Keynote lecture 1
John Crespi (Colgate University), “The Many Faces of ‘Leader Manhua’ in Post-Mao China”
Political caricature in the People’s Republic of China is notorious as a form of attack, be it against imperialists and other “enemies of the people” during the Maoist era, or as oppositional discourse by grassroots artists such as Rebel Pepper and Kuang Biao during the Weibo boom of the early 2010s. The height of the post-Mao reforms in 1985-1986 and the early Xi Jinping period from 2013-2014, however, both saw the cautious reinvention of Chinese caricature, or “leader manhua” (lingxiu manhua/lingdao manhua), for quite different purposes. By reconstructing the stories behind, and between, these two moments, this keynote address on the one hand challenges conventional understanding political caricature in China and, on the other, reveals the long shadow cast by Mao-era culture.
Panel 1. Resignification of memory
Laura Pozzi (University of Warsaw), “Mnemocomics: The San Mao Comics Strips as Agents of History and Memory in the People’s Republic of China”
This paper investigates the process through which comic strips become agents of history commemoration. Comics’ ability to activate the past is well-studied (Chute 2016), but what happens once comics representing historical events become history themselves? This paper answer these questions analysing the history of San Mao Joins the Army (1945) and The Wondering Life of San Mao (1947-1949), arguably China’s most popular comic serials (Pozzi 2014, 2017). Created by cartoonist Zhang Leping, these comics follow the adventure of the fictional child San Mao during the War of Resistance against Japan and the Civil War. While San Mao’s adventures were fictional, Zhang drew inspiration from his own life and events he witnessed. The San Mao strips, therefore, share elements with both ‘documentary comics’ and ‘historio-metagraphics’ (Polak 2020). Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, these serials has been employed as agents of memory to create new political narratives. San Mao’s strips are now celebrated in museums and used in public events to commemorate war and revolution. How did these drawings ceased to be art to become historical documents? What happen when the strips become used for educational purposed or celebratory exhibitions in museums? The case study of the San Mao strips allows for a wider exploration of what I call mnemocomics, visual narratives concerning events that took place within the reach of the artist’s memory and that nowadays are employed as reliable historical sources. The elevation of the San Mao comics to agents of historical memory can be considered unique, as it is the product of the Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to control the representation of Chinese history. Nevertheless, questions about the agencies that guide the employment of comics for the commemoration of history is becoming increasingly relevant also in democratic countries.
Leshan Li (University of Heidelberg), “From Fading Red to Rising Tianxia: The Evolution of Political Symbols in Chinese Symphonic Music from Mao to Xi”
The “Ode to Red Flag” (1965) by composer Lü Qiming was initially composed to honor Mao Zedong’s governance, integrating the most iconic musical piece representing Mao from “The East is Red.” However, in 1997, the first revised version after the Cultural Revolution, Lü removed this piece, reflecting a shift in political symbolism. Without “The East is Red,” the red flag no longer signifies Mao’s cult of personality but has evolved into a broader symbol for CCP leadership, and was widely used in national galas and also kept as the opening piece of the China National Symphony Orchestra’s annual New Year concert.
This transformation is emblematic of a larger trend: the erasure of Mao from cultural memory while the emotional and affective aspects of his era’s propaganda techniques persist. Additionally, although the overt political cult surrounding Mao was alleviated, it accentuated the foreign policy stance towards third-world countries during his era. Under Xi Jinping, the concept of Tianxia (天下)—the Confucian idea of a world shared by all—has emerged as a central ideological vision, continuing the theme established during the Mao era. In 2020, during the pandemic, an online performance on Huashan Mountain, promoted by the Shaanxi Provincial Propaganda Department, the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra (XSO) performed Tan Dun’s “For the World (天下).” This performance presented the scene from Mao‘s cult to Xi’s global vision while still leveraging traditional media strategies.
By examining the evolution of “Ode to Red Flag” alongside “For the World” through musicological and historical methodologies, this research highlights how cultural symbols are reimagined to serve new political agendas, maintaining continuity with Mao-era propaganda while redefining its message. The red flag, once synonymous with Mao’s revolutionary leadership, now serves a broader, global mission under Xi Jinping.
