Communist Party redistributed land from landlords to peasants through violent class struggle sessions, abolishing feudal tenure and establishing collective ownership foundations for socialist agriculture. This massive socioeconomic transformation eliminated rural elites who had traditionally patronized classical poetry and calligraphy. Land reform created new peasant-subject positions that Maoist cultural policy demanded literature serve rather than depict from above.

Mao Zedong's Talks at Yan'an Forum mandated that poets adopt worker-peasant-soldier perspectives, suppressing individualistic lyricism in favor of collectivist propaganda verse. Classical forms were repurposed for revolutionary content as Mao himself composed traditional-style poems celebrating socialist construction. Underground old-style poetry persisted among persecuted intellectuals as act of cultural resistance against enforced aesthetic conformity.