513101 CIN0010.1177/0920203X13513101China InformationNaftali research-article2014 Article Orna Naftali INFORMATION Marketing war and the military to children and youth in China: Little Red Soldiers in the digital age china China Information 2014, Vol. 28(1) 3–25 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0920203X13513101 cin.sagepub.com The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Abstract Since the early 2000s, the Chinese military has been engaged in the production of military- and war-themed cultural products which increasingly employ new media and new technologies. Many of these products specifically target children and youth, and many are also a result of collaborations between the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and commercial forces. This article offers a preliminary exploration of how such PLA–civilian productions attempt to package and market war and the military to contemporary Chinese children and youth. It compares these current endeavours to previous depictions of war and the military in the youth culture of the Maoist period, and reflects on what this comparison can tell us about recent changes in official as well as popular conceptualizations of childhood, youth, and violence in the People’s Republic of China. The analysis demonstrates that contemporary PLA products for children and youth display positive attitudes toward the military and toward officially sanctioned military violence. However, these products also subscribe to new public sensitivities about children and their involvement in acts of brutality, thereby reflecting the changing needs and interests of the PLA and of the Chinese Communist Party in the post-Cold War, post-Tiananmen era. Keywords children’s media, youth culture, post-socialist China, military, war, patriotic education In a recent interview, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) political instructor complained about young conscripts. ‘The 90s generation, who grew up at the time of the Internet Corresponding author: Orna Naftali, Department of Asian Studies and School of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel. Email: [email protected] 4 China Information 28(1) boom and were influenced by what they read on websites, are not as compliant as their predecessors,’ he said. ‘They argue about everything, from whether it is necessary to fold quilts neatly to human rights issues related to one’s privacy.’ Some of these new recruits, the instructor further grumbled, are nothing more than ‘spoilt brats … occupied with technological gizmos such as MP3, iPod, and PSP (PlayStation Portable)’.1 This complaint reveals the exasperation of army personnel with the value system and psychological make-up of the current generation of urban youngsters in China. It is also indicative of the PLA’s growing concern about the appeal of military service and the image of the military in general in present-day China. To address these concerns and remain relevant in the age of market reforms, the PLA propaganda apparatus has, over the past decade or so, embarked on an ‘intensive charm offensive’, consisting, among other things, of the production of military- and war-themed popular culture works.2 Many of these works specifically target children and youth, and many are also a result of collaborations between the Chinese military and commercial forces. In this article, I offer a preliminary exploration of how such PLA–civilian productions currently attempt to package and market war and the military to contemporary Chinese youth. I compare these current attempts to previous depictions of war and the military in the youth culture of the Maoist era, and reflect on what this comparison can tell us about recent changes in official as well as popular conceptualizations of childhood and military violence in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Children and youth all over the world have been deeply engaged in different aspects of modern war – and not simply as victims. They often become a part of the meaning of war by the way in which societies use them as ‘symbols of virtue, sacrifice, and patriotism’.3 Post-Second World War representations of children in Western media nonetheless tend to depict youngsters’ involvement in war as a serious offence on the moral and natural order and as a violation of the ‘sacred’ nature of childhood, which in modern liberal societies constitutes a time of passivity and vulnerability.4 Romantic notions of the innocent, defenceless child have also been present in 20th-century Chinese cultural works, most notably during the May Fourth Period. However, in the Maoist era, the idea of the vulnerable, passive child was largely marginalized and ultimately eclipsed by the notion of children as active political agents who can and ought to partake in brutal struggles.5 As Farquhar and Donald have shown in their ground-breaking studies, stories, films, cartoons, and propaganda posters of the Maoist era often celebrated the figures of heroic children and situated young protagonists in the historic settings of the fight against Nationalists or the War against Japan (1937–45), thereby allowing children ‘to develop the requisite qualities of bravery, resolution and a keen class consciousness in the midst of revolutionary struggle’.6 This was particularly true for works of the Cultural Revolution period (1966–76), in which literary and filmic young characters were shown imitating the actions of adults by partaking in violent skirmishes, even if they displayed rebelliousness and non-conformity in the process.7 In contrast, Chinese media of the reform period has tended to de-emphasize the fighting skills of child protagonists. Seeking to entertain rather than merely educate young audiences, a growing number of writers, directors, and producers in post-1978 China have started to adopt a more ‘child-centred’ approach and to place a premium on the Naftali 5 ‘unique features’ of childhood.8 Consequently, contemporary PRC media works for children tend to show young characters engaging in a world of play and fantasy rather than political struggle. They also allow children to display ‘innocent’ behaviour, ‘vulnerability’, and ‘tender human feelings’.9 Despite this notable transformation, the image of the belligerent child has not altogether disappeared from the media scene in contemporary China. Rather, it has gained new life under the impetus of the Chinese government’s patriotic education (爱国主义教育) campaign, in place since the early 1990s. Historically, the PLA has been as much an educational organ as a defence force. Over the years, the PLA’s media apparatus has overseen more than a dozen news, educational, recreational, and publishing institutions.10 Today, the military media continues to play a central role in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda efforts. However, its ideological task is becoming ever more difficult as China goes through a period of unprecedented change and as the military struggles to adapt to a more liberal, marketoriented environment.11 The present article describes how the PLA creatively attempts to address this challenge through the co-production of ‘fashionable’ youth products together with commercial companies. Drawing on a critical analysis of a number of recent PLA products, including a 2007 adaptation of a Cultural Revolution war film, a 2009 military toy series, and a 2009 pop song and animated video, I note some of the key differences between past and present representations of children in Chinese military products. I demonstrate that contemporary PLA products for children display highly positive attitudes toward the military and toward officially sanctioned military violence. As such, they form a crucial part in the ongoing formation of the PRC ‘war culture’ – a culture that has portrayed war as a glorifying experience and which has had tremendous