Bellinetti, Maria Caterina (2018) Building a Nation: the Construction of Modern China Through CCP's Propaganda Images
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Bellinetti, Maria Caterina (2018) Building a nation: the construction of modern China through CCP's propaganda images. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/30913/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Building a Nation The Construction of Modern China through CCP’s Propaganda Images Maria Caterina Bellinetti Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art School of Culture and Creative Arts College of Arts University of Glasgow February 2018 Abstract Building a Nation The Construction of Modern China Through CCP’s Propaganda Images To date, the study of Chinese propaganda photography has been limited. While some research has been made on post-1949 photography, the photographic production of the pre-1949 period has not been sufficiently explored. Focusing on the years of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), this thesis aims at addressing this gap in the literature and at providing an analysis of how the Chinese Communist Party exploited photography for propaganda purposes during the war. Through the images taken by Party affiliated photographers and printed on the Jin Cha Ji Pictorial, the first Communist photographic propaganda magazine, this study aims to show how this type of visual propaganda aimed not only at narrating the events of the war against Japan, but also at creating a new idea of Chinese nation. This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first, The Jin Cha Ji Pictorial: A Brief History presents the history of the magazine and the work of the CCP affiliated photographers who contributed to its creation and popularity. Chapter two, The Geography of a Revolution, explores how a new cultural landscape was visually constructed to create the basis of the political legitimation that the CCP needed during wartime. Chapter three, Becoming Modern Women, investigates the symbolic and ideological value of the spinning wheel in 1943 in relation to women’s contribution to the war effort and the thorny issue of women empowerment. Lastly, chapter four, Moulding the Future looks at the visual representation of childhood and discusses the issue of militarisation and masculinisation of childhood during wartime. This study ends with few considerations on the propagandistic, historical and artistic value of Communist propaganda photography during the Second Sino- Japanese War as well as a reflection on how the symbolic and ideological significance of some of the photographs presented here are still recognisable in contemporary Chinese propaganda. Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................................ IV MAP OF THE AREAS CONTROLLED BY THE CCP IN NORTHERN CHINA, 1945 ........................... VII INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................... VIII THE JIN CHA JI PICTORIAL: A BRIEF HISTORY ........................................................................................... 1 THE GEOGRAPHY OF A REVOLUTION .......................................................................................................... 1 THE CREATION OF A CULTURAL LANDSCAPE ................................................................................................................... 5 THE EIGHTH ROUTE ARMY .................................................................................................................................................. 9 TRADITIONAL LANDSCAPES AND SACRED MOUNTAINS .............................................................................................. 13 THE NEW IMMORTALS: THE SENTINELS OF THE EIGHTH ROUTE ARMY ................................................................ 20 THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA ............................................................................................................................................ 27 SOLDIERS OF THE EIGHTH ROUTE ARMY FIGHTING OVER THE GREAT WALL........................................................ 36 THE LONG MARCH .............................................................................................................................................................. 45 YAN’AN, THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE CHINESE NATION .................................................................................................. 53 CONCLUSIONS ...................................................................................................................................................................... 61 BECOMING MODERN WOMEN ...................................................................................................................... 66 THE LIFE OF CHINESE WOMEN ......................................................................................................................................... 69 GENGZHI TU: A CONFUCIAN REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WEAVING IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE SOCIETY ..................................................................................................................................... 73 EVENING IN A FARMER’S HOME: THE NEW SOCIALIST WOMAN ................................................................................ 84 HERO EMULATION PROPAGANDA: WOMEN AT THE SPINNING WHEEL AS WARTIME HEROINES ..................... 96 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................................................... 108 MOULDING THE FUTURE ............................................................................................................................ 114 CHILDREN, CHILDHOOD AND NATION .......................................................................................................................... 119 CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD IN CHINESE ART ............................................................................................................. 122 THE ROLE OF CHILDREN FOR PROPAGANDA STRATEGIES........................................................................................ 126 CHILDREN AS VICTIMS ..................................................................................................................................................... 130 LITTLE FARMERS .............................................................................................................................................................. 138 LITTLE SOLDIERS .............................................................................................................................................................. 147 MOULDING THE FUTURE ................................................................................................................................................. 155 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................................................... 161 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................... 165 APPENDIX A ..................................................................................................................................................... 176 APPENDIX B ..................................................................................................................................................... 179 APPENDIX C...................................................................................................................................................... 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................................... 190 Acknowledgments It is with the greatest appreciation and respect that I thank my two supervisors, Nicholas Pearce and Deborah Lewer. You accepted my fledgling project and contributed immensely to make it, hopefully, a relevant one. Your mentoring was essential not only for the making of this thesis, but also for giving me the tools to improve myself as a researcher and, most of all, as a person. A special thank you goes to John Richards who, aside from the great chats we had in his office, gave me the chance to be a tutor and teach History of Art. I am also in debt to all those academics who, knowingly or not, contributed to the realisation of this project. Laura De Giorgi, Roberto Peruzzi, Sabrina Rastelli, Zhu Zhu, Daniel Hammond, Christopher Rosenmeier, Aaron William Moore, Julian Ward, Iain Banks, Helen Wang, Josepha Richards, and all the others I received help and encouragement through Twitter. I am grateful for the grants I received from the UCCL Committee in London and the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities that allowed me to conduct