Constructing A New Citizen: The Use of Model Workers in 'New China' 1949-1965

Having suffered a 'century of humiliation,' a ruinous war with Japan and a highly divisive civil war, China was looking for answers to the problems that had plagued it prior to the Revolution. Politicians, philosophers and film directors of the 1940s had played a key role in identifying exactly what the social problems facing China were. Following the Revolution in 1949 the newly victorious Communist Party of China would show the country what the solutions were.

Whilst Mao's desire to reconstruct Chinese culture has been well documented, less attention has been given to the way in which propaganda was used in a highly integrated way to present this message to the people through a variety of different mediums. This thesis focuses on the use of specific 'Model Workers' to identify and examine the way in which poster propaganda and the cinema were used to further the Party's goals of national unity, cultural reform and the construction of a socialist state prior to the start of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s.