propaganda posters from the chinese cultural revolution

PROPAGANDA POSTERS FROM T H E CHINESE

CULTURAL REVOLUTION PATRICIA POWELL AND JOSEPH WONG

n 1942, from the revolutionary base in Yenan, Mao Zedong defined the function I of art in the future People’s Republic of China when he wrote, “literature and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part. . . . [Tlhey oper- ate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy.”l At no time in Chinese history was this function of art more apparent than during the Cultural Revolution of 1966- 1976, when political posters designed to further Mao’s aims and promote class struggle dominated the arts in China. This photo essay is drawn from the exhibition of 70 posters entitled Mads Graphic Voice: Pictorial Posters from the Cultural Revolution, shown from 31 August through 27 October 1996 at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin- Madison. These posters illustrate many aspects of Mao’s ideological campaign during the turbulent decade of the Cultural Revolution.

On 5 August 1966, China plunged into ten years of chaos, social upheaval, and political struggle in what became known as the Cultural Revolution. Launched by Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and considered by many the de fact0 head of the Chinese state, the movement was intended to destroy his political foes and restore the vigorous spirit of the Communist Revolution of 1949. Instead, it nearly destroyed the foundations of Chinese society, as China endured a decade of violence, horror, and uncertainty. Many now view this period as the ten lost years.

The Cultural Revolution was the culmination of a power struggle between Mao and other leaders in the politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, who were led by Liu Shaoqi. As president of the People’s Republic and official head of state, Liu was Mao’s apparent successor as party chairman and also chief economic planner for the country. But while Mao promoted ideological orthodoxy and relied on the revolutionary spirit of peasants, workers, and soldiers to ensure economic prosperity, Liu pursued more pragmatic economic development policies. For example, in 1955, Mao

Patricia Powell is an editor at the Etvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, and curator of Mao’s Graphic Voice; Joseph Wong is a graduate student in the Department of Political Science, Universiv of Wisconsin-Madison.

‘Ma0 Zedong, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature,” in Selected Readingsfiom the Works ofMao Tse-tung (Peking, 1978), 250.

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Figure 2. Energetically Criticize the Chinese Khrushchev’s Politics, Ideology, and Theories (Shanghai People’s Ar t Publishing Housc, 1967). Ma0 dubbed Liu Shaoqi “the Chinese Khrushchev” to identifi him as a tiational enemy. Liu Shaoqi was imprisoned in 1968 and died in 1969. Having eliminated his chiqf’political rival, Ma0 used poster propaganda to ensure pop- ular support.

directed that collectives be established throughout agriculture and industry, believ- ing that collectivization, if supported by revolutionary zealotry, would promote development “faster, better, and more economically.”2 Liu Shaoqi, realizing that Mao’s production targets were unrealistic, contended that economic development should be led by strong central planning and a more prudent, less rapid development program. At the Eighth Chinese Communist Party Congress in September 1956, Liu delivered the opening address, conspicuously omitting any mention of Mao’s principles as expressed in the venerated “Thoughts of Mao Zedong.” Mao considered this omission a subversive attack on him.’

2Party slogan, cited in Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Culturctl Revolufion, vol. 1 (New York, 1974), 30.

’Ibid., 103.

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Figure 3. Learn from Lei Feng How to Be a Determined soldier of the Proletarian Revolution, by Xian Dming (Shanghai People’s Art Publishing House, March 1963). While party leaders like Liu Shaoqi were denigrated, new heroes such as Lei Feng, a soldier who died at the age of 21 in 1962, were hailed by Ma0 as exemplary revolutionaries. Maoistpropaganda made a lasting impression on Chinese youth. Children’s story books were replete with Lei Feng iconography. Jung Chang, recount- ing her student days during the “learn f iom Lei Feng” campaign, recalls that “Lei Feng soon began to dominate my l;fe,” and that she found herselfstriving to “do good deeds like Lei Feng.’%

The differences between Mao and Liu grew more pronounced in 1958, when Mao launched another overambitious development program, the Great Leap Forward. Through communization, intensive labor, shock brigades, and the “unleashed energy of the rna~ses,”~ Mao believed that China would develop rapidly and soon match the economic performance of the industrial world. Instead, the Great Leap resulted in famine, unusable industrial goods, and economic disaster. Undeterred, Mao formed an alliance of civil and military leaders to implement his personal socialist ideals of proletarian culture, class struggle, and the learning of

4Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (New York, 1991), 257.

SParty slogan, cited in Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2 (New York, 1983), 59.