Panel 2. Multimedial transformations
Nick Stember (independent scholar), “Utopian Revisionism: Ritual Practice and Revolutionary Symbolism in Xiao Ganniu’s Folktale The Zhuang Brocade (1955)”
Largely forgotten today, The Zhuang Brocade (一幅僮锦, also known as A Chuang Tapestry and The Magic Tapestry) was first published as a short story in 1955, as part of a collection of folktales attributed to the Zhuang (壮) ethnic minority ‘collected and edited’ by the folklorist Xiao Zhongtang 肖钟棠 (1905–1982), who wrote under the penname Xiao Ganniu肖甘牛. In this paper, I will begin by looking at this fantastic tale within the specific context of Xiao’s early childhood experiences with Zhuang shamanist ritual practices (which draw on both Buddhism and Daoism), and his background as a schoolteacher and language reformer from the mid-1920s to the late 1940s in Guangxi, Shanghai, and (briefly) Taiwan. Secondly, I will consider the story — and its many adaptations, into lianhuanhua, an opera, and perhaps most famously, a 1959 feature-length animated film, directed by Qian Jiajun (钱家骏) — within the broader context of Maoist mass line cultural policy in the PRC in the mid- to late-1950s. Drawing on an emerging body of research into folktale films like The Zhuang Brocade, I will be arguing that this work (and other works like it) played a key role the popular imaginary of revolutionary socialism, ostensibly helping to promote the ideological goals of the Chinese Communist Party, while at the same time telling what is, essentially, a classic romance. As such, I conclude that The Zhuang Brocade provides a poignant parable for the not only utopian but moreover gendered labor of socialist construction, grounded in personal experiences of the compiler/author, drawing on the unique spiritual cosmology and material culture of the Zhuang.
Martina Caschera (University of Bergamo), “From Lianhuanhua to Manhua, from Propaganda to Soft Power”
Lianhuanhua 连环画 was the dominant way comics were conceived and disseminated during the “Seventeen years” of the Maoist Era. The medium works through the synergy between written and iconic modes, yet it maintains a structural separation between the two. The works which obtained a great success and still are lauded and remembered as “classics” and “masterpieces” were generally authored by two figures: an artist who drew and a writer who adapted a previously publish (short or long) story. This is the case of Li Shuangshuang 李双双, by Li Zhun. Published in 1960, it was adapted into a movie in 1961 and then into many lianhuanhua. One of them, made in 1964 by the renowned He Youzhi 贺友直, is the case study hereby selected to show the exemplary way lianhuanhua implemented the discourse of the “original” text (yuanben 原本) and allowed to reach a wider public in a powerful and unique way. Lianhuanhua does not seem able to embrace this role anymore: while a notion of “great lianhuanhua” 大连环画 that celebrates past successes is promoted, other ways to re-create that power through manhua 漫画 are experimented. One way of doing so is by creating and capitalizing on IPs. One of the most intriguing examples of this practice is the adaptation of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s webnovel Modao zushi魔道祖师 into tv series, donghua and manhua. Censored, yet allowed and omnipresent in contemporary PRC pop culture, the protagonists of the novels keep on expanding their public, way out the national borders. The present essay proposes to describe and compare the two transmedia/intermedial phenomena by considering the adaptation from short story/novel (the prototexts) to lianhuanhua/manhua series (the metatexts) as a way of responding to precise political needs.
Mei Liu (University of Cologne), “The Penetration of National Ideology into the Chinese Classic Story Sun Wukong Battles the White Bone Demon: An Analysis of Four Key Works (1961–2016)”
The classic tale of Sun Wukong Battles the White Bone Demon (Sun Wukong san da Baigujing) has reflected and shaped national ideologies in China since the 1960s. This study examines four pivotal adaptations: Mao Zedong and Guo Moruo’s poems (1961), a lianhuanhua as comic book (1962), the TV series Journey to the West (1986), and the film The Monkey King 2 (2016).
