The production of Mao’s images in photographs and paintings became one of the most significant propaganda tasks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since Mao’s rise in Yan’an. During the Yan’an period (1937–1949), the CCP developed an unsophisticated but efficient model of producing Mao iconography in various forms, attracting professional photographers and painters from big cities to join this endeavor. These individuals brought advanced skills, ideas, and creativity to Yan’an, and they became Communist Party cadres who played key roles in making urban cultural policies after 1949.

However, after 1949, the Yan’an model of iconography production came into conflict with the existing print culture in big cities, especially Shanghai. The one-party state encountered private publis...[ Read more ]

The production of Mao’s images in photographs and paintings became one of the most significant propaganda tasks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since Mao’s rise in Yan’an. During the Yan’an period (1937–1949), the CCP developed an unsophisticated but efficient model of producing Mao iconography in various forms, attracting professional photographers and painters from big cities to join this endeavor. These individuals brought advanced skills, ideas, and creativity to Yan’an, and they became Communist Party cadres who played key roles in making urban cultural policies after 1949.

However, after 1949, the Yan’an model of iconography production came into conflict with the existing print culture in big cities, especially Shanghai. The one-party state encountered private publishers who made profit from producing Mao iconography. The CCP implemented standardization and censorship to discipline private industry and corralled it into the planned economy. During the “socialist transformation” (shehuizhuyi gaizao) (1953–1956), the cultural industry, including Mao iconography production in Shanghai, became state controlled. By tracing the evolution of Mao iconography production from the Yan’an period to the early years of the PRC, this thesis examines how “print socialism” evolved in Yan’an and developed in big cities after 1949. It also investigates how the Communist state utilized, absorbed, and eventually transformed the capitalist print industry to serve its socialist political culture.