power in shaping Chinese national memory throughout the 20th century.12 However, a careful examination of the design and contents of contemporary military– civilian productions, and a comparison between the images and narratives they convey and those depicted in the exclusive PLA productions of the Maoist period, reveal a major representational shift. This shift, I argue, is a product of the changing needs and interests of the PLA and CCP in the post-Cold War, post-Tiananmen era. It further reflects changing notions of childhood and violence within China’s urban population – a transformation that the PLA is forced to acknowledge in its current drive to recruit more sophisticated, better educated urban youths of middle-class backgrounds. Playing war games with righteous Red Soldiers In the fall of 2009, the Chinese government staged a massive military parade as part of the national celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. As Chinese citizens were gearing up to watch the newest generation of tanks, missiles, and aircraft on live television,13 the PLA propaganda apparatus launched yet another public relations initiative, addressing children and youth: a new military toy series branded ‘Red Justice Division’ (正义红师). The launching of the PLA toy series was accompanied by the release of a Red Justice Division theme song, video clip, and Internet website, all of which were produced as a result of the collaboration between the PLA’s August First 6 China Information 28(1) Film Studio and the Puzzle Animation Studio, a Shenzhen commercial entertainment company. The release of the Red Justice Division toy series was itself not an ad hoc initiative but part of an ongoing propaganda campaign waged by the Chinese government and the PLA since the early 1990s. The patriotic education campaign aims to foster the dual spirit of ‘love for the nation’ and ‘love for the army’ among the Chinese public and in particular youth.14 Campaign initiatives accordingly include taking school students on regular trips to visit ‘patriotic education bases’, including war memorials, military museums, and sites of important battles in revolutionary wars,15 where students can imbibe ‘national defence values’ and ‘national security awareness’.16 In the past two decades or so, Chinese students have also been taking part in month-long military training on campuses and military bases. According to participants, the programme, which initially applied to college students but was recently expanded to include primary- and high-school students, offers activities such as ‘singing army songs, learning self-defence, and studying advanced weaponry, such as U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and aircraft carriers’.17 The 1994 ‘Outline on Implementing Patriotic Education’ states that the goal of these various educational activities is to ‘strengthen the civil-military unity’ within Chinese society, enhance students’ ability ‘to resist foreign invasion’ and deepen the consciousness of the youth about the importance of ‘guarding the territorial integrity, national sovereignty and independence of the motherland’.18 To better communicate with the younger generation, the campaign calls for the use of entertainment as a medium of education, and employs a broad range of media channels for this purpose, including art exhibitions, books, newspapers, television shows, video and audio products, films, computer games, and the Internet.19 A recurrent theme in this ongoing media campaign is China’s ‘traumatic and humiliating experience in the face of Western and Japanese incursions’,20 along with the notion that the country’s development is the result of ‘unceasing effort to lift itself up and to struggle against foreign aggression and oppression after repeated setbacks’21 and hard fighting in ‘bloody battles’.22 Working under the assumption that the fostering of ‘military culture’ plays a prominent role in conveying these messages and in developing a patriotic consciousness,23 the Chinese army has contributed its share to these propaganda initiatives. Since the 1990s, the PLA media apparatus has made a concerted effort to expand its reach into television broadcasting and, especially in the last decade or so, it has been involved in the production of a large number of war- and military-themed prime-time television dramas, adult and children’s films, and children’s toys.24 Many of these PLA products have been the fruit of military–civilian collaborations, which is not so remarkable if we consider that during the 1980s and 1990s, the PLA as a whole was extensively engaged in commercial activities. The military media apparatus joined the fray, and the PLA’s August First Film Studio even started making popular entertainment products for money,25 engaging in co-productions with commercial companies both inside and outside China, for instance in Hong Kong, Canada, Japan, and the United States.26 In the late 1990s, the Chinese army was ordered to divest its commercial interests because of rampant malpractices. Nonetheless, PLA media units were permitted to continue with business operations that were deemed ‘politically acceptable’ as long as Naftali 7 such activities did not interfere with their primary duties and as long as they abided by the operational model of ‘propaganda first, profitability second’.27 Under this model, PLA media productions are required to focus on a number of central themes, including ‘the portrayal of a positive and strongly patriotic image of the military as the defender of the country’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and ideological purity’; ‘instilling a strong sense of patriotism and nationalism within the general public and linking this with the notion that a prosperous country requires a strong army’; ‘stressing the PLA’s complete loyalty and obedience to the CCP and the core leadership’; ‘showing off the technological progress that has been achieved in the military’s modernization drive’; as well as ‘painting the PLA as a peaceful force that does not represent a security threat to any other country unless China’s national interests are challenged’.28 The new Red Justice Division toy series and related products embody these official themes. According to reports in the Chinese media, the release of the toys in 2009 was meant to fill a gap in China’s market, which carried the GI Joe series produced by Hasbro, an American toy company, but left Chinese children with ‘no national military hero’ of their own.29 Just as with Hasbro’s products, the PLA toy set consists of miniature soldiers equipped with a range of state-of-the-art military props, including fighter jets, helicopters, armoured vehicles, tanks, boats and rifles, all of which are said to be based on real PLA equipment. With no less than 21 movable joints, the Red Justice Division soldier is ideally suited to a child’s active play; it can also take on any potential rival in hand-tohand combat. Notably, however, the design of the Chinese soldier carries some unique features which distinguish it from similar toys on the market. A comparison of the Chinese toy soldier with its main adversary – the American GI Joe soldier – is particularly telling. Hasbro’s GI Joe was specifically designed with a stoic, even robot-like, expression to demonstrate its ability to ‘face danger with an unchanging, unemotional demeanor’.30 In contrast, the PLA toy soldier is marked by much more expressive, humanlike facial features.31 Admittedly, such a design choice is a bit risky when it comes to a military toy set, for it renders the soldier susceptible to emotional and perhaps even physical injury. Yet this strategy may give the toy soldier a more trustworthy, amiable face, and by extension the Chinese military as a whole. The attempt to accord the PLA soldier with humane qualities even at the risk of rendering him more vulnerable is