When the Chinese edition of Liu Ching-chih's A Critical History of New Music in China came out 12 years ago, it caused a furore. The professor said much of the music written on the mainland in the past century that was influenced by the Europeans - a genre he referred to as 'new music' - lacked originality.
It's easy to understand why his book ruffled feathers: his stance is at odds with that of the central government, which holds that new music should be the mainstream Chinese music.
Now, the English edition of Liu's work has been published by the Chinese University Press - and he stands his ground: China lacks music traditions, he says, and as a result the development of new music is but a process of 'copying, imitating and transplanting'.
'Since music was a medium of conversation with God, music was regarded very highly in the European world. But in China, musicians were looked down upon.'
While China had other forms of music - such as court music (which came to an end after the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911), religious music, folk music (including Chinese opera) and scholars' music - the country didn't have true composers in the Western sense.
'The performers themselves had a free hand to develop their own style and talent, not like Western music, which was properly notated,' Liu says. 'So all the melodies were modified, used and re-used with new editions or divisions. You can never trace the composer of an [original] melody.'
New music was written using European compositional techniques and musical idioms, he says. Two of the most revered figures in the genre are Nie Er (1912-1935), who wrote the national anthem, and Xian Xinghai (1905 to 1945), composer of the Yellow River Cantata.