao Zhenglu’s works

By Harsh Thakor* 

Cao Zhenglu occupies a distinctive position in contemporary Chinese literature as a writer whose work persistently engages with the social transformations brought about by market reforms. His fiction foregrounds the lived experiences of laid‑off state workers, migrant labourers, and other groups affected by the restructuring of China’s economy, and it does so through a realist mode attentive to the pressures shaping working‑class life. 

Across his oeuvre, Cao depicts the socioeconomic consequences of privatization and globalization, addressing themes such as income inequality, labour exploitation, and the erosion of working‑class dignity. Although his writing has often been associated with what critics term underclass literature, he has expressed ambivalence about reducing narratives of marginalization to depictions of suffering alone. His work instead attempts to illuminate the structural conditions that produce such suffering and to articulate the perspectives of those who have been sidelined by China’s economic ascent.

Cao’s literary career began during the Cultural Revolution, though not in the form of youthful radicalism commonly associated with that period. Rather than joining the generation of young writers who produced poetry in the countryside, he worked within the cultural bureaucracy and eventually rose to head a municipal branch of the Writers’ Association in Anhui. His time at the Lu Xun Literary Institute and subsequent appointment to a more central Writers’ Association shaped his professional trajectory. Like many writers in the 1990s, he also produced commercially oriented work aligned with the expanding cultural industries of the reform era. A shift occurred in the early 2000s when he took an academic post in Shenzhen and became involved with Left Bank Culture Net, an online left‑wing literary community. While much of the writing on such platforms consisted of political commentary, Cao distinguished himself by producing fiction that retained narrative complexity and literary ambition even as it engaged with explicitly political themes.

His major works reflect this synthesis of literary form and social analysis. His novel “Wen cangmang” (“Asking the Boundless”) is set in a Taiwanese‑owned factory in Shenzhen and uses the interactions among workers, managers, and investors to explore the dynamics of labour and capital in a globalized economy. Some commentators have described the novel as an attempt to interpret Das Kapital through the lens of contemporary Chinese reality. His 2004 novella “There” offers a detailed portrayal of the decline of a trade‑union cadre in a northern industrial town during the restructuring of state‑owned enterprises. Widely regarded as a significant contribution to post‑socialist social realism, the work examines the human consequences of institutional reform and the disintegration of older forms of workplace solidarity. These and other writings contributed to a revival of left‑wing literary traditions in the early 2000s, helping to catalyse renewed interest in narratives centred on workers and marginalized groups.

Cao’s broader body of work includes short‑story collections such as “Beginnings” and “Mountain Ghost,” and novella collections including “As Long As You’re Still Walking,” “My Second Father,” “Nale (Internationale),” “Selected Novellas of Cao Zhenglu,” and “Neon.” His novels include “Anti‑corruption Instructions” and “Not Your Average Dark Horse.” He has also written non‑fiction, including the documentary‑style work “Notes on a Monster Tamed” and the theoretical study “The Development of New Era Novel Art.” His contributions to film and television include the films “The Wind Lightly Blows” and “I Am Also Romantic,” as well as the television dramas “Fallen Leaves” and “The Young Have Come to the Organization Department Again.” His total output exceeds three million words, reflecting both productivity and range.

His 2011 novel “Minzhu ke” (“Lessons in Democracy”) represents his most extensive engagement with the Cultural Revolution. The novel re‑examines the period by focusing on its political processes, contradictions, and perceived significance, presenting the Cultural Revolution as a historical sequence shaped by mass mobilization rather than as a narrative of individual excess or elite power struggle. The protagonist, Xiao Ming, is a young Red Guard who reads both Maoist and Marxist texts, debates questions of democracy and equality, and reflects on the meaning of political participation. Through her experiences, the novel reconstructs events such as the dispatch of work teams to schools, the formation of Red Guard groups, the arrest of alleged counterrevolutionaries, the role of the army, and the establishment of Revolutionary Committees. Because of its interpretive stance, the novel was not published in Mainland China and instead appeared in Taiwan.

Cao’s own reflections on the Cultural Revolution further illuminate his intellectual orientation. He distinguishes between different social interpretations of the period, arguing that working‑class participants emphasized equality while intellectuals emphasized constitutionalism. He contends that contemporary critiques often overlook the historical context and motivations of the era and suggests that modern economic and political elites may frame the Cultural Revolution negatively in ways that reinforce existing social structures. His reassessment of the period is linked to his understanding of capitalism and its social effects, particularly the inequalities that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. For Cao, the relevance of the Cultural Revolution lies not in its replication but in its exploration of mass political participation and the question of how ordinary people might shape their own social and political conditions.

Taken together, Cao Zhenglu’s writings constitute a sustained inquiry into the relationship between literature and social transformation. His work seeks to document the lived realities of workers and marginalized groups, to interrogate the structural forces that shape those realities, and to revisit historical episodes that continue to inform contemporary debates about democracy, equality, and political agency. Whether through realist depictions of factory life or through fictional re‑examinations of the Cultural Revolution, Cao’s contributions offer a distinctive perspective within modern Chinese literature and provide a significant body of work for understanding the cultural dimensions of China’s reform era.

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*Freelance journalist