further illustrated by the equipment and attire of some of the toys in the Red Justice Division series. For instance, the Red Soldier (红兵) set in the series possesses nothing more than bayonets, swords, and antiquarian rifles. Riding on horseback, the soldiers are attired in khaki shorts, woollen leggings, straw hats, and straw sandals. Severely under-equipped, a Red Soldier toy is certainly no match for a modern GI Joe, and seems oddly out of place in today’s high technology warfare. The former does bring to mind, however, the Red Army soldiers of the 1930s and 1940s. During this period, the Red Army was mostly a low-tech infantry force engaged in continuous guerrilla campaigns against the Japanese military and Nationalist forces. Since 1949, the stories, rituals, and symbols that were born in the years of guerrilla resistance came to constitute the PLA mythology in the founding narrative of the birth of the nation. They also construct the Chinese military’s image as a highly disciplined, humane army, which historically was low on weaponry but high in morale and ideological conviction.32 8 China Information 28(1) With approximately 2.3 million soldiers and a defence budget that has grown by double digits in recent years, today’s PLA has come a long way since the hardships of the revolutionary period. Why market under-equipped PLA soldiers to contemporary Chinese youth then? The answer may lie in the current ideological and pragmatic concerns of the CCP and Chinese military. In recent years, China has become involved in several territorial disputes with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines in the East and South China seas.33 However, it is also the case that since the end of the Cold War there has not been an immediate military threat to China’s security. Instead, the CCP has been more concerned with its legitimacy, which it tries to cement through performance, focusing on economic development and political stability. While Chinese leaders have made repeated statements regarding the need to ‘constantly enhance [the PLA’s] capability to … win local wars under information age conditions’,34 the Chinese military has in recent years devoted much of its manpower to rescue efforts during natural disasters. These activities may have been part of an attempt to restore the PLA’s image, which had been damaged after military troops crushed the pro-democracy movement in 1989 and because of the PLA’s rampant involveme in commercial activities.35 In designing a contemporary military toy series which includes both high-tech combatants as well as ‘barefoot soldiers’, the PLA therefore strives to connect the future of the Chinese military with its past, marked by qualities such as self-sacrifice and abnegation.35 The marketing of the technologically inferior toy may also signify the PLA’s efforts to present contemporary urban youth in China, often derided for succumbing ‘to the lure of individualism and consumerism’, with a role model of a modern capable soldier, who is also honourable and humane, and above all whose duty is to ‘serve the people’.36 Notably, this theme is also present in the Red Justice Division theme song, released in 2009 as part of the toys’ marketing campaign. The Red Justice Division theme song was created by one of China’s best-known record producers, Zhang Yadong, who has worked with many noted Chinese artistes, including the Cantonese pop-diva Wang Fei (Faye Wong). The song is performed by the Beijing-based all-male popular band, Super VC (果味VC), and employs a very modern pop tune. Its lyrics, penned by Super VC’s members, celebrate the ‘timeless heroism’ of PLA soldiers and the idea that the Chinese army is in fact a force for ‘love’. To quote the song itself: ‘You cannot stop justice; the power of love leads us in the right direction; you cannot stop the light of hope; defend the ideals of the Red Justice Division and complete the glorious mission of our peers.’ The Red Justice Division song was accompanied by the release of a music video, made available on various Chinese video sites and on the product’s official website (tellingly named ‘worldpeacekeepers.net’). Jointly produced by the PLA’s August First Film Studio and Puzzle Animation Studio, the music video shows the animated versions of Super VC’s four young band members. Exuding the air of ‘soft masculinity’ which has become increasingly popular among contemporary urban youth in China,37 the singers are shown sporting fashionable suits and the kind of trendy, untidy hairdos more likely to be worn by teen pin-ups than traditional military crooners. They play their conspicuously red guitars in a war-torn urban environment while a battle involving infantry, fighter jets, helicopters, and tanks takes place around them. At the end of the clip, the lead singer bends down to gently caress a red peony. The flower, which is associated with Naftali 9 the theme of peace in Chinese popular discourse, is blooming against all odds amid the ruins of the battleground. Clearly, the producers of the Red Justice Division song and music video have gone to great lengths to create a fashionable image for the PLA toy series and, by extension, the PLA itself, an image which may appeal to the sort of sophisticated urban youth in China who consume popular music, new media, and animated films. In doing so, however, the producers have also been careful to follow the stipulation that military media products should show off the technological progress that has been achieved in the PLA’s modernization drive, while presenting the military as a peaceful force that does not pose a security threat to any other country. A second animated video, which is also available on the Red Justice Division official website, sends a similar message. In this second video, young viewers are shown PLA soldiers sent on a mission to rescue a young boy who has been taken hostage by enemy robots. The Chinese soldiers in the video are fully equipped with advanced high-tech weaponry, which creates dazzling, giant explosions. Their mission is successful, and as the evil androids are blown to pieces, no blood is spilled on either side. According to an interview with the producer of the video at Puzzle Animation Studio, the use of robots instead of human soldiers in the role of the enemy was a deliberate choice on the part of PLA personnel, who wished to avoid potential offence to any foreign power.38 As noted by some perceptive Chinese netizens, however, the automatons shown in the PLA video carry a clear resemblance to the highly popular transforming alien robots of the Transformers franchise, jointly produced by Hasbro (American) and Takara Tomy (Japanese) toy companies. This choice, along with the decision to produce a cartoon rather than a realistic-looking video, has further symbolic implications. The PLA animation arguably renders military action as an exhilarating adventure, thereby fostering a ‘war-game mentality’, which normalizes military fighting by blurring differences between reality and simulation or make-believe.39 By presenting war as an ‘absolute unreality’, the creators of the Red Justice Division cartoon are in fact selling combat to Chinese children as a harmless fantasy in which no one – at least no human – is hurt and ‘the good guys always win’.40 In the process, the clip creators have also been careful to place the young male protagonist in an innocent, inactive role compared to that of the adult combatants. This may not seem such a remarkable decision in the context of post-Second World War European and North American media, which typically feature children in the role of blameless victims of war brutality.41 However, compared to PLA representations of children and war up to the late 1970s, this is in fact a major representational shift. Children, military, and violence in PRC culture During the Maoist period, Chinese society witnessed