ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise and uses of anti-American imagery by CCP propagandists during the early years of the PRC and within the greater Resist America, Aid Korea Campaign (1950–53). While much has been written about the deployment of anti-American propaganda by Chinese officials during the Korean conflict to rally the Chinese public for war against an American enemy, less analysis has been directed towards the careful crafting of these nationalized and localized propaganda efforts by CCP officials. Drawing upon both popular propaganda materials and archival records from local propaganda departments, I argue that Chinese officials used anti-American ideas as critical vehicles to educate the public on new notions of Chinese patriotism, nationalism and civic duty. From large-scale Resist America rallies, patriotic pledge campaigns, production competitions and city exhibitions to elementary school curriculum planning, neighbourhood newspaper reading sessions and local sanitation campaigns, CCP officials sought to instil anti-American education into all facets of Chinese public life. Despite evidence of some popular apathy towards these campaigns, Communist propagandists continued to launch a variety of different efforts to fuse anti-Americanism with ‘correct’ notions of CCP political concepts. In the process, this program to instil fear and enmity of the United States into the political consciousness of the New China paradoxically wedded CCP political ideals to the very (American) object from which they imagined they would be emancipated.