Mao’s and Guo’s interpretations symbolized the political atmosphere of the early 1960s. Guo’s poem idealized Sun Wukong’s dedication to eradicating evil, while Mao’s response linked the White Bone Demon to reactionary forces and upheld Sun Wukong as an allegory for revolutionary vigilance. These works underscored the Party’s call for ideological struggle and vigilance against perceived enemies of socialism. The 1962 lianhuanhua adaptation extended this narrative, portraying Sun Wukong as an ideal revolutionary and using Tang Sanzang’s hesitation as a cautionary tale against “soft-heartedness” in class struggle.
The 1986 television series reflected the reform-era shift to subtler ideological expression. Sun Wukong’s struggles emphasized perseverance and adaptability, resonating with Deng Xiaoping’s modernization policies and the evolving identity of Chinese audiences during economic reforms.
By 2016, The Monkey King 2 embraced global aesthetics and storytelling techniques, reflecting China’s rising cultural confidence. The film infused Sun Wukong with the spirit of national rejuvenation, aligning with the “China Dream” narrative of the Xi Jinping era while reimagining the White Bone Demon as a nuanced antagonist that embodied the balance between tradition and modernity.
This study highlights how the story’s recurring themes—vigilance, discipline, and transformation—have been reinterpreted to reflect and reinforce China’s socio-political priorities from the 1960s to the present.
Panel 3. Science and harmony
Marcin Jacoby (SWPS University) and Piotr Machajek (SWPS University), “Critical Visions of China as a Perfectly Harmonious Society and a World Leader in Science: ‘Hospital’ by Han Song and ‘Nova’ by Cao Fei”
Scientific progress and social harmony have become evident as areas contextualised by the Chinese state to legitimise its power and argue for its superiority. This “prolonged utopian dream of [China’s] rise and ascendence to superpower status” (Song 2021) provides artists with constant stimulus, as they very often find themselves pressed to either support, elaborate on or offer alternatives to utopias that constitute the state’s ideology. In this light, we look at two, recent works: a 2016 sci-fi novel by Han Song 韩松 Hospital (Yiyuan 医院) and a 2019 full feature film Nova (Xinxing 新星) by visual artist Cao Fei 曹斐, as part of her decade-long, multi-faceted project HX (Hongxia 红霞).
Both works combine futuristic imagery with high-socialist, anachronistic social engineering. Additionally, in both works, utopia, state ideology, scientific progress, and social harmony provoke questions about the position of an individual. In our paper, we analyze how contemporary Chinese science fiction and visual arts engage with state-driven narratives of progress and harmony, revealing tensions between collective ideology and individual agency. This approach seems all the more viable as Chinese science fiction is already considered in some research as a reflection of the country’s global strategy (Callahan 2023).
Our comparative exploration hopes to contribute to a better understanding of how high-socialist era ideals and the modern state discourses on social harmony and scientific progress function as ideological underpinnings and, at the same time, objects of critique in contemporary Chinese culture.
Panel 4. New media
Lili Jiang (Technical University of Braunschweig) and Yang Sheng (University of Munich LMU), “New Media Poster: TV Dramas as Political Tools in the Xi Jinping Era”
Since it was founded, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has utilized various propaganda tools to shape public opinion. From the revolutionary period to the period of social mobilization after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the CCP has used diverse media to convey its values and political intentions.
During the Mao era, propaganda posters were widely used as political tools. From the “Anti-Rightist Campaign” to the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement,” and the subsequent “One-Child Policy,” propaganda posters not only reflected the social dynamics of a particular historical period, but also shaped the public perceptions of government policies.
With the development of modern media, posters have gradually faded out from prominence. In recent years, TV dramas have become one of the essential tools, subtle yet powerful, for policy guidance and ideological influence. Under Xi’s rule, China has been facing significant challenges, such as high unemployment, low birth rates, and corruption. To address these issues, the CCP has increasingly turned to TV dramas to provide the public with subtle political guidance, supplementing traditional propaganda approaches such as posters.