the spread of the military’s characteristic organizational techniques, routines, and attitudes to civilian realms.42 In the 1960s, for instance, Mao called upon the entire nation to ‘learn from the PLA’ and to ‘Learn from Lei Feng’ – the model soldier – and the military was hailed as the ‘crucible of revolutionary citizenship’. Stories of heroic sacrifice pervaded PRC mass media, and ‘soldiery became not only the noblest profession to which every youngster aspired, but 10 China Information 28(1) also one of the few viable paths of upward mobility for many rural youth’.43 In accord with Mao’s instruction to millions of Chinese children that they ‘go out to face the world and brave the storm’,44 school and college students received training in armed battle,45 and when relations between China and the Soviet Union had deteriorated to an armed conflict at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, youngsters also took part in preparations for war by building air-defence tunnels in northern China.46 Works for children and youth, including those produced by the PLA’s media apparatus, reflected and further propagated the militarization of Chinese society during the Maoist period and in particular during the Cultural Revolution. The small number of children’s works that appeared during this period was stern, militant, and overtly political in content.47 Stories and films of the mid-1960s to mid-1970s drew on the assumption that ‘there is no such thing as “an adult’s standpoint” or “a child’s standpoint”’, since ‘a person’s standpoint is determined by class position rather than by age’.48 Cultural Revolution public discourse condemned the notion that youngsters possess unique characteristics, labelling it a ‘bourgeois way of life’, and instead emphasized the importance ‘of allowing children to forge and develop their character by facing difficulty under tough conditions’.49 In this atmosphere, producers of children’s media had no qualms about creating works which sought to inculcate in children ‘combatant qualities required in revolutionary struggle: bravery and resoluteness to the point of martyrdom’.50 After 1978, however, PRC cultural works for children underwent a dramatic transformation. Fantasy and fairy tales started to replace the older theme of political struggle, and literary and filmic creations paid attention to ‘children’s psychology’, allowing young protagonists to display more ‘childish’ features and ‘human feelings’, such as ‘love and a sense of beauty’.51 Notably, this development corresponded with the emergence of a new public discourse about children and their education in post-socialist urban China. Particularly since the 1990s, PRC official legislation, mass media publications, and pedagogic materials have been promoting the idea that children are persons with distinct needs and rights, including the right to protection from violence, and that childhood ought to be a happy, carefree time of innocence and play.52 In line with these developments, the PRC government has in recent years banned the sale of audio and video products containing elements of ‘horror, violence, and cruelty’ to minors, as these are now deemed ‘unfit for children, and extremely harmful for their psychological development’.53 The general media in China has likewise shifted from condoning to condemning the depiction of children’s heroic actions, while arguing that the idea that ‘just like adults’, children, should ‘display their sense of social responsibility to the point of self-sacrifice’, is ‘in fundamental contradiction with the principles of child protection’.54 PLA cultural products for children have followed suit. Though sticking to the themes of war and the military they have nonetheless had to adapt to new public tastes and sensitivities. A notable example of this process of adaptation is the 2007 remake of the Cultural Revolution children’s war film Sparkling Red Star (闪闪的红星).55 Originally produced in 1974 by the PLA’s August First Film Studio, Sparkling Red Star is still considered a classic in China’s film industry. Moreover, as part of the patriotic education campaign, the Chinese government has recently re-canonized it as a ‘red classic’ and included the original title in the list of ‘One hundred patriotic films, songs, Naftali 11 and books’ recommended for children.56 Unlike the original film, the new version of Sparkling Red Star (now carrying the slightly different Chinese title, 闪闪的红星: 孩子 的天空)57 is the fruit of military–civilian collaboration between August First Film Studio and Puzzle Animation Studio. The idea for the remake of the film as a cartoon came from the Hong Kong businessman and Chairman of Puzzle Animation Studio, Chin Yiu-tong, who reportedly ‘wanted to do something’ for the fledgling Chinese animation industry which was struggling to keep up with American and Japanese competitors. The cartoon cost more than US$2 million to make and was created by the award-winning Hong Kong director Dante Lam, who insisted on including mainly hand-drawn characters which resemble the work of the famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.58 In what follows, I do not seek to present a full-fledged comparison between the two film versions, but rather to discuss the new version of the film while identifying points of similarity and difference between the remake and the original, particularly concerning the rendering of PLA soldiers as well as of children’s involvement in acts of violence. I consider adaptations to be an instructive barometer for an age, since each film version may reflect the different political and social realities of its time and the contemporary concerns of its audiences and producers.59 I therefore ask what the comparison between the two versions can tell us about the changing interests of the PLA and the current concerns of Chinese audiences in the post-socialist era. From small soldiers to innocent victims: Sparkling Red Star revisited As with the original film, the 2007 animated version of Sparkling Red Star is set in the mid-1930s. It tells the story of Pan Dongzi, a young Chinese boy who helps the Red Army fight an evil landlord, Hu Hansan. When the boy’s father joins the Red Army’s Long March, the 10-year-old Dongzi challenges the landlord who has taken over the village and sent the young boy and his mother fleeing. Dongzi’s mother then sacrifices herself to save the Red Army soldiers who have been ambushed by Hu’s people. From that point onwards, Dongzi, alone, experiences failures and frustrations, striving constantly to become a tougher, stronger fighter. Under the influence of Captain Wu who is in charge of a local Red Army unit, Dongzi is transformed from a naughty, sometimes stubborn child into a brave and passionate youth who successfully beats the evil landlord in the film’s final showdown. The 2007 cartoon is far less didactic on the issue of socialist revolutionary struggle and also lacks in declarations of ‘love for Chairman Mao’, both of which were required staples of any work produced during the ultra-politicized decade of the Cultural Revolution. However, like the older motion picture, the 2007 remake is replete with celebratory depictions of war and the military. Red Army soldiers are consistently portrayed as righteous, courageous fighters who will readily sacrifice their lives for the sake of a wounded comrade and the welfare of the common people. Notably, the soldiers engage not only in dangerous guerrilla skirmishes, but also in the building of a new village school and clinic, as well as in rice distribution to the poor farmers who joyfully declare that the ‘Red Army has come to rescue us!’ 12 China Information 28(1) As in the Maoist-era version, the 2007 animated film also shows how the Red Army soldier, Captain Wu, becomes in charge of Dongzi’s training and education following the departure of the child’s father to