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Figure 4. The Liberation Army Firmly Supports the Proletarian Revolutionaries (Shanghai People’s Art Publishing House, 1967). This poster emphasizes that all revolutionary groups should work together. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the army was instructed to remain neutral. But when many revolutionary groups began to fight one another, Ma0 gave the army power to disband groups they considered counterrevolutionary.

PROPAGANDA POSTERS FROM THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION 78 1

Mao Zedong Thought. In 1962, he launched the Socialist Education Campaign, aimed at making his own ideological position party doctrine and stripping all political influence from dissenters. Marshal Lin Biao joined Mao’s faction in 1963 and spread Mao’s influence from the military to the civilian population by com- piling Mao’s Little Red Book of quotations. Liu and other pragmatists resisted. On 16 May 1966, Mao openly criticized Liu and Deng Xiaoping, a Liu ally and future secretary general of the Party, calling on the masses-particularly students-to reject Liu’s “bourgeois capitalism” and return to Mao’s Chinese socialist vision. The Cultural Revolution had begun.

By summer, China’s students had organized into Red Guard brigades and firmly supported Mao. He called on them to destroy the “Four 0lds”-old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking. Schools closed as the Red Guard destroyed “old” buildings and “traditional” temples and confiscated works of art. Students were encouraged to attack teachers, factory administrators, party members, and even their parents for “bourgeois” crimes. These crimes were defined by Mao and his supporters as anything from class background to collaborating with the Japanese in the 1930s. These attacks were initially verbal but in some cases escalated into actual physical violence. Chinese culture and its civilizing foundations were uprooted while Mao Zedong was progressively venerated.

Although the Communist Party’s central committee issued a “Sixteen Point Directive” defining the Cultural Revolution’s aims and goals in August 1966, by 1968 Red Guard factionalism had created complete anarchy, and the party was torn apart, Mao called in the People’s Liberation Army to restore order and disbanded the Red Guards in 1969 by sending them to the countryside. Mao’s ideological revolution was far from over; he had forged an alliance with the army that gave him the leverage for the Campaign to Purify Class Ranks. This campaign, which lasted from 1967 to 1969, investigated the class background of party members in order to iden- tify those who had capitalist or bourgeois elements in their personal or family his- tories. The poster in Figure 4 from 1967 shows a soldier from the People’s Liberation Army clutching the Little Red Book of Mao’s thoughts while using his rifle butt to crush supposed “bourgeois elements.” A heroic worker can be seen in the background. During this period, many students and young people from urban areas were sent to remote rural regions to labor and learn from the peasants in order to rectify their formerly bourgeois ideas, as shown in Figure 5 .

When schools were reopened in 1973, Mao encouraged students to continue the revolution within the schools, and party members were subjected to ritual meet- ings to discuss Mao Thought. Rural May Seventh Cadre Schools-named for the date Mao ordered their creation-were established for those party members and intellectuals who were designated “revisionist,” or a threat to Mao’s personal hold

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Figure 5. Go to the Countryside; Go to the Borderland; Go to the Places Where the Motherland Needs You (Shanghai Revolutionary Publishing Group, 1970). This poster glorifies the movement to send students to the conntryside. On the redflag in the foreground is a quotation from Mao: “Young intellectuals must go to the countryside to be reeducated by the former poor and low middle class peasants.” Students on the train are leaving Shanghai, saying good- bye to their family and friends. They all hold Mao’s Little Red Book and wear Mao badges and the faddish army greatcoats. Their cold weather clothes indicate that they are being sent to the northern border.


on power, where they toiled in the fields and studied the thoughts of Mao. Within the Communist Party, factional battles were waged by the leftists led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, against the moderate faction, which since Liu Shaoqi’s imprisonment was led by Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. Chinese society and the Chinese Communist Party were left in tatters6

Theories of totalitarianism note that propaganda serves to dehumanize individuals as they lose their sense of self and submit to a higher ideological cause. Mao, a charismatic leader, created a “cult of personality” in which he was increasingly dei- fied. Pictures of Mao were posted everywhere, quotations from Mao were recited ritually, and revolutionary songs were sung religiously. People’s daily lives were inundated with the images, sounds, and ideas of Mao. A Chinese national visiting the exhibition explained that for every poster she remembered a song-“The East Is Red,” “Remember Lei Feng,” and numerous paeans to Mao as the Great Helmsman, as the Red Sun in My Heart, etc.

