Cold War Cultural Diplomacy in Outward State Translation of Chinese Literature in the PRC (1949–1966)

ABSTRACT

During the formative years (1949–1966) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the outward translation of Chinese literature was a crucial element of an ambitious project of cultural diplomacy. Chinese leaders sought to redefine the PRC by projecting a positive self-image of the newly born state to generate interest, sympathy and support abroad during the Cold War. Despite its political and cultural importance, this project in translational practice has received little scholarly attention. Drawing on archival documents, this article focuses on the rationale, intentions and mechanisms behind the Chinese government’s outward translation project as a form of cultural diplomacy in the first 17 years of the PRC. It thereby provides preliminary observations on the reception and effects of the PRC’s export enterprise, specifically in the English-speaking world, which created new fault-lines as much as it built bridges during the Cold War. It also foreshadows the inherent tensions and challenges for the present China’s more ambitious cultural diplomacy project via ‘sending out’ Chinese literature and culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Outward translation of Chinese literature
• Cold War
• cultural diplomacy
• People’s Republic of China (PRC)
• 1949–1966

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief of Asian Studies Review, Associate Professor David Hundt, for their careful reading of the manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this regard, the Franklin Book Program may be an exception. The nonprofit Franklin Book Program existed from 1952 until 1978 and helped to make possible the publication of some 3,000 titles in languages such as Arabic, Urdu, Bengali, Indonesian and Portuguese. The programme involved the intelligentsia of each country in the process of book selection and translation, and established both a publishing infrastructure and a market for US books in areas where there had been none (see Haddadian-Moghaddam, 2016).

2. In the early 1950s, the International Liaison Department of the Ministry of Culture published four English translations of Chinese literary works – namely, Cao Ming’s The Moving Force (1950), Li Zhihua’s Struggle against Counter-struggle (1950), Shi Yan’s It Happened at Willow Castle (1951) and Zhao Shuli’s Rhymes of Li Yu-tsai and Other Stories (1951), in the name of ‘the Cultural Press’. In fact, the Cultural Press was not formally founded. The FLP reprinted Zhao Shuli’s Rhymes of Li Yu-tsai and Other Stories in 1954.

3. In 1959, the working plan on the FLP’s publications stated that ‘In socialist countries, the translations of Chinese books were often conducted locally, enabling each country to more easily select topics based on their needs’ (Zhou & Qi, 1999, 140).

4. For Alley’s other activities as a ‘peace worker’ in the new China, see Brady (2003).

5. The advertisement slogan shown on the inside back covers of some issues of the journal and the FLP books reads ‘Know China through its literature – Read CHINESE LITERATURE, a literary journal in English’.

6. Such a policy can be detected in the notes of ‘The 1957 Plan for the Selection of Classical Chinese Literature of the FLP’ and ‘The 1958 Selection of Classical Chinese Literature Series’.

7. See Duiwai wenhua lianluoju (1955). Unfortunately, the data collected in this volume is not complete: the names of the translators, the titles in the target languages, and the publication years of some translations are also not given. I have thus cross-checked details wherever possible.

8. For more on revolutionary Chinese literary and ideological influence on other Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, in the 1950s, see Nguyen (2004, 173–183).

9. The original essay was entitled ‘Dao Qunzhong Zhong Qu Luohu’ (To settle down among the masses), which was the text of a speech delivered to the Second National Conference of Chinese Cultural Workers held in September 1953.

10. The most negative response to printed materials from China can be seen in the use of ‘Communist propaganda images to counter Communist propaganda’, which in turn ‘shaped some anti-Communist activism in the United States’ (Manning, 2010, 159–160). On the use of publications from the Soviet Union and China in the US during the Cold War, see Manning (2010).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant No. 18BYY019, and Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science, PRC, under Grant No. GD20CWY11.