China’s top film and television regulator has announced plans to send artists to grass-roots communities in order to learn from the masses, The New York Times reported. The announcement follows a major speech on the arts delivered by President Xi Jinping in October, in which he implored artists not to “lose themselves in the tide of the market economy”, or to “go astray while answering the question of whom to serve”. By forcing artists to travel to rural and ethnic minority regions, as well as areas significant to China’s revolutionary past, the program will purportedly encourage artists to “unearth new subjects” and promote “fine works”.