This thesis will examine the cross-cultural trends in Chinese political art and design from the 1930s through the first decade of the People’s Republic. While European and Japanese influences are well-documented in China’s propaganda formats, the interchange with the Soviet Union has been underplayed, particularly since the Sino-Soviet split.

Starting with the May 4th Movement in 1919, political art played a new role in China. Its importance grew throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and was crucial during the War of Resistance (1937-45). Modern graphic forms circulated in urban centres, in numerous journals, exhibitions and societies. Adaptations of traditional forms and styles were better received in village China.  Politically, China was divided into three parts at this time (occupied, Nationalist and Communist-controlled). The processes and practices by which Soviet propaganda production were transmitted to these areas will be examined  through surviving works and documents.

The cartoonist and critic Jack Chen (Chen Yifan, 1908-95) may be the crucial link here. Chen was the first Chinese artist to study at VKhutemas (the Soviet Higher Art and Technical Workshops). Upon graduation, he worked at Pravda and was taught there by the great Soviet cartoonists, including Viktor Deni (1893-1946) and Boris Yefimov (1900-2008). He then served as art editor of the Moscow News. Back in China, he collected cartoons, drawings and prints, then organised exhibitions of these works in Europe, the US and USSR , for the National Salvation Committee. Although Chen was a public face outside China, he is much less well-known within. Lu Shao-fei (1903-95) is another important figure in this study. Artist, editor of Modern Cartoons and organizer of the first National Cartoon Exhibition in 1936, Lu published collections of Soviet political satire and posters, and after 1949 worked among Russians in Xinjiang.

Cartoons and protest prints comprise much of the surviving art of the Civil War period (1946-49). After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, two dominant strands of propaganda design prevailed: Socialist realism and folk art. The Soviet contribution to style in the former is obvious, but training methods, institutional arrangements, exhibition and distribution practices require investigation. The interchange in folk art is also significant and will be traced. The Soviets transformed lubki into the Rosta windows posters, and Chinese designers made traditional popular prints (nianhua) into harbingers of the new society. In wartime, in both countries, patriotism prevailed: such works were enthusiastically produced and received. The efficacy of these practices, when lives were in turmoil in the name of social re-organisation, is another matter.