“Chinese Children Rise Up!”: Representations of Children in the Work of the Cartoon Propaganda Corps during the Second Sino-Japanese War

Abstract

During the War of Resistance against Japan (1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945), children were a major subject of propaganda images. Children had become significant figures in China when May Fourth intellectuals, influenced by evolutionary thinking, deemed "the child" as a central figure for the modernization of the country. Consequently, during the war, cartoonists employed alreadyestablished representations of children for propagandistic purposes. By analyzing images published by members of the Cartoon Propaganda Corps in the wartime magazine Resistance Cartoons, this article shows how portrayals of children fulfilled symbolic as well as normative functions. These images provide us with information about the symbolic power of representations of children, and about authorities' expectations of China's youngest citizens. However, cartoonists also created images undermining the heroic rhetoric often attached to representations of children, especially after the dismissal of the Cartoon Propaganda Corps in 1940. This was the case with cartoonist Zhang Leping's (1910Leping's ( -1992 sketches of "Zhuji after the Devastation," which revealed the discrepancies between propagandistic representations and children's everyday life in wartime China.

From nation builders to global connectors: children and China’s BRI propaganda

“…In crafting this narrative, the CCP has historically used visual representations of children. Children have long been seen as symbols of hope for China's future (Farquhar 1999;Bai 2005;Jones 2011;Pozzi 2015). In Maoist China, the figure of the child has been used in Chinese propaganda posters and other forms of propaganda media (Donald 1999;Landsberger 2013).…”