With his smooth, warm, ruddy face which radiated light in all directions, Chairman Mao Zedong was a fixture in Chinese propaganda posters produced between the birth of the People’s Republic in 1949 and the early 1980s.

Chairman Mao, portrayed as a stoic superhero (aka the Great Teacher, the Great Leader, the Great Helmsman, the Supreme Commander), appeared in all kinds of situations (inspecting factories, smoking a cigarette with peasant workers, standing by the Yangzi River in a bathrobe, presiding over the bow of a ship, or floating over a sea of red flags), flanked by strong, healthy, ageless men and “masculinized” women and children wearing baggy, sexless, drab clothing. The goal of each poster was to show the Chinese people what sort of behavior was considered morally correct and how great the future of Communist China would be if everyone followed the same path toward utopia by uniting together.

This book brings together a selection of colorful propaganda artworks and cultural artifacts of Chinese propaganda posters, many of which are now extremely rare.

About the Authors

Anchee Min was born and raised in Mao’s China. A staunch party supporter, she was awarded the lead role in a film to be made by Mao’s wife, Jiang Ching, but the death of Mao soon after caused the film to be cancelled. In 1984, Min emigrated to the United States and later wrote the bestselling biography Becoming Madame Mao.

The poet and writer Duo Duo was born in Beijing in 1951 and now lives on the island of Hainan in southern China. After spending time in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands, he taught literature at Hainan University. He is considered one of the most outstanding poets to emerge from China since the Cultural Revolution.

Stefan R. Landsberger (1955–2024) was a lecturer at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Leiden University, editor of the journal China Information, and owner of one of the world's largest private collections of Chinese propaganda posters. He published numerous works on Chinese propaganda and maintained an extensive website on this genre of political communication.

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