fight with the Red Army and the sacrificial death of his mother. The portrayal of the military captain as both a valiant soldier and a caring father closely resembles the original version in that it symbolically substitutes the armed forces for Dongzi’s biological parents, thereby making the PLA ‘a surrogate parent and ultimate protector of the child’.60 The new film further performs its duty in justifying the act of war to young audiences. For instance, upon his departure to fight with the Red Army, Dongzi’s father solemnly tells the boy (and contemporary audiences) that ‘fighting is necessary in order to safeguard the future of our beloved country’ and ‘the future of Dongzi’ himself. Before he leaves he gives his son a special memento: a Red Army badge in the shape of a sparkling red star, from which the boy can draw courage and inspiration. Dongzi, equipped with this special token, proceeds to join the Children’s Brigade. There, he and the other village boys (but not the girls) receive military instruction from Captain Wu, who tells the children that in order to ‘build a world of equality’ everyone must ‘unite and fight’. Taking these words to heart, Dongzi and his little friends work together to assist the PLA soldiers in their battle against the landlord and his men, and in a dreamlike scene at the end of the cartoon, Dongzi’s father, who has just returned to the village accompanied by a large platoon, proudly pins the red star badge on the boy’s cap, symbolically initiating him into the ranks of the military. These scenes largely resemble those of the 1974 original, and yet in contrast to the older film, the recent version conveys a much more ambiguous message concerning the effects of war on individual lives and the appropriateness of children’s involvement in acts of violence. For instance, in the Cultural Revolution version, Dongzi repeatedly hears that he must not cry or be afraid of anything, including death, ‘for that is what makes a true soldier’. In contrast, the new version shows the young boy experiencing deep fear for the life of his father who is away at war, as well as shock and inconsolable grief after witnessing the death of his mother who is shot in a military ambush. Indeed, the 2007 cartoon also includes a poignant new scene, in which viewers see the young boy running around frantically and desperately crying to his dead mother: ‘Mama, don’t go! Mama, please come back!’ and promising that, if she returns, he will behave and study hard. Replacing the infallible, hardened little warrior of the Cultural Revolution period with a more well-rounded protagonist who exhibits a broader range of emotions and is allowed to be weak and vulnerable, the new version of Sparkling Red Star illustrates the so-called humanistic turn in Chinese war films of the post-1978 period. As noted by a number of Chinese scholars, this change also appears in the depiction of the tragic, emotional impact of war on individuals’ lives, replacing the previous tendency of PRC war films to celebrate battle as a necessary experience for the forging of heroic revolutionary characters.61 The new Sparkling Red Star cartoon further departs from the original in that it constructs childhood as a time of study and play rather than battle. In a discussion of another recent adaptation of a Maoist-era red classic, Little Soldier Zhangga (小兵张嘎), Liu Yingming observes that unlike the original film, the 2004 televised version of this 1963 war film places greater emphasis on the theme of childish ‘fun and games’.62 Notably, the televised adaptation of Little Soldier Zhangga was produced by a privately owned Naftali 13 commercial company in China. An examination of the new version of Sparkling Red Star reveals a similar move on the part of the PLA’s August First Film Studio and Puzzle Animation Studio. In the 1974 version of Sparkling Red Star, we see for instance a debate between Captain Wu, the Red Army soldier, and the peasant, Grandpa Song. While the latter is afraid that ‘Dongzi is too young to participate in the revolution and should be protected by adults’, the Red Army Captain insists that the boy ‘should plunge into class struggle’. As the film later makes clear, Grandpa Song is wrong.63 The new animated version of the film addresses the issue of children’s involvement in violent struggle in a decidedly different manner. Whereas in the 1970s film, Dongzi daydreams of joining the military and taking part in combat, children in the 2007 cartoon repeatedly hear that they must go to school and work hard at their studies – a message that was anathema at the time the initial film was produced, but which once again is in vogue in post-socialist China. Moreover, children in the new version are shown not only helping the PLA in its battle against the evil landlord, but also engaging in more benign activities such as hiking and exploring nature, playing with animals, or pulling pranks on each other. Such scenes are altogether missing from the 1974 version which has only one notable play scene, in which children conduct a war game. The reconstruction of childhood as a time of study and play is further accompanied by a new approach to the nature of children’s engagement in acts of brutality. The original film includes several scenes involving the use of extreme violence, at times even bordering on sadism against the child protagonist, and by extension against viewers themselves.64 In contrast, the new version of the film considerably tones down the level of violence, especially where minors are involved. For instance, in the original, there is a scene early on in the story in which the landlord and his men tie the seven-year-old Dongzi to a tree and mercilessly flog him. The new version retains this scene but replaces the child with his father, an adult PLA soldier. And when the landlord brutally pushes the boy away from him, the new version shows the villagers all shouting in indignation, ‘He won’t even leave a little child alone. What a beast!’ Presenting violence toward children as an act that ‘defines the realm of the inhuman’,65 the new version dramatically departs from the Cultural Revolution original in further depicting children as victims rather than active participants in adult hostilities. Whereas the 1974 film shows Dongzi practising with a bayonet and receiving his first real gun at the end of the film, in the 2007 version the boy and his friends are armed only with slingshots. This transformation of the child protagonist – from a child soldier to an innocent victim – is equally evident in the final showdown between Dongzi and his enemy, the evil landlord who was responsible for the death of Dongzi’s mother. In the 1974 version, we see the young child delivering the fatal blow. After informing his best friend that he will not let Hu Hansan live, Dongzi sneaks into the landlord’s bedroom, pours oil over the bedcovers as the landlord sleeps, and sets the bed on fire, attempting to burn the man alive. When Hu wakes and tries to throw the blanket off, the young boy attacks him with a knife and kills him. Stepping outside, Dongzi then proudly informs the captain of the local Red Army unit that he has ‘killed Hu Hansan’. The captain, his men, as well as the other villagers – men, women and children – all proceed to praise the young boy for his heroic achievement. 