This discussion approaches how TV dramas have been used in recent years to guide and shape public perceptions, particularly in communicating policy intentions on hot social issues. By analyzing a selection of state-approved and widely broadcast TV dramas, this study examines how storylines incorporate ideological messages and address societal concerns on the one hand, and discusses the reception from the audience and how viewers interpret and internalize these messages on the other.
Keynote lecture 2
Barbara Mittler (Heidelberg University), “Déjà Vu? Repurposing Iconic Repertoires: The Photographic Archives of Mao Zedong”
In focusing on the power of the photographic archive, this lecture is interested in how particular types of images of Mao Zedong proliferate, deliberating what these proliferations can tell us about what he was meant to mean and what he has meant (and continues to mean) to people, in China and beyond. Deliberating the ideas behind acts of meaningful amplification and semantic loading, xieyi 寫意, I will show, on the one hand, how, in the hands of Party choreographers, the Mao photograph became a very specific type of image model (déjà-vu). At the same time, I will also consider how this model became a (more or less) successful image act and how that meant that Mao actually continually (re-)made history and thus continually mattered and matters, as a Figure of Thinking and Window to Heaven (pas-encore-vu) for everyone — even as China underwent great changes after his death — the reason why every contemporary politician will be measured in Mao’s terms.
In thus reading the multiple image(d)-biographies of Mao that continue to be written, and considering the force of déjà-vu, the question of popular affect will be foregrounded. I am probing into not only how Mao is enshrined, but more importantly, on how he is remembered, how he lives on in people’s minds and for what purposes. I argue that the proliferation of reuses of Mao’s photographic image are, at the same time, a memory of the past that determines not just the present but also how the future is being conceived. I will highlight how, in this process, Mao has become the model for continuous change and transformation — on the grand and all-important scale of the economic base, as well as in the superstructure — and how that would e/affect the most intimate spheres of every individual.
Panel 5. Imprinted emotions of propaganda
Xi Xu (Freie Universität Berlin), “Paper Tiger and Everyday Enemy: Framing Knowledge and Emotion in Early PRC’s Narratives of the USA”
In the year of 1950, the Chinese Communist Party’s “Resist America, Aid Korea” campaign portrayed the United States imperialism as an enemy of peace, democracy, and the Chinese people. Central to this propaganda effort was the metaphor of the “paper tiger,” depicting the USA as a fragile enemy who was destined to be defeated. This image, disseminated through visual media, rallied soldiers at the Korean War front and mobilized civilians to support the war effort.
After the war, during the first Five-Year Plan from 1953 to 1957, the portrayal of the USA evolved into that of an “everyday enemy,” a subtler symbol yet more embedded in daily life. This shift mirrored the central government’s transition from wartime mobilization to domestic construction, using anti-American sentiment to foster broad emotional solidarity and the widest possible civilian engagement.
The construction and evolution process of these metaphors were deeply reflected in artistic propaganda, in which cartoon creation played a significant role. This paper explores the Manhua magazine during this period, which was the sole publication dedicated to political cartoons. Employing a visual semiotics approach, the study analyzes the cartoons’ titles, compositions, characterizations, and symbolic objects to uncover the visual strategies used to cultivate anti-American sentiment and consolidate public emotion.
The findings reveal how political cartoons served as a dynamic medium for ideological education and social mobilization, embedding propaganda into the cultural fabric of everyday life. Moreover, the study highlights the enduring impact of these visual strategies, which continue to shape contemporary Chinese attitudes, visual demonstration, and cultural narratives about the United States. By tracing the legacy of these metaphors, the paper underscores the long-term role of satire and visual media in influencing national identity and collective memory.
Lauren Walden (Birmingham City University), “Surrealist Pop in China: Propaganda as Muse?”