The Little Red Book of Mao’s quotations was an essential accessory among the young. One woman recalled that “we vowed . . . to submit ourselves unquestioningly to the control of the Great Leader Mao. . . . [Mlany people had been reduced to a state where they did not dare even to think.”’ Criticism attacking party members was expressed in large Chinese characters, called Da Zi Bao, on the posters that came to adorn every available wall space. Even Liu Shaoqi’s daughter denounced her father in wall posters. Mao regarded these “big character posters” as “an extremely useful new type of weapon.”* Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans, recalled the violence their tone and imagery evoked through such slogans as “Smash So- and-so’s dog’s head” and “Annihilate So-and-so if he does not surrender.”’ As political scientist Kenneth Lieberthal suggests, “[TI he core Maoist priorities were to permeate the public and the private.”I0

Even young children did not escape Mao’s penetrating presence. Starting with the kindergarten curriculum, for example, all daily school activities reflected Chinese communist ideology. Using posters and other visual aids, young students

6Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York, 1990), 614.

7Frederick Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (Arrnonk, N.Y., 1984), 46,50; Alan P. L. Liu, Communications and National Integration in Communist China (Berkeley, 1971), 41; Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China: A History ofthe People’s Republic (New York, 1977), 336; Chang, Wild Swans, 262, 363.

*Quotation from Mao Zedong, New China News Agency (20 June 1966).

9Chang, Wild Swans, 279.

loKenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution Through Reform (New York, 1995), 146.

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were taught “class struggle” and “Maoist thought.”’ English lessons in the primary school focused on such statements as “Concern yourself with affairs of the state and carry through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end.”’* Children were even organized into Little Red Soldier brigades.

For Mao, all art was political; as he proclaimed in 1942, “There is no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or indepen- dent of politic^."'^ Thus, when Mao determined to reconsolidate his base of support within the party in 1962, he set up his own propaganda organization that bypassed the national bureau of propaganda, putting Jiang Qing, a former actress, in control of what was later in 1966 called the Cultural Revolution Small Group. Her hegemony was extended to literature and the arts in 1967. Thus, Jiang Qing determined appro- priate models for Cultural Revolution art, authorized the slogans, and decided how many posters were to be distributed. “Proper” art was narrowly defined by what Mao and Jiang Qing considered to be “model” revolutionary art. Constructing “a new pictorial history,” the posters were to dramatize and venerate Mao and minimize the role of most other communist leaders. Figure 6 illustrates the glorification of Mao that Mao and Jiang Qing encouraged. The poster in Figure 7, although not published until 1970, still shows a Red Guard member holding the Little Red Book and indict- ing intellectuals to indicate that class struggle should ~0nt inue. l~

In serving its political function, the concept of model art undermined artists’ cre- ativity in both form and content. Attempting to prove their loyalty to Mao, artists competed with each other to turn Mao’s directives into the most effective visual propaganda art. After all, as Andrews notes, through Jiang Qing, Mao “point[ed] the cor- rect direction for the revolutionary literary and art workers.”” For some artists, pleasing the leadership was the primary goal. Many artists and party members alike saw demonstration of loyalty to Mao and Jiang Qing and recognition from them as a means to promote their careers and protect them from future criticism.16

Propaganda posters were designed and printed at regional publishing houses.

“William Kessen, ed., Childhood in China (New Haven, 1975), 96, 102.

’?Ibid., 115.

”Mao Tse-tung, Selected Readings from the Works ofMao Tse-tung (Peking, 1971), 271,272.

I4Julia F. Andrews, Painters and Politics in the People3 Republic of Chinu, 1949-1979 (Berkeley, 1994). 337,339.

15Aiidrews, Painters and Politics, 337.

“Andrews, Painters und Politics, 347,367; see also Harry Harding, “The Chinese State in Crisis, 1966- 9,” in The Politics of China, 1949-19x3’). ed. Roderick MacParquhar (Cambridge, 1993), 159; Frederick Teiwes, Politics ofMtioi Court: Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s (Artnoilk, N.Y., 1990).


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Figure 6. A Long, Long Life to Our Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Marshal, Great Helmsman Chairman Mao (Shanghai People's Art Publishing House, 1968). In this poster, Ma0 stands alone on the rostrum of Tiananmen Square wearing the red arm band of the Red Guard. During the height of the cult of Mao, he was wished a long, long life. At a I966 rally, Ma0 was crowned with the title of the Four Greats: Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Marshal, and Great Helmsman. He is shown standing alone rather than with otherparty leaders in this poster, show- ing he is unique; the military uniform indicates the increasing importance o f the military.

Shanghai, a Maoist political stronghold and China's largest publishing center, was the location for much poster production. The central bureau provided slogans that bore Mao's imprimatur, while the staff artists of the publishing house sketched images for approval by the propaganda chief of the local party bureau. If approved by Jiang Qing, the design was completed in oils or gouache media, prepared for off- set lithography, and printed in large numbers for distribution all over China.

