Exhibiting Socialist Chineseness Abroad: PRC’s Audio-visual Propaganda in Cold War Hong Kong and Beyond, 1950s-1970s

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dc.contributor.advisorGroppe, Alison
dc.contributor.authorTao, Sabrina Y.
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-07T22:56:17Z
dc.date.issued2024-08-07
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation investigates how socialist Chinese audiovisual productions (especially cinema) that incorporate folklore, regional, and traditional Chinese cultural elements after socialist reform were exported internationally to win the hearts and minds of diasporic Chinese audiences via the intermediary of Hong Kong in the early Cold War era. In contrast with previous conceptions on PRC’s domestic propaganda that highlight revolution and class struggle, my dissertation argues that “socialist Chineseness” was an alternative as it blurred revolutionary messages in its audiovisual representations and marketing strategies for the purpose of circumventing censorship from the British colonial government and to construct a benevolent image of the new PRC to global audiences. Muting overt political themes while still shadowed by ideologies of socialism and anti-colonialism, these audio-visual texts created a nostalgic space of “cultural China” that blurred boundaries between regions, nationhood, social class, political and cultural identifications. In the meantime, they also had anti-colonial and anti-capitalist stances and acted as a contesting discourse against pro-rightist and pro-American culture in Cold War East Asia. By tracing these long-neglected transnational cultural interactions, this study hopes to reexamine the national boundary of Chinese cinema, as PRC films in the early socialist era were circulated in the broader regions of the Sinosphere. Meanwhile, by building a bridge between PRC and Hong Kong studies, this study explores the role of Hong Kong as a cultural nexus for the PRC’s audiovisual propaganda overseas. The dissertation not only reexamines how China presented itself to the world historically, but also explores how the socialist bloc conducted and responded to the global cultural Cold War in the realm of “soft power.”en_US
dc.description.embargo2026-07-23
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/29849
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Oregon
dc.rightsAll Rights Reserved.
dc.subjectChinese diasporaen_US
dc.subjectCultural Cold Waren_US
dc.subjectHong Kongen_US
dc.subjectSocialist Chinese cinema and audiovisual mediaen_US
dc.subjectSocialist Chinesenessen_US
dc.subjectTransnational circulationen_US
dc.titleExhibiting Socialist Chineseness Abroad: PRC’s Audio-visual Propaganda in Cold War Hong Kong and Beyond, 1950s-1970s
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
thesis.degree.disciplineDepartment of East Asian Languages and Literatures
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Oregon
thesis.degree.leveldoctoral
thesis.degree.namePh.D.

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