Coalescing a critique of commerciality and stardom with Freudian, oneiric elements, in 1990s China ‘Surrealist Pop’ harked back to Maoist propaganda, its psychic imprint remained palpable despite inherent incongruity when juxtaposed with a socialist market economy. During the late 1950s to early 1970s, Surrealism was often inflected with pop art in a Euro-American context, Salvador Dali’s Mao-Marylin adorning the French Vogue front cover (1971). These two diametrically opposed, world-famous figures leveraged mass appeal. The cult of personality associated with Marylin and Mao assumed what Dali termed a ‘monarchical’ presence in both capitalist and communist societies through a photographic montage of their personae. Whilst elements of parody are present, Dali equally admired Mao’s iconicity whilst foreshadowing Nixon’s China Visit and the normalizing of international relations in 1972, encouraging a dialectical method of interpreting this piece. Notwithstanding, Contemporary Chinese artists who had lived through the cataclysmic Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) were more fervent in their criticism of Mao. Nevertheless, they equally appealed to more subversive tastes of western art collectors who were key players in a nascent Chinese art market. Fang Lijun overturns the teleology of facial expressions in Socialist Realist works, referencing the Hundred Flowers Movement (1956-1957). Yue Minjun’s splices his head open Mao swimming inside it, referencing the Chairmans’s Yangtze swim (1966). Grimacing, Yue is unable to expunge the chairman from his memory. Finally, Zhong Biao’s AD 1997 contains the propaganda billboard of Deng Xiaoping displayed in Shenzhen, the leader himself becoming a branded product. His poster is opposite that of a lipstick advertisement as well as his leitmotif of the Coca-Cola kiosk, politics now subsumed by economics. In short, Surrealism balances out the insidious omnipresence of consumerism reflected by pop art aesthetics through reasserting individual sovereignty of the psyche as opposed to the collectively prescribed emotions of propaganda.
Panel 6. Noisy silent lianhuanhua
Lena Henningsen (Heidelberg University), “Sounds of Silence: Sonic Comic Stories amid the Noises of Maoist China”
Western comic art has been described as audiovisual. The depiction of noise such as music emanating from a gramophone or of stomping feet, as Eike Exner argues, proved formative for the rise of modern comics in the US. If audiovisual elements are constitutive for the medium of comics, an inquiry into the sonic qualities of lianhuanhua – the pocket size comics genre popular throughout the 20th century – suggests itself; even more so when the context of their consumption, a China immersed in the rumpus of the revolution, is also taken into the account. Throughout the Mao era, lianhuanhua were employed to mobilize readers for the revolution and to instill them with revolutionary fervor, making full use of the text and images in these comics. Often, lianhuanhua told stories of revolutionary heroes and of ferocious fights against the enemies of the revolution. However, I argue that lianhuanhua are much less noisy than their foreign counterparts: speech bubbles exist, but to a lesser extent than in Western comics; sound is not visualized on the panels; pastoral backgrounds to the action often give scenes a notion of peace and quiet; very often, protagonists are depicted solitarily and absorbed in thought, or within small groups and in calm dialogue; even scenes depicting larger groups of people typically do not shout at their readers. Adding to these stylistic inquiries and their changes over time, I will also inquire into the contexts within which comics were read, arguing that this (relative) silence offered readers an escape into an atmosphere of serenity and quietness. This, I contend, added to the popularity of the genre in a Maoist China flooded with the noises of propaganda.
Damian Mandzunowski (Heidelberg University), “Revolutionary Onomatopoeia: Soundscapes in/of Chinese Comics of the Mao Era”
A significant portion of the sonic and visual stimuli capturing people’s attention in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was intermedial. Films often included subtitles indicating how to sing along; radio broadcasts of important editorials encouraged listeners to read along; propaganda posters depicted scenes to be staged and re-enacted. This paper examines another such phenomenon: the depiction of onomatopoeia and other sounds in Chinese comics (lianhuanhua) of the Mao era (1949–1976). These popular booklets, enjoyed by millions of children and adults alike, frequently included scenes of evocation, explosions, screams, singing, radio listening, talking, or whispering, but also of natural sounds such as animals chirping or belling and elements like wind, rivers, and forests. Conversely, lianhuanhua functioned as a very “loud” medium: these supposedly silent booklets were often read aloud at street bookstalls or in mobile libraries by groups of children, or by mothers at bedtime. All this was accompanied by the sounds of flipping pages, gasps at plot twists, and the voices of the readers. How did visualised sound relate to image, text, meaning, and reception of lianhuanhua? What changes and continuities in these depictions can be traced over the decades? And which sounds made it into the visual canon of revolutionary onomatopoeia—and which not? This paper offers a first exploration of the intermediality of sound and image in lianhuanhua. By taking a set of exemplary comics as a case study, it explores how popular culture under state socialism drew upon familiar forms while creating indigenous approaches to visualizing soundscapes. It also seeks to enhance our understanding of one of the most influential media in the daily lives of people under state socialism. Expanding beyond the printed form, this paper further highlights lianhuanhua’s cultural significance during a transformative era of modern Chinese history when sound and image converged.
