Advertising in China

[Editor’s Note:This article is a part of ADText. ]

Fig. 1.

A Coke Billboard in China [ENG] [Source]

“If you could sell every Chinese a Coke, you’d be very rich indeed.”

—Unnamed 20th-Century Coca-Cola Executive

“Poverty is not socialism.
To be rich is glorious.”

—Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), Prominent Politician, Reformist, and Head of the Chinese Communist Party

Contradictory elements coexist in modern China—urban sophistication and rural backwardness, wealth and poverty, and the imported along with the indigenous. Nothing seems more contradictory to outsiders than the seemingly opposing economic philosophies of capitalism and communism—but both are robust forces in the China of the new millennium.

FYI...
Familiarize yourself with timelines of Chinese history and dynasties.

This unit explores the role of advertising within the avowedly socialist political environment of China. It examines the history of advertising in China prior to the advent of the communist regime at the end of World War II, the state-sponsored propaganda that replaced consumer advertising from the 1950s onwards, and the reintroduction and proliferation of advertising in modern China. It explores the regulations imposed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on advertising, the cultural and social values expressed in advertisements, the media outlets available in modern China, and the relations between multinational advertising agencies operating in China and indigenous agencies.

1. Advertising in Pre-War China

The history of advertising in China¹ falls into three broad periods in which the goals and techniques of publicity are somewhat different. These are: (1) Chinese advertising up to the end of World War II, (2) the high period of state-sponsored propaganda (roughly, 1949–1980s), and (3) contemporary China (that is, China after the Open Door Policy began in the late 1970s).

The first period has no clearly delineated beginning since advertisements of one sort or another are known to have existed in China for centuries. The long history of pictorial advertising in China is confirmed by the existence of a copper printing plate from the Song Dynasty (960–1260). Inscriptions on the engraving plate indicate that it was used to print wrapping paper for acupuncture needles. The advertising copy and accompanying illustration proclaimed the excellence of the needles and provided the address where they were manufactured.

Fig. 2.

Earliest Known Pictorial Advertisement from China (c. 960–1260) [Source]

Few actual advertisements printed before the 19th century survive today. A small number of packing boxes, wrapping papers, and handbills with advertising messages from as long ago as one thousand years ago have been preserved and give some idea of China’s rich advertising past. Ellen Johnston Laing offers three reasons why so few old advertisements exist: (1) paper and ink were themselves fragile and not expected to have a long life, (2) paper containing advertisements was often recycled for other uses, and (3) a tradition known as the “reverence for lettered paper” on which Chinese characters were written called for the proper disposal of paper.

Treaties signed at the end of the Opium Wars in 1842 opened five Chinese cities to Western trade. Manuscripts and archives from this period show that advertising proliferated alongside the trade. Laing writes that by the mid-1800s, “Western products in shops attracted both the curious just to gawk and the wealthy to purchase some modern item. By the late 19th century, Shanghai Chinese were familiar with Western gadgets such as desk or mantel clocks, hanging oil lamps with glass globes, and other technological advances, soon to include trains, trams, and automobiles.”²

Fig. 3.

Advertising Was Prevalent in Early 20th-Century Shanghai [Source]

Along with Western products came many forms of promotional advertising—signboards, posters, black-and-white newspaper ads, and colorful advertising calendars. Images in advertisements introduced Chinese audiences to Western representational art, and it was largely through advertising that Western forms of art gained familiarity and acceptance in China.

Fig. 4.

This Billboard Advertised BAT Cigarettes along a Chinese Roadside (c. 1920) [Source]

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