Introduction

In December 1978, the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a comprehensive framework for the modernization of agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology. Economic reform required social order and political predictability. Widespread as the initial appeal of the prints may have been, it has been impossible to gauge their success in propagandizing their ‘unnoticed’ political contents. Alternatives to propaganda posters, however, became available in the mid-1980s. These were more in line with the popular demand for aesthetically pleasing decorations, preferably without any explicit or implicit political contents, and the masses did not hesitate to switch to these new materials. The decline in the use of the propaganda poster as a medium for communicating political messages, and its reduced appeal to the population, raise a number of interesting questions concerning the effectiveness of the poster.