14 China Information 28(1) Extolling this and other scenes for their ‘high level of realism’, official PRC media of the 1970s praised the original motion picture for ‘correctly dismissing the notion of children’s innocence as no more than revisionist rubble’.66 In contrast, the military–civilian creators of the 2007 version are much less keen on depicting children in the role of aggressors. In the new film, Dongzi and his friends attempt to physically attack the evil landlord and his men, but their assaults are often futile and shown in a comic light, bordering on slapstick. Moreover, the death scene of the evil landlord has also been considerably altered. In the new version, the boy hero (whose age at the beginning of the story has notably been elevated to 10 instead of seven) does not in fact premeditatedly murder the landlord. In the final showdown, the new film shows the landlord chasing the unarmed boy inside a granary while shooting him. In an act of desperation, the defenceless boy manages to break the log on which he and the landlord are standing; the landlord loses his footing, falls and is buried in the pile of rice he has unjustly confiscated from the villagers. Watching the landlord die, Dongzi declares: ‘You deserve this, Hu Hansan!’, but when he steps outside, he does not announce his responsibility for the man’s death, nor is he praised for his actions. As in the Red Justice Division video clip, then, the creators of the new version of Sparkling Red Star have shifted the responsibility for the act of brutality from the child to the adult, making the child a victim rather than a perpetrator of violence.67 The choice to remake Sparkling Red Star as a cartoon rather than as a realistic motion picture is again equally significant in this regard. Noting the use of animation products in the current image-making efforts of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, Sabine Frühstück suggests that cartoons perform ‘a trivialization and infantilization’ of the military’s tasks for young consumers, who also are potential recruits.68 In the case of the Chinese military, I would argue that recruitment concerns likewise play a part in the decision to use the more ‘innocent’ medium of animation and to tone down the level of violence. Technically, service in the PLA is obligatory for all Chinese citizens. However, in practice it is entirely voluntary; because of the size of China’s population and the large numbers of individuals who volunteer to join the regular armed forces, the authorities have never enforced a draft. The challenge, however, is not so much the number of recruits but their quality.69 Compared to the Maoist period, the Chinese military officer corps is now drawn from a younger and better educated generation.70 However, the vast majority of PLA personnel are still undereducated, drawn from rural villages and have little acumen for modern military technology.71 While there appears to be some enthusiasm for military service among urban Chinese youth, that spirit is certainly not universal, and in recent years the PLA has publicly recognized problems in bribery and quota manipulation during conscription period.72 To address this issue and recruit personnel with higher levels of education and technical proficiency, the PLA has devised various recruitment schemes for well-educated urban youths. These include relaxed restrictions on height, weight, tattoos, and ear piercings; offering bonuses to college graduates who volunteer for the armed forces; as well as bonuses for students, who enlist in the army while still in college, based on years of college completed (such recruits can resume their studies within two years after leaving the military). The army also directly targets college graduates for officer positions through the National Defense Students programme, which is roughly equivalent to the US Reserve Officer Training Corps.73 Naftali 15 Alongside these practical measures, the PLA now heavily invests in the production of innovative and entertaining cultural products geared toward urban children and youth. Through the marketing of toys, music videos, cartoons, and websites, and with the help of commercial companies, China’s military currently seeks both to increase the numbers of more educated, computer-savvy conscripts and to foster a patriotic spirit among the present generation of consumer-oriented urban youth. As demonstrated by the testimony of the political instructor who was quoted at the beginning of this article, these are rather difficult tasks to achieve, however. Indeed, later in the interview, the same PLA instructor admitted that while in the beginning, the 90s generation conscripts ‘were treated with the traditional tough measure’, army personnel later complied with various demands made by rebellious recruits. These demands included establishing ‘a cyber-bar for the exclusive use of soldiers’, ‘installing pumps to irrigate the company’s kitchen garden, which previously would have had to be watered manually’, and ‘installing private closets for soldiers’.74 PLA cultural products for children and youth likewise have had to adapt to new civilian sensibilities. Some urban Chinese parents do see value in exposing children, and in particular boys, to war-themed stories or military drills. They hope that this exposure will instil qualities such as discipline, self-reliance, endurance, and virility in their pampered only-child and help him succeed in a competitive market economy.75 However, recent surveys and ethnographic studies also document the emerging conviction, particularly among urbanites who wish to associate themselves with middle-class civilities,76 that children should be protected from adult brutality. Or in other words, that ‘beyond a certain level of violence, the child is no longer a child’.77 Accordingly, the PLA products surveyed in the present article continue to extol war and the military but are careful to place children in a relatively passive, innocent role compared to the past. By symbolic extension, this representational shift allows contemporary young audiences in China to retain their ‘childish’ nature, and their adult, middle-class caregivers their sense of moral righteousness. Concluding remarks Militarization, suggests the historian Michael S. Sherry, can be defined as the process by which war and national security become ‘consuming anxieties’ and provide ‘the memories, models, and metaphors that shape broad areas of national life’.78 In contemporary China, the PLA’s attempts to market war and soldiering as attractive and exhilarating pursuits coincide with the CCP’s on-going campaign to promote martial values and military behavioural models as the basis for youth patriotism. Should we therefore conclude that the PLA–civilian products surveyed in this article are contributing to a widespread ‘discursive militarization’79 of Chinese childhood? The findings of the present article suggest that this is not necessarily the case, since the recent wave of militarization of children’s culture in China is marked by ambiguity and even aversion toward the depiction of violence, especially as it involves minors. Like the propaganda works of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary PLA products for children and youth continue to present war as a glorious endeavour which turns boys into men. However, the military media apparatus faces much difficulty in selling its ideological merchandise in the commercial environment of post-socialist urban China, now 16 China Information 28(1) inundated with the highly popular products of Japanese anime, Disney cartoons, and Hasbro toys.80 To overcome this difficulty, the Chinese military has had to cooperate with civilian forces. Similarly to the Japan Self-Defense Forces or the US military,81 the PLA also uses new electronic technologies and other elements of youth culture, such as pop songs and toys, as marketing and recruitment tools.82 In China, however, the military continuously struggles to balance its political responsibilities as the armed force of the CCP with countervailing pressures not only from an information-savvy, market-oriented generation of self-assured urban singletons, but also from their parents, many of whom have come to reject the involvement of children in acts of violence.83 In stark contrast to PLA works of the Cultural Revolution, which sanctioned patriotic and revolutionary brutality regardless of the age of victims or oppressors, new PLA products reflect a considerable lowering of the threshold of tolerance of violent conduct inflicted on or by children. Thus, even if more and more Chinese youngsters are becoming militarized, a statement that is far from proven and which requires a separate empirical study, it is also the case that the Chinese army is becoming, to borrow E. P. Thompson’s phrase,84 more and more ‘civilianized’. Notes 1. Baijie An, Young soldiers rewrite rules, China Daily, 1 November 2011, 7, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-11/01/content_14012363.htm, accessed 9 October 2013. 