Sometimes the local party bureau of propaganda called together staff artists to propose poster designs for specific events, such as the 1967 January revolution or the campaign against Confucius, who was considered culturally archaic by Maoists. In 1976, Jiang Qing and the art creation office of the Shanghai Propaganda Small Group selected staff artists from the Shanghai People's Art Publishing House for the

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Figure 7. Thoroughly Revolutionize the Battlefronts of Ideas and Culture (Shanghai Revolutionary Publishing Group, 1970). According to Man, artists and intellectuals could not be revolutionaries because oftheir devotion to individual rather than collective expression. Their art and ideas should be criticized and often destroyed by workers and revolutionaries. In this poster, a Red Guard and a vet- eran worker show their anger at capitalistic artists and intellectuals.

“Art Group for Cultural Revolution Paintings.’’ The group’s assignment was to pre- pare a commemorative series of posters entitled “The Cultural Revolution Will Shine Forever:’ one of which is shown in Figure 8.

Poster themes ranged from promoting the Cultural Revolution and criticizing Mao’s opponents, as seen in the posters illustrated above, to furthering anti-imperialist foreign policy by criticizing the United States or the Soviet Union. Mao promoted China’s foreign and domestic policies through posters such as those in Figures 9, 10, and 11. Posters encouraging increased production also were frequent, with such titles as Seize the Revolution: Promote Production, Eradicate Imperialists, Revisionists, and Reactionaries, or Grasp Revolution and Promote Production: Smash Thoroughly the Counterattack by the Capitalist Reactionary Line. Mao mistrusted science and technology and believed that the people could produce necessary equip- ment without expensive manufacturing facilities. Posters often contained slogans


Figure 8. Bombard the Capitalist Headquarters (The Cultural Revolution Will Shine Forever), by the Art Group for Cultural Revolution Paintings (Shanghai People’s Art Publishing House, 1976). By reenacting the scene of the first big character poster at Beijing University in May 1966, this poster attacked the “capitalist-roaders” (Mao’s rivals) within the party. The term “capitalist” commonly was used to denounce anyone in authority. Ma0 encouraged the radical students to attack with such slogans as this.

and iconography indicating that increased production would come more through the judicious use of Mao Zedong Thought than through mere technology. During the Great Leap Forward, household utensils were collected by school children and smelted down to be manufactured into bullets and guns for the revolution. The result was steel of deplorable quality.

Still other posters celebrated model heroes, such as Lei Feng, or the soldier Wang Jie, who died on duty and left a diary expressing his efforts to serve the chairman. The model industry, the Daqing Oil Production Field, and the model agricultural brigade, Dazhai Commune, were also frequently praised in posters. Mao’s frequent injunction to continue the revolution is shown by such posters as Never Forget Class Bitterness. Titles such as Never Forget the Class Struggle: Fiercely Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius exemplified another type of poster that expressed Jiang Qing’s

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Figure 9. Down with U.S. Imperialism; Yankees Get Out of Dominica, by Jin J i m (Shanghai Printing Press ofZhong Hua Publishing House, 1965). US. intervention in the Dominican Civil War in 1965 prompted China to criticize U S . imperialism and show the world her opposition to imperialist powers through solidarity with the islanders. This poster, issued the year before the Cultural Revolution was launched, illustrates typical iconography of the Soviet socialist realism style.


Figure 10. Concern from the Motherland, by Zheng Kubang (Shanghai People’s Art Publishing House, 1976). The status of Taiwan was another theme in several Cultural Revolution posters. This poster showsfishermen throwinggifts andgoods into the Taiwan Straits to be carried by the tide to the people in Taiwan. The slogans on the boat read, “We miss ourflesh-and-bone-com- patriots in Taiwan” and “Unite the Motherland, liberate Taiwan.” Party propaganda depicted the people of Taiwan as poverty-stricken and suffering under American exploitation, with women turned into prostitutes. Taiwan’s economic success was concealed.

oblique attack on intellectuals like Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping by linking them with the traitor Lin and Confucius.

