Comics Culture in the People’s Republic of China

Introduction

Comics Culture in the People’s Republic of China (ChinaComx) sets out to investigate the intellectual, political, social, historical, and transcultural dimensions of a medium still heavily understudied: lianhuanhua, literally “linked images.”

Objectives

It studies them as a medium from the People’s Republic of China and its place within the larger Chinese and global comics culture.

Key Areas of Study

• Production, Distribution, and Consumption: The project sheds light on how comics contribute to the project of nation building, to the creation of a new socialist man, and to the continued legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
• Public Reception: It investigates how these at times highly propagandistic texts were read by ordinary citizens.

Methodology

In clearly circumscribed case studies, the project analyzes:

1. Large amounts of literary and filmic adaptations
2. The conventions of text-image relations (and the breaking of these conventions)
3. Narrative qualities
4. The visual language which is very much indebted to other visual forms of art, including traditional Chinese visual art, cartoons, propaganda posters, photography, and movies.

Cultural Context

With its focus on practices and meaning making, ChinaComx moreover delves into the changing global cultural, political, and economic connections within the socialist cultural sphere, within the Greater China region, East Asia, and beyond, tracing distinct and changing relationships of domestic and foreign elements.

Historical Scope

The case studies cover developments since the late 1940s to the present and situate concrete phenomena within larger developments and traditions.

Contribution to Knowledge

In providing more knowledge about comic culture from China and in contributing to theoretical debates, ChinaComx aims to delineate the term „lianhuanhua“ as a distinct genre and area of academic research that bears specific characteristics, being embedded in a particular context of origin, yet changing across time and space as Japanese manga or Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées.