Red China

Red China

Duc Tran

            China having gone through so many different reforms and for many years been divided by foreign countries and different political parties had finally become untied under one party, the Communist. After the civil war, the People’s Republic of China was shortly created afterwards in 1949. The country was made red. Everywhere you went or did signs of the Communist party and their propaganda was at every turn. Walls being cover with all posters of propaganda for the Communist party. Everything was red.

            In the play the “Teahouse,” there is a form of propaganda. The play is set in a few different time periods of China and every period is going through a different reform. Even though China is going through changes, the same old problems that they had before are never solved. The story goes from the Qing Dynasty to right before the creation of the People’s Republic of China. There is a reason for that. This play was created around the same time as the PRC. Also in the epilogue there is a small poem. It uses lines such as “the sun will rise” and “bright new hope” (P. 196, Teahouse). The poem can be seen as referring that the new Communist party and Mao is the new hope of China. They will make things better. The arts were used to create propaganda for the new Communist party.

            Thought there were many different types of propaganda used, who were being target the most? Who was being influence by these things? The youth, in which were the easiest to influence by all sorts of things, were the ones who focus on the most. In the memoir “Growing Up with Posters,” is a great example of how propaganda was used to shape people’s lives of the youth and they way they thought. There was a lot of pressure everywhere to have the same ideas as everyone else and this especially for young people. In a young, many want to be part of the group and in this case the group that everyone was a part of the Communist party. In the memoir, there are points in which it can be seen that Chen had felt the pressure early on in her life. She says, “from an early age, I willingly subjected myself to subalterns sharing “their” dream of building and ideal society in which men and women – rich and poor, educated and uneducated- could, through their collective efforts, share equality in wealth and happiness” (P. 105, Chen). She later says when she realizes she didn’t believe all the things she was made to learn, “I have no doubt that in my unconscious, posters became indelibly inscribed as part of my childhood of wonders, my wanderings, and the emotions associated with growing pains” (P. 109, Chen). The propaganda she was exposed to did affect her and played a huge role in shaping her into the kind she is.

Another example of the propaganda molding people into the Communist idea was in the documentary, “Morning Sun.” In it, it showed how people were influence and some of the propaganda that was used. They used everything from simple posters on walls to creating a entire play to support Communism. In one the interviews, a man says, “to me, this wasn’t propaganda, this was reality” (Morning Sun). Meaning that all the ideas and propaganda that he was exposed to was a way of life. There wasn’t anything else. All the ideas he was taught, he believe to be all true.

            The propaganda not only promoted Communism and its ideas but also it helped Mao become the center of it all. Mao had become the face of all Communism in China. There were many posters of just him or him being the center of attention of posters. It went as far as “Mao sitting in a chair” to “Mao shaking hands with the people.” There was propaganda solely focused on Mao. He became “the central figure ‘who possessed the entire world” (P. 115, Chen). He was almost shown as an emperor and was all powerful. Mao had even created a spiritual A-bomb, saying that it was the most powerful thing in the world. No other country had this bomb and it was more powerful than any weapon that any other country had.

            Propaganda was a part of life during these times. The influence they had on the people is immeasurable. They didn’t just shape the people and their way of thinking, they molded them. There are some that think that Mao and his policies hurt China and some will say it help. I think it had both help and hurt the people of China. Many people had suffered under Mao’s rule and policies but I think it also helped. The people had now become united and there was a sense of unification in the country. Although all the propaganda pressure people to think the same way and have the same ideas, it still made the people come together as one.

Works Cited

Chen, Xiaomei. “Growing Up with Posters in the Maoist Era,” in Picturing Power in the People’s Republic of China, edited by Evans, Harriet and Donald, Stephanie. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1999, pp. 105-115.

Lao, She. “Teahouse.” Hong Kong: Chinese UP, 2004. Print.