Great Leap Forward

As a result of the collectivization of the countryside, certain amenities and services that had until then been reserved for city dwellers, now came within reach of the rural population. The "electrification of the countryside", in combination with the mechanization of agriculture, was among these. Judging by the poster below, the availability of these amenities was apparently used to entice the people to join such collectives.

Great Leap Forward,

Before long, the land that had been handed out to the peasants was slowly returned to the state. In a process of collectivization that started in 1953, the farmers were first organized in so-called mutual help teams. These were gradually merged into lower agrarian cooperatives. During the Great Leap Forward, these lower forms of cooperatives would be merged into huge People's Communes.

land reform

Despite the centrality of Land Reform in the party's policies, publication data from 1949 indicate that less than two percent of the total poster production was devoted to typical rural topics, including methods to improve production. This suggests even more strongly the extent to which posters were intended to support other types of mobilizational techniques. It may also point to important shifts that emerged in the political agenda. Shortly after the fields had been turned over to the tiller, preparations began to familiarize the peasantry with the next step in agricultural reform.

land reform

Nationwide agicultural reforms took place from 1950 until the spring of 1953. In some places, the law was executed with more force than was called for, leading to the mistreatment of former landlords. In all, about one million of them were executed. Although the poster above, published in 1952, boasts that land reform basically had been completed, this was only accomplished in 1953. In all, 700 million mu of land (1 mu is .0667 hectares) and various means of production were redistributed among 300 million peasants who had been landless before. Only the areas inhabited by the minority nationalities had not been touched by the Law yet.

Land Reform

Long before the Land Reform Law was promulgated on 30 June 1950, the CCP had been experimenting with measures to return the land to the vast numbers of peasants. These experiments, which had taken place wherever the party had been able to maintain a stronghold, including the Jiangxi Soviet and Yan'an, had known various radical aspects, but boiled down to the abolishment of landownership by the landlord class and the introduction of peasant landownership. A new element that was introduced in 1950 was the provision that the development of agricultural production resulting from this would pave the way for the industrialization of China. As a result, many peasant households held the deed for their piece of land for the first time ever.

Shanghai Style

It is striking to see how many of these early to mid-1950s posters use the same pictorial style that was employed in the so-called "Shanghai Style" that had been so popular in advertisements for cigarettes, medicines and beer in the pre-war and pre-Liberation periods.

Economic Construction Period

The poster below was designed to accompany a drive to persuade people to purchase bonds during the "Economic Construction Period" which started in December 1953. Ostensibly well-to-do urbanites and private businessmen were urged to subscribe from January to March 1954, and to hand over their ample savings to the government in order to contribute to national reconstruction. The sign on the left identifies the receiving party as the "National Economic Reconstruction Bonds Subscription Office".

soldiers

They included drives to spread Land Reform policies and to publicize new rules and regulations, such as the Marriage Law; rectification movements of intellectuals; campaigns to weed out corruption, bureaucratism and petty crime; and movements to boost popular support for the new regime, in particular in the cities. All the people were mobilized to help reconstruct the country in whatever manner possible, including (recently) demobilized soldiers.

warning

An almost continuous stream of mass movements that addressed national, international, moral and social topics marked the first decade of the PRC. This 'flow of campaigns', organized both at the national and the local levels, and in the rural and urban areas, was intended to strengthen the support for the CCP, to deepen the understanding of the new ideology that guided China, and to promote economic production. The goals for most of these initial mass movements were comparatively easy to understand.

Mao Zedong

great leader,Mao Zedong

labor

A small part of the collection — mostly materials from the early 1970s up to the early 1990s — has been included in a book I published quite some time ago which traces the development of Chinese propaganda art.  which contains many excellent color illustrations, is still available. A more recent publication, Chinese Propaganda Poster,contains a number of posters that can also be found on this website.

scientist

The designers of many of the posters shown on this website have been identified. More information about these artists --short biographies, often including other examples of the works they produced-- can be found by clicking on those images that have been linked (for example, the posters above and below). The translation of the slogans on the posters becomes visible when one hovers the pointer over the images. This feature now is available for IE- and FireFox users!

labor

Due to the enormous visual impact these posters have even today. Moreover, in a society that has been changing as fundamentally as the Chinese since 1949, propaganda posters enable us to witness these historic and aesthetic changes from up close. The first 50 years of the People's Republic have left us with a body of materials that give an idea of how China saw itself, and its future, over the years. By showing a breathtaking glimpse of the way in which the country has developed over the past 50 years, these materials provide an illustrated history of modern China in a nutshell.

worker

For more general information about the genre of Chinese propaganda art.The sections devoted to artists and designers — provide details about a great number of people engaged in poster design.

Chinese Propaganda Poster

This site is dedicated to the Chinese propaganda poster as it has been produced from 1937 till the present day. So-called propaganda art has played a major supporting role in the many campaigns that were designed to mobilize the people, and throughout the People's Republic, the propaganda poster has been the favored vehicle through which art conveyed model behavior. I've been collecting these Chinese political posters for many years now, and have brought together quite a nice collection of some 2,000 titles, spanning almost six decades of Chinese poster production. From time to time, new sections will be added to the site, devoted to the political, social and economic movements and developments that have found their way into visual propaganda over the years. As my collection expands over time, existing sections will expand as well in order to include more or more exciting posters that I have acquired.