Panel 7. Enforcing or obliterating didacticism
Elizabeth Emrich-Rouge (University of Cambridge), “Obliteration: Multiplicity in Chinese Contemporary Art from the 1980s and ’90s”
During the mid-twentieth century in China, Mao’s image, as well as those of idealised worker, soldier and peasant figures, were reproduced on a plethora of quotidian objects, including lithographic prints, metal badges and cups, among many other types. Inundating the visual field, this repetitive propaganda surrounded the nation’s citizens, both representing centralised political power and simultaneously emphasising uniformity and similarity as key markers of China’s socialist society. (Ho 2013, 235) This paper will argue that for some contemporary Chinese artists born during the 1950s, repetition in artwork was both connected to this ‘vernacular visuality’ (Mitchell 2006), as well as indicative of a range of source material and theories, and their own personal histories. Xu Bing (born 1955) himself addressed his own devotion to multiplicity (複數性) in a 1987 Meishu article related to his MFA thesis printmaking series, noting at that time that his process ultimately led to what I will call an obliteration of form. Though later problematically positioned by the international art market as an easily-legible marker of ‘Chinese contemporary art’, Wang Guangyi’s (born 1957) Great Criticism series of paintings, placing the familiar mid-century heroic idealised figures in blatant contrast to the logos of massive multinational corporations, intimated the obliteration of message. Finally, some of Zhang Peili’s (born 1957) earliest video works, 30 x 30 (1988) and Water: Standard Version from the Cihai Dictionary (1991), with their consistent repetition of action (breaking a mirror) or language (the reading of all words in the dictionary starting with shui), communicate the obliteration of meaning. This paper will argue for a reading of the significance of multiplicity that incorporates global art market awareness on the part of the artists, as well as interests in Buddhist philosophy, political critique in a post-Tiananmen context, and ultimately, the power of repetition to obfuscate.
František Reismüller (SWPS University), “Are They Dreaming Differently? Contemporary Chinese Film Seen through the Socio-Cultural Policies of Xi Jinping Era”
Ever since Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art the idea about the connection and subordination of arts to politics has been omnipresent in China and up until today we can still see what Link observed in 1983 and called “shou” and “fang” periods, i.e. periods of loosened and tightened rules for creative creation vis-á-vis political agenda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the same time, the leading role of the CCP has been strengthened by number of policies and ideological concepts during the Xi Jinping era since 2013 (see Tsang, and Cheung, 2024) and the didactical and political role of art has, once again, come to the foreground. With the premise that this era could be considered one of “shou” periods, also in broader socio-political sense, this paper reads the works of Chinese cinema through the lenses two sets of ideological concepts and notions, the Xi Jinping’s Thought on Culture and the Chinese dream, in order to explore the relationship between the teleological process of history as prescribed by the official discourse and the individual narratives and subtle social critiques presented to the audiences. The resulting analysis reveals a tension between realistic tendencies as described by McGrath (2022) and individual utopias partially shaped by collective ideology (Wang, 2018). This paper deliberately ignores “main melody”, and propaganda films and deals mainly with films of the broad category of art house (as defined by King, 2022), or, where appropriate, genre films. Also, the paper only analyses those films which passed the censorship process, obtained the so called “dragon seal” and are thus available to local audiences.