Amigos e inimigos do povo

: a educação patriótica e a propaganda nacionalista chinesa (1984-1999)

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s, in light of drastic social and political changes, the Chinese Communist Party launched a ‘Patriotic Education Campaign’ with the goal of legitimizing its regime among the younger generations. In this context, a host of new textbooks, curricular and extracurricular activities, and nationalistic media productions were made under the control of the Central Propaganda Department. This thesis studies two sets of elementary school textbooks of Chinese Literacy and a cartoon television series created in the context of the Patriotic Education Campaign during the 1980s and 1990s. It aims to unravel the relationship between propaganda and education in PRC and the representations of the ‘heroes’ and the ‘enemies’ created by the Chinese Communist Party. With this purpose in mind, I use the methods of discourse analysis and multimodal analysis. The present research reveals that the concepts of propaganda and education in the context of the PRC are ontologically interchangeable. The government has implemented the education system in order to conduct pro-regime propaganda, and all propaganda campaigns in the PRC have been conducted on behalf of education and by means of it. The main ‘heroes’ created in this campaign are Chinese and foreign Communist Party leaders as well as Chinese and foreign figures related to diverse social revolutions, many of which are also Communist. On the contrary, the ‘enemies’ created in this campaign, which are mainly the feudal and nationalist ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and the imperialist and ruthless foreign invaders, especially the Japanese. All of these groups have extremely negative representations. However, there also exists some ambiguity in the narratives about a number of ‘heroes’ and ‘enemies’, such as Sun Yat-Sen and the United States. This ambiguity possibly occurs due to the political and economic relationship between the PRC and the countries or regions involved during this time period, as well as to the differences of narratives and collective memories created about the same historical events by each side.

Date of Award	3 Apr 2023
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Nelson Ribeiro (Supervisor)