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

ABSTRACT

This article uses a case study of three propaganda videos featuring children promoting the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to analyse how children are used in post-1978 Chinese propaganda. Our close semiotic analysis of these videos takes a two-pronged approach. First, we trace how the images of children in the BRI videos emerge out of a historical trajectory of deploying children as political messengers in Chinese propaganda. Second, we consider how this deployment of children differs due to the expansion of the target audience to include international viewers. Children continue to be used as propaganda mouthpieces to strengthen China’s prowess. However, although propaganda materials in the past used images of children as nation-builders, the BRI videos utilize children not to build up the individual nation, but rather to break down national barriers and project a happy future where all nations work together towards economic prosperity. Images of children’s playfulness, purity, and joy are harnessed to downplay the perception of China as a threat, transforming it into a friend. However, we identify elements in the videos that undermine their overarching message.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Belt and Road Initiative
• children
• propaganda
• politics

Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to Paola Voci for her immensely helpful comments on an earlier draft. This article would not have been possible without the kind encouragement of Benjamin Penny, Gillian Russell, and Emily Potter. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest.

Notes

1. The BRI publicity campaign does not only use children. It also uses other formats, including adults in live action videos, claymation, and animation to convey the message (see for example China Daily 2017; New China TV 2017; PDNMC 2017; Xinhua News 2017).

2. ‘Together, Prosperous’ is one of a series of Public Service Advertisements that China Central Television (CCTV) produced ahead of the Belt and Road Forum held in May 2017. On the China Global Television Network (CGTN) official YouTube channel, however, the title of the video is ‘Kids’ perspective on globalization with new Belt & Road ads’ instead of ‘Together, Prosperous’, even though the video also features adults enjoying the benefits of BRI.

3. Like ‘Together, Prosperous’, this two-minute video was released before the Beijing One Belt One Road summit in May 2017. The title is a play on words, because ‘How’ sounds like ‘hao’ in Mandarin Chinese, which means ‘good’. Fuxing Road Studio is a highly secretive media production studio with no traceable physical address or visible presence online (Li 2018). Reportedly a part of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Zhonggong zhongyang duiwai lianluo bu) (Wong 2016), the Studio focuses on producing propaganda for foreign audiences.

4. Repetition of the character, huan, in the name is a way of showing affection to children in Chinese societies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shih-Wen Sue Chen

Dr Shih-Wen Sue Chen is Senior Lecturer in Writing and Literature at Deakin University. She received her PhD in Literature, Screen and Theatre Studies from the Australian National University. Her research focuses on British and Chinese children’s literature and culture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. She is the author of Children’s Literature and Transnational Knowledge in Modern China: Education, Religion, and Childhood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Representations of China in British Children’s Fiction, 1851–1911 (Routledge, 2013). Her work has been published in edited books as well as in International Research in Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature in Education, Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, Barnboken: Journal of Children’s Literature Research, Australian Literary Studies, and Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. Email: [email protected].

Sin Wen Lau

Dr Sin Wen Lau is Senior Lecturer in the Chinese Programme at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University. Her research interests include the anthropology of China, religion, gender, children and youth. She is the author of Overseas Chinese Christians in Contemporary China (Brill 2020) and co-edited Religion and Mobility in a Globalising Asia: New Ethnographic Explorations (Routledge 2014). Her work has been published in The Asian Studies Review, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, and in edited volumes. Email: [email protected]