For Liu Zaifu, literature was not a mere sideline of history, but a sanctuary where a person could once again be seen as an individual. The Chinese writer, poet, and academic passed away on May 24, 2026, at the age of 84. His name remains especially associated with an intellectual courage that grew out of years of political pressure, which later made him one of the prominent voices in Chinese literary criticism. Introduction Liu Zaifu, born on October 22, 1941, in Nan'an, Quanzhou, in Fujian province, belonged to the generation of Chinese intellectuals whose lives were closely intertwined with the major upheavals of the 20th century. He became known as an author, poet, and professor of literature and the liberal arts, but especially as a literary theorist who profoundly helped change the way Chinese literature was read. His name is linked to a humanistic approach to texts, emphasizing psychological depth, individual experience, and artistic autonomy. Career and Work Liu Zaifu studied Chinese literature at Xiamen University, a formation that laid the foundation for a career in which the question of how literature should be read became as important as the literature itself. Early on, he moved not only within the academic world but also into the realm of literary magazines. After graduating, he became editor-in-chief of Wenxue Pinglun, known in English as Literary Review, and also worked as an editor for the Beijing-based magazine New Construction. These early professional years took place during a period when intellectual work in China was increasingly under political pressure. During the Cultural Revolution, Liu Zaifu was placed under house arrest. This fact marks more than just a biographical turning point; it also explains why his later work so strongly defended the autonomy of literature. For him, a novel or poem was not merely a carrier of ideology, but a form of human knowledge, allowing space for contradiction, inner conflict, and moral nuance. After the Cultural Revolution, Liu was among the thinkers who sought to reopen Chinese literary studies. During the years of cautious liberalization, he had the opportunity to move literary criticism away from doctrinal schemas and reconnect it with aesthetics, psychology, and humanistic reflection. This role became institutionally visible when he served as director of the Institute of Literature at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 1985 to 1989. In this position, he stood at a crucial intersection of science, cultural politics, and intellectual renewal. His breakthrough was less in a sensational book than in his broader reform of the critical vocabulary used to approach Chinese literature. Liu Zaifu advocated reading classical and modern texts not solely for their political utility but for their artistic truth. This made him a pioneer of a new, more open literary criticism in China, one that recognized the writer as a creative individual again. This commitment is clearly reflected in Farewell to Revolution from 1997. In that book, Liu critically examined the Chinese revolutionary tradition and the ways in which political language shaped intellectual life. The work is regarded as an important reflection on the relationship between culture and revolution, demonstrating how Liu used literature to explore larger historical questions. For him, human experience, not slogans, was the starting point. Also, Reflections on Dream of the Red Chamber from 2008 is significant within his oeuvre. With this book, he returned to one of the great classics of Chinese literature. Whereas such texts had long been read morally or ideologically, Liu approached them as complex works of art, full of psychological subtlety and tragic layers. This showed what his criticism essentially aimed for: not to confirm dogmas, but to restore the freedom to truly read a text. After the political unrest of 1989, Liu Zaifu left China and continued his academic work in exile. That phase gave his career an international dimension. He was regarded as one of the important Chinese literary theorists of the late 20th century, precisely because his work straddled heritage and modernity, national tradition and global debate. His writings and ideas made him a recognizable figure within the broader Chinese intellectual diaspora. As a poet and writer, he was in a sense always committed to the same conviction that also underpinned his academic work: that literature must bring humans back to the center of reading. This made him not a loud polemicist but a thoughtful reformer. His influence lay in how he helped shift an entire discipline from political interpretation to a more open, human, and artistically sharp understanding of texts. Private Life Little is publicly known about Liu Zaifu’s private life. However, it is clear that the political circumstances of his time deeply influenced his intellectual development. The experience of house arrest during the Cultural Revolution and his later exile were not isolated episodes but conditions that visibly shaped his thinking on freedom, literature, and the value of independent critique. Death Liu Zaifu died on May 24, 2026, at the age of 84. The place of death has not been publicly confirmed. No public information about the cause of death has been released either. With his passing, the Chinese literary world loses a critic and thinker who, at decisive moments, defended a different understanding of literature. His significance lies not only in his books or academic roles but also in his role as a voice for intellectual independence in an era when such freedom was far from guaranteed. Conclusion Liu Zaifu left behind a body of work that reminds us of a simple yet demanding idea: literature must be read as art, and thereby as a form of human freedom. It is precisely because of this that his work continues to resonate, from his reflections on revolution to his reinterpretation of the classical Chinese novel. On Overleden.net, you can find more well-known deceased individuals from writers. This article was prepared with the support of AI tools and verified by the editorial team of Overleden.net. Significance for the Netherlands Liu Zaifu’s work has been particularly significant in the Netherlands as a bridge between Chinese and Western literary traditions. His theoretical insights into the autonomy of literature and the role of the individual in literary interpretation resonated with Dutch academic debates on cultural critique and humanistic values. Through translations and international conferences, he contributed to a broader European understanding of Chinese modern literature, giving Dutch publishers and literary scholars access to a more nuanced perspective on Chinese writers and their work. In Dutch university circles, especially in sinology and comparative literature programs, Liu Zaifu’s ideas on how to read literature have been recognized as an important counterbalance to purely ideological or political text analysis. His advocacy for psychological depth and artistic autonomy aligned with Dutch literary critical traditions. Although Liu Zaifu cannot be considered a ‘Dutch’ intellectual, he indirectly influenced how the Netherlands positioned itself in the international scholarly debate on the universal value of literature and the importance of free intellectual expression.