Thomas Warham

The patriotic celebrations of the People’s Republic of China have aroused interest from observers throughout contemporary history. From 1949 to 1970, the Communist Party of China mobilised the Beijing National Day (1 October) parade as a means to publicise party policy on both a national and international level. The festivities demonstrated how the ruling elite co-opted nationalism as a persuasive tool to advance the aims and objectives of the Chinese Communist Party. The creation of the annual 1 October parades were one example of a wide array of propaganda created by the Politburo to promote their interests and maintain their authority.

As a carefully constructed and imaginatively designed public event, the parades drew upon select cultural motifs in order to create an eye-catching, nation-state aesthetic suitable for the evolving ideologies of Chinese communism. By focusing on the specific visual mechanisms employed by the Chinese state as part of a continually shifting national identity, the complexity of the political ritual may be more clearly understood. Calligraphy, portraiture, flags, floats and the human body were analysed as individual elements in relation to the parade medium. It is through ritual performance and collective social spectacle that nationalism gained widespread support in New China during the period. Analysing how the Mao-era National Day parades were designed elucidates why they proved a viable method for the dissemination of a wide variety of cultural, economic and political objectives that were encompassed under the wider aegis of Chinese nationalism.