China-Africa Relations

Building Images through Cultural Co-operation, Media Representation, and Communication

Kathryn Batchelor, Xiaoling Zhang, Kathryn Batchelor, Xiaoling Zhang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138714953
• eBook ISBN: 9781351858052
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The recent rapid growth in China's involvement in Africa is being promoted by both Chinese and African leaders as being conducted in a spirit of cooperation, friendship and equality. In the media and informally, however, a different, less harmonious picture emerges. This book explores how China and Africa really regard each other, how official images are manufactured, and how informal images are nevertheless shaped and put forward. The book covers a wide range of areas where China-Africa exchange exists, including diplomacy, technological cooperation, sport, culture and arts exchange. The book also discusses the historical development of the relationship and how it is likely to develop going forward.

Part 1
Building images through cultural cooperation and diplomacy

Section A: Historical contexts

3 Revolutionary friendship

Representing Africa during the Mao Era

Melissa Lefkowitz

Thanks to media outlets throughout the world, the current state of China’s economic relationship with Africa has nearly become common knowledge. Less salient in the media’s consciousness, however, is China’s historical relationship with Africa. The year 1955 marked the official commencement of Sino-African relations as we know it today.¹ The Bandung Conference – otherwise known as the Asian-African Conference of 1955 – was attended by country leaders who wanted to position themselves as a ‘non-aligned’ developing world in opposition to the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union (Ampiah, 2007, p. 2). Members of the conference accomplished several tasks, among them the formation of the Non-Aligned movement and a re-writing of the ‘Five Principles’, a set of tenets first established in the preamble to the 1954 Sino-India Agreement on Tibet. The revised principles established agreements along the lines of mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence (Ampiah, 2007, pp. 43–44). It is these principles that over half a century later Chinese leaders still point to as the country’s bedrock for foreign policy and aid strategies.²

In the decade following Bandung, Premier Zhou Enlai would utilise the tenets of the Five Principles towards Chairman Mao’s initiative to become the advocate for a world ‘struggle against imperialism’.³ While the Bandung Conference signalled the official establishment of Sino-African relations in terms of values and diplomatic relationships, Zhou Enlai’s official 1963–1964 tour to Africa, during which he disseminated the tenets of the Bandung Principles in their revised ‘Eight Principles’ form to 10 countries on the continent (Strauss, 2009, p. 781), represented a shift in China’s foreign policy, the crux of which focused on establishing what Deborah Brautigam (1998, p. 39) has described as a ‘counterweight to both Soviet hegemony and capitalist imperialism’.⁴ As a result of this new policy, the official rhetoric of solidarity first introduced during the Bandung Conference greatly increased; moreover, key terms from the Five Principles, such as ‘self-reliance’, ‘equality and mutual benefit’ and ‘non-interference’ rose to the forefront in diplomatic speeches involving Africa.⁵

On the mainland, as a means of pursuing its global movement of solidarity and anti-imperialism, China incorporated Africa into an imagined global community composed of members of developing nations around the world. In addition to written articles praising China’s relations with African nations, illustrated images of African peoples were in wide circulation throughout China during the sixties and the seventies, namely in the form of posters, stamps and cartoon books, while physical objects bearing the semblance of Africans, such as sculptures, trophies and biscuit boxes also circulated throughout the country.⁶ It is difficult to pinpoint exactly how many and in what locations this work made a presence. Posters and cartoon books state how many were printed during a given year but do not specify their destinations and generally offer a range rather than a given number (e.g. 1–600,000). However, it is certain that posters did serve a substantial role in the dissemination of rhetoric, at least throughout the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) period.⁷ Additionally, newsreels covering diplomatic and sporting events were broadcast to the public through China’s only television network, Beijing Television, later renamed China Central Television (CCTV), which served as an official mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Hong et al., 2009, p. 40).

Ultimately, a series of archetypes were crafted and repeatedly reinforced in the artwork.⁸ Mass-produced artwork acted as a medium through which the government could express party policy through fictional figures who, in turn, became ‘ideal types’ or models of Maoist ideology.⁹ The newsreels, on the other hand, while at times projecting a parallel image to that of the artwork, introduced ‘versions’ of African peoples not prominent in the illustrated works. To examine this aspect of China’s cultural history, specifically during the Cultural Revolution, is to delve into the complex process the Chinese state underwent to simultaneously promote Maoist ideology and an official rhetoric that prioritised the maintenance of non-interference, self-reliance, and equality and mutual benefit between China and Africa.¹⁰

As a means of taxonomising African archetypes, in this article I classify two ‘types’ of representations of African peoples: the friend and the revolutionary hero.¹¹ I will address these types as they are depicted in artwork in the first two sections; the third section is devoted to newsreels and their role in contributing to and confusing established representations. The research I have done is not exhaustive by any means, and the headings I have created should not be regarded as static in their positioning, but rather serve as placeholders for my examination of the multifaceted works of cultural production from this period.