Viewers familiar with the long tradition of Chinese art often note how un- Chinese these posters appear. Neither the poster format nor the media in which they were executed was typical of traditional Chinese art, where brush and ink is the usual medium and where illustrations customarily used the woodcut technique. The style of the Cultural Revolution posters is a fusion of western and Soviet realism, combined with an occasional quote from traditional literature or one of Mao’s poems in his own calligraphy. One reason for the westernized appearance of the posters is that prior to the communist takeover in 1949, most modern illustrators and designers were trained as commercial artists, using western styles. These artists carried over the styles they had learned into the revolutionary period. In addition,

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Figure 11. Long Live Marxist, Leninist, and Mao Zedong Thought! The Liberation Army Pictorial Group (The People’s Art Publishing House, 1971). The slogans on the left and on the right say, “Proletariat of the World, Unite!” Represented arefighters f rom the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, with the Chinese man in the center. This message of internationalism represents the army’s effort to keep its own power secure, and the nationalistic emblem ofthe sun demonstrates China’s desire to lead the Third World.

many students in Chinese art academies after 1949 were taught by Soviet artists employing the “socialist realism” practiced in the communist world. This style was supposed to present labor as the central hero, to be optimistic, to express the party ethos, and to depict “a revolutionary romanticism.” The figures in such works were types, not individuals. l 7

Artists for Cultural Revolution posters drew on these principles of socialist realism and proceeded to develop their own particular set of requirements: Mao’s face must always be painted as smooth, red, and luminescent-the obvious source of light, Mao is identified with the red sun rising in the east, the source of all good. Slogans such as “Mao is the reddest sun in our hearts” are represented on many

”Andrei Zhdanov, speech at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, 1934, in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt (New York, 1976), 293.


Figure 12. Completing the Zhi Bu Railway is a Great Victory for Mao Zedong Thought! by Bu Yang District Revolutionary Committee (Anhui Provincial Revolutionary Committee Publishing Bureau, 1970). In 1960 the Soviet Union pulled out of a development agreement, leaving China with many unfinished projects, including the Zhi Bu railroad. Completing the railroad was therefore an implicit criticism of the Soviets. To the left of Mao’sportrait on thefront of the train is the traditional sign for “double happiness” in yellow on red background; to the right, a soldier and a worker hold up Mao’s Little Red Book. Slogans laud self-reliance and proclaim the economic benefits of the railway.

posters by the Mao badge on the chests of workers or peasants. The revolutionary spirit expressed in socialist realist style is exemplified in Figures 12 and 13.’*

Cultural Revolution posters were often produced by teams of collaborators rather than by individual artists. Even workers in the military, factories, and other organizations were encouraged to produce propaganda. Of the 70 posters in the exhibition, 24 list party work units such as Qian S i p Railway Factory, Shanghai No. 3 Class Factory Revolutionary Committee, Red Eagle Pen of Nanjing Army, East Sea Is Red of the Air Force of Shanghai Navy, and Shanghai Textile Technique School Revolutionary Committee. Fourteen are anonymous, ascribed to neither individual

I8Andrews, Painters and Politics, 321, 342.

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Figure 13. Read Chairman Mao’s Books and Listen to His Words, by Huang Dijian (Fujian People’s Art Publishing House, 1965). While this poster does not show the red sun and the images of the military thatprevailed a year later, the image offarrners with sunflowers suggests thatpeo- ple turn to Mao us sunflowers turn to the sun. The visage of Mao is jolly, not godlike. The poster promotes modernization with the Soviet-made tractor on the right and elevates Ma03 definition of the ‘kood” classes; the soldier, worker, and peasant appear arm in arm a t the centerfront of dozens of posters.


nor group, 18 give a designer’s name, and three list a main artist within a group. Little is known of most artists.

Xian Daxing is one artist whose background is known. He was born in Shanghai and still lives there. Prior to 1949, Xian worked in a printing factory; in 1954 he became an artist with the East China Publishing House, which became the Shanghai People’s Art Publishing House after private firms were taken over by the state in 1956. Xian was self taught and came from the worker class, which was important for acceptance during this period. Before retirement he became one of the leaders of the publishing house. Xian is identified as the artist of Learn from Lei Feng How To Be a Determined Soldier of the Proletarian Revolution (Figure 3).

The other artist about whom we have information is Ha Qinwen, a Manchu, one of the minority groups in China. Ha joined the army during the Korean War and was educated at the Army Artists Academy in Beijing, and later worked in Beijing. He joined the poster section at the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Press after painting a much-praised oil portrait of Chairman Mao in 1956.

The Cultural Revolution was a complex period in contemporary Chinese history. As the Chinese government and society begin to revisit these turbulent ten years, we realize that there is still much to be learned about the era. This photo essay provides a glimpse into the political and social reality of Chinese lives in the years before and during the Cultural Revolution, from which one can see clearly how the political battles waged in the elite sphere of politics affected the Chinese people. It was a frightening time for all Chinese. In addition, this essay begins to unravel the political uses of poster art, and art more generally, by Mao and his followers. Yet even when the political dimensions of the Cultural Revolution are removed, the posters present powerful graphic images that still grip the viewer’s imagination.

propaganda posters from the chinese cultural revolution

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