Creating unity out of difference: the African as ‘friend’

An important distinction between China’s principles underlying its public solidarity with Third World nations’ liberation movements during the sixties and seventies and its overarching goals is that although the movement was ostensibly driven by China’s aspiration for a worldwide proletariat consciousness, the goal was to fight ‘imperialism’, specifically that of the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union, on a global scale. This goal could be achieved by any means necessary, even if it meant linking up with Communist groups, religious groups, workers, immigrants, intellectuals or capitalists. The purpose of creating a universal link between the proletarian revolution and the Third World (East Asia, Africa and Latin America) revolution movements was to form an internationally united front (W. Zhang, 2007, p. 85). I will go into more detail on the ‘united front’ at a later point. First, however, it is important to address the government’s incorporation of Africa’s disparate cultures into its cultural production during this period.

Cultural Revolution posters were used as propaganda tools by the Chinese government to convey information simply and clearly via images and small amounts of text. Posters played a significant role during this period, as illiteracy rates were very high throughout the country, and people had infrequent access to televisions or projectors on which newsreels or documentaries could be screened (Huang, 2013, p. 1). Within these posters, Chinese citizens were depicted as workers, peasants or soldiers (Evans, 1999, p. 72). Located outside of the worker, peasant, soldier triumvirate, Africans were distinguished in terms of clothing. Traditional robe, Muslim clothing or Western attire comprised the three basic categorisations of distinction among an entire continent of people.¹² However reductive, these archetypes reflected the myriad nations and liberation movements with which China had diplomatic relations.¹³ A poster entitled ‘Revolutionary friendship is as deep as the ocean’ (geming youyi shen ru hai) (Guo, 1975) (Figure 3.1) exemplifies this balancing act. The poster features two Africans photographing a group of seven people who are standing around a tractor. In the background, five people dressed in Western-style clothing are being lectured by a Chinese worker. On the left-hand side of the poster, behind the tractor around which people are posing for a photograph, is the slogan ‘self-reliance’ (zili gengsheng), a term applied both to the previously mentioned policy instated in 1964 surrounding China’s pledge to assist Third World countries in their development of a ‘self-reliant way’ (as opposed to imperialists, who wielded power by means of fostering a relationship predicated upon dependence) and to the Cultural Revolution policy of local self-reliance, which obligated workers to self-sufficiently produce grain.¹⁴ The double-layered meaning of ‘self-reliance’ represents a transnational relationship between Africans and Chinese workers along policy lines.

Figure 3.1 ‘Geming youyi shen ru hai [Revolutionary friendship is as deep as the ocean]’, (1975). Reproduced with the permission of the University of Westminster Archive

An especially striking aspect of the representation of Africans as depicted in Cultural Revolution posters is the degree to which the government had to simultaneously craft these culturally distinctive archetypes and instil Africans with agency (as a means of propagating anti-imperialism rhetoric) while promoting Mao Zedong Thought. Observing the Africans and Chinese in this image, at first glance it is clear that a diverse array of clothing styles is featured in this drawing. The man taking the picture is dressed in a Western style; the two African women are wearing ‘traditional’ clothing; and the African man positioned towards the left of the image is clad in Muslim garb, wearing a fez and a white robe. However, if we continue to observe colour in this poster, it quickly becomes clear that elements of the Africans’ clothing complement objects in the photo, specifically the red tractor and the red writing on the wall.¹⁵ Indeed, the yellow and the red hues of the women’s dresses (and even the Muslim African’s red fez) are representative of the CCP. The men’s clothing, on the other hand, complement the Chinese worker’s clothing; their neutral tones blend in with their denim.

Though the Africans are implicitly linked to Mao Zedong Thought along chromatic lines, it is interesting to think about how ‘difference’ operates in representations of Africans during this period, especially with regard to depictions of African women. In her article on the representation of women in Cultural Revolution posters, Harriet Evans (1999, pp. 73–74) posits that the women in ‘Revolutionary Friendship’ are ‘dominant sources of colour, gaiety, and exuberance’, qualities that perpetuate the image of the ‘ethnic subaltern’ as ‘the exotic embodiment of a range of imaginaries, fantasies, and sublimations that the dominant discourse denied in the representation of Han women’. In reference to the representation of ‘Third World women’ in cultural production produced during the Cultural Revolution, Xiaomei Chen (2002, p. 157) writes that ‘these women served primarily as an ideological construct and were denied any subjectivity or personal identity’. Therefore, following the observations of Evans and Chen, we could simply regard the representations of African women as portrayals of vacuous counterparts to model Han women. However, two questions linger in this reading. First, how can an exotic other contribute to transnational solidarity from the periphery? Second, in Cultural Revolution artwork, who (or, more appropriately, which models) were endowed with subjectivities or individual identities?

Rather than compare and contrast African men and women with Han men and women, these questions may be answered if we compare the portrayal of Africans with that of China’s ethnic minorities, or shaoshu minzu. As with Africans, China’s ethnic minorities were actively incorporated into works of cultural production during the Cultural Revolution. Additionally, markers of their alterity were demonstrated through portrayals of their local dress, cultural activities and physical characteristics (Cushing & Tomkins, 2007, p. 97). Referring to the inclusion of ethnic minorities in model operas, Chen (2002, p. 149) writes that ‘the predominant ideology in effect located the ethnic periphery at the centre of its own version of multiculturalism’. Echoing Chen, Yingjin Zhang (1997, pp. 8...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction and context
• Part 1 Building images through cultural cooperation and diplomacy
• Part 2 Building images through media representation and communication
• Index