2. Tai Ming Cheung, Engineering human souls: The development of Chinese military journalism and the emerging defense media market, in Susan L. Shirk (ed.) Changing Media, Changing China, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 128–49; Nan Li, PLA conservative nationalism, in Stephen J. Flanagan and Michael E. Marti (eds) The People’s Liberation Army and China in Transition, Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Press, 2003, 69–90. 3. James Marten, Introduction, in James Marten (ed.) Children and War: A Historical Anthology, New York and London: New York University Press, 2002, 8. 4. Ian Wojcik-Andrews, Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2000, 162–3; Vicky Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema, London: Reaktion Books, 2008, 142; Catarina Martins, The dangers of the single story: Child-soldiers in literary fiction and film, Childhood 18(4), 2011: 434–46; David M. Rosen, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2005, 7; and Chris Jenks, Childhood, London: Routledge, 1996, 125. 5. Mary Ann Farquhar, Children’s Literature in China: From Lu Xun to Mao Zedong, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999; Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Children as political messengers: Art, childhood, and continuity, in Harriet Evans and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald (eds) Picturing Power in the People’s Republic of China: Posters of the Cultural Revolution, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, 79–150; Xu Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’: Sparkling Red Star and the construction of children in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 36(4), 2011: 383, 397–8; Thomas A. Zaniello, Heroic quintuplets: A look at some Chinese children’s literature, Children’s Literature 3(1), 1974: 36–42; Fang Weiping, Shuru yu chuanbo: Cong ‘ertong zhongxin zhuyi’ dao ‘ertong benwei lun’ (Input and dissemination: From ‘child-centrism’ to ‘child-centered theory’), Zhejiang shifan daxue bao (shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Zhejiang Normal University (social sciences edition)), no. 2, 1993: 8–15; and Fang Weiping, Lun ‘wusi’ shiqi Zhongguo ertong wenxue lilun piping de xiandai zijue (On the modern consciousness of children’s literary criticism in China of the Naftali 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 17 ‘May Fourth’ period), Dongbei shidaxue bao (zhixue shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Northeast Normal University (philosophy and social sciences)), no. 2, 1994: 36–41. Farquhar, Children’s Literature in China; Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Public Secrets, Public Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000; Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Little Friends: Children’s Film and Media Culture in China, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, 33–4; and Donald, Children as political messengers, 79–150. See also Chen Taolan, Cong ‘hushi ertong’ dao ‘yi ertong wei ben’: Xiandai xiaoshuo li Zhongguo ertong jiaoyu guannian de biange (From ‘ignoring children’s [nature]’ to ‘emphasizing child-centredness’: The changing conceptualization of Chinese children’s education in modern novels), Zhejiang shifan daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Zhejiang Normal University (social sciences edition)) 38(4), 2013: 22–7; and Zeng Qingjiang, Guochan zhanzheng pian zhong shaonian ertong xingxiang de shanbian (The transformation of children’s images in domestic war films), Dangdai dianying (Contemporary cinema), no. 197, 2012: 157–9. Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’; Zaniello, Heroic quintuplets. See, for example, Chen Mo, Laoshu de gushi rang women xiangdao shenme? – Jian shuo tonghua pian, ertong dianying yu ertong wenhua (What does the story of the mouse tell us? A discussion of children’s films and children’s culture), Dangdai dianying (Contemporary cinema), no. 187, 2011: 45–8; Chen Taolan, Cong ‘hushi ertong’ dao ‘yi ertong wei ben’, 22–7. Zheng Huanhuan, Xin Zhongguo 60 nian zhanzheng ticai ertong pian de chuangzuo zhuanxing (New China’s 60 years of creative transformation of children’s war-themed films), Beijing dianying xueyuan xuebao (Journal of the Beijing Film Academy), no. 6, 2009: 20– 4; Zeng, Guochan zhanzheng pian zhong shaonian ertong xingxiang de shanbian, 157–9. See also Donald, Little Friends, 33–4; Donald, Children as political messengers, 79–150; Farquhar, Children’s Literature in China; and Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 402. Haiyan Lee, The charisma of power and the military sublime in Tiananmen Square, The Journal of Asian Studies 70(2), 2011: 406–7. Cheung, Engineering human souls, 128, 130–2, and 141. James Z. Gao, War culture, nationalism, and political campaigns, 1950–1953, in C. X. George Wei and Xiaoyuan Liu (eds) Chinese Nationalism in Perspective: Historical and Recent Cases, Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2001, 179. Cheung, Engineering human souls, 128. Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu yinfa ‘Aiguozhuyi jiaoyu shishi gangyao’ de tongzhi (Notice of the CCP Central Committee regarding the ‘Outline on implementing patriotic education’), 22 August 1994, http://news.xinhuanet.com/ziliao/2005-03/16/content_2705546.htm, accessed 6 February 2013. Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004, 219–222; Baogang He and Yingjie Guo, Nationalism, National Identity and Democratization in China, Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, WI: Ashgate, 2000, 26–7; William A. Callahan, History, identity and security: Producing and consuming nationalism in China, Critical Asian Studies 38(2), 2006: 179–208; Zheng Wang, National humiliation, history education, and the politics of historical memory: Patriotic education campaign in China, International Studies Quarterly 52(4), 2008: 783–806; and Edward Vickers, The opportunity of China? Education, patriotic values and the Chinese state, in Marie Lall and Edward Vickers (eds) Education as a Political Tool in Asia, London and New York: Routledge, 2009, 53–82. Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu yinfa ‘Aiguozhuyi jiaoyu shishi gangyao’ de tongzhi. China’s annual military recruitment favors college graduates, People’s Daily, 2 November 2009, http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6800268.html, accessed 9 June 2010; 18 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. China Information 28(1) Calum MacLeod, Chinese kids undergo required military training, USA Today, 4 September 2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-09-04-bootcamp_N.htm, accessed 10 October 2010. Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu yinfa ‘Aiguozhuyi jiaoyu shishi gangyao’ de tongzhi. Zheng Wang, National humiliation, 796. Ibid., 791. Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 227. See Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu yinfa ‘Aiguozhuyi jiaoyu shishi gangyao’ de tongzhi. Zhenjiang Ming, Jianchi shehui zeren, fanrong junshi wenhua zuopin (Adhere to social responsibility, let military cultural artworks prosper), 30 August 2010, http://jswm.newssc. org/system/2010/08/30/012872773.shtml, accessed 11 March 2011. Ibid.; Li, PLA conservative nationalism, 82; and Cheung, Engineering human souls, 135, 141. Thomas J. Bickford, The People’s Liberation Army and its changing economic roles: Implications for civil–military relations, in Nan Li (ed.) Chinese Civil-Military Relations: The Transformation of the People’s Liberation Army, London and New York: Routledge, 2006, 148–63. Military movies with touch of reality China, China Daily, 20 March 2006, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2006-03/20/content_546723.htm, accessed 27 February 2011. Cheung, Engineering human souls, 133 and 147, note 13. Ibid., 142–3. ‘Hong Shi’ chengjun de beihou: Zhizuoren Qian Guodong zhuanfang (Exclusive interview with producer Qian Guodong: Behind the scenes of Red Division), Hobby Wave, no. 10, 20 September 2009, 52. Karen J. Hall, A soldier’s body: GI Joe, Hasbro’s great American hero, and the symptoms of empire, The Journal of Popular Culture 38(1), 2004: 35, 40. Images of the PLA toys are available on the Red Justice Division official website http://www. worldpeacekeepers.net/. Lee, The charisma of power, 406; see also Hans van de Ven, The military in the Republic, The China Quarterly, no. 150, 1997: 352–74; Stefan R. Landsberger, Learning by what example? Educational propaganda in twenty-first-century China, Critical Asian Studies 33(4), 2001: 541–71; and Gao, War culture, nationalism, and political campaigns, 184. Jeremy Page, Jason Dean, and Julian E. Barnes, Beijing’s buildup stirs fears, The Wall Street Journal, 5 March 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870358000457618 0482219510892.html, 10 March 2011; Wang Hui, Chinese military increases transparency, China Daily, 30 January 2013, http://china.org.cn/opinion/2013-01/30/content_27835930. htm, accessed 9 October 2013. Roy Kamphausen, Andrew Scobell, and Travis Tanner, Introduction, in Roy Kamphausen, Andrew Scobell, and Travis Tanner (eds) The ‘People’ in the PLA: Recruitment, Training, and Education in China’s Military, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army College, 2008, 3. Ibid.; see also Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction, 289–90; and Lucy Hornby, China’s military cautiously tries out new openness, Reuters, 28 July 2009, http://www.reuters.com/ article/worldNews/idUSTRE56R1YR20090728?sp=true, accessed 28 July 2009. Lee, The charisma of power, 411. Kam Louie, Popular culture and masculinity ideals in East Asia, with special reference to China, The Journal of Asian Studies 71(4), 2012: 929–43. ‘Hong Shi’ chengjun de beihou, 52. J. David Slocum, General introduction: Seeing through American war cinema, in David J. Slocum (ed.) Hollywood and War: The Film Reader, New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006, 18. Naftali 19 40. Ibid.; see also Paul Wells, Understanding Animation, London and New York: Routledge, 1998, 25. 41. Wojcik-Andrews, Children’s Films, 162–3; Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema, 142. 42. Van de Ven, The military in the Republic, 352–74; Lee, The charisma of power, 397–424. 43. Lee, The charisma of power, 406; Landsberger, Learning by what example?, 541–71; van de Ven, The military in the Republic, 353; and Emily Honig, Maoist mappings of gender: Reassessing the Red Guards, in Susan Brownell and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (eds) Chinese Femininities, Chinese Masculinities: A Reader, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002, 263. 44. Cited in Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 399. 45. Honig, Maoist mappings of gender, 262; Lynn T. White III, Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China’s Cultural Revolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, 205–8, 215–16. 46. See Weili Ye with Xiaodong Ma, Growing up in the People’s Republic: Conversations between Two Daughters of China’s Revolution, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Sheldon H. Lu, Beautiful violence: War, peace, globalization, positions: east asia cultures critique 12(3), 2004: 762. 47. Farquhar, Children’s Literature in China, 30, 285; Donald, Little Friends, 33–4; and Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s Child’, 382, 392. 48. Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 389, 393. 49. Wu Yuzhang, Xinnian hua jiachang (New Year message on family affairs), Zhongguo qingnian (Chinese youth), 1964. Cited in Zhao Zhongxin (ed.), Wu Yuzhang tan jiating jiaoyu (Wu Yuzhang discusses family education), Zhongguo jiating jiaoyu wuqiannian (Five thousand years of family education in China), Beijing: Zhongguo fazhi chubanshe, 2003, 579. 50. Farquhar, Children’s Literature in China, 30, 285; Donald, Little Friends, 33–4; Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s Child’, 382, 392; Zeng, Guochan zhanzheng pian zhong shaonian ertong xingxiang de shanbian, 155–7; Zheng, Xin Zhongguo 60 nian zhanzheng ticai ertong pian de chuangzuo zhuanxing, 20–4; Liu Hongqiu, Lun xin Zhongguo shaonian ertong zhanzheng ticai dianying (New China’s war-themed children’s films), Dangdai dianying (Contemporary cinema), no. 6, 2009, 118–21; and Wang Haiying, 20 Shiji Zhongguo ertong guan yanjiu de fansi (Reflections on the concept of childhood in 20th-century China), Huadong shifan daxue xuebao (jiaoyu kexue ban) (Journal of East China Normal University (educational sciences)), no. 2, 2008: 16–24. 51. Qingyun Huang, A survey of children’s literature in China, The Lion and the Unicorn 10(1), 1986: 25; Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 402; Donald, Children as political messengers, 79– 150; Donald, Little Friends; and Chen Taolan, Cong ‘hushi ertong’ dao ‘yi ertong wei ben’, 22-7; and Zeng, Guochan zhanzheng pian zhong shaonian ertong xingxiang de shanbian, 157–9. 52. Orna Naftali, Children, Rights, and Modernity in China: Raising Self-Governing Citizens, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; Orna Naftali, Recovering childhood: Play, pedagogy, and the rise of psychological knowledge in contemporary urban China, Modern China 36(6), 2010: 589–616; Wang Haiying, 20 Shiji Zhongguo ertong guan yanjiu de fansi; Donald, Little Friends, 58; Ronald C. Keith, Legislating women and children’s ‘rights and interests’ in the PRC, The China Quarterly, no. 149, 1997: 29–55; and Yufu Huang, Ni Liu, and Ying Shi, Portrayal of children in the news: A case study in China, in Anura Goonasekera (ed.) Children in the News: Reporting of Children’s Issues in Television and the Press in Asia, Singapore: Asian Media, Information and Communication Centre, Nanyang Technological University, 2001, 47–64. 53. China intensifies crackdown on horror audio and videos, People’s Daily, 14 February 2008, http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90782/6353981.html, accessed 14 February 2008. 20 China Information 28(1) 54. Cited in Huang, Liu, and Shi, Portrayal of children in the news, 51–2. 55. Jun Li and Ang Li (dirs.) Shanshan de hongxin (Sparkling red star), 102 minutes (August First Film Studio, 1974). 56. Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 401. 57. Dante Lam (dir.), Shanshan de hongxing: Haizi de tiankong (Sparkling red star), 82 minutes (Asia Animation LTD, 2007). Note that the film’s name in Chinese includes a subtitle, ‘Haizi de tiankong’, which may be translated as ‘a child’s universe’. 58. Classic Chinese Red Army propaganda film reborn as animated film, FoxNews.com, 23 October 2007, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,304357,00.html, accessed 24 September 2012. 59. Wojcik-Andrews, Children’s Films, 188–9. 60. Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 396; Donald, Children as political messengers, 85. As Donald notes, the absence of parents, whose role is taken up by Party cadres or CCP soldiers, is a frequent theme in films and stories of the Maoist period. See also Donald, Public Secrets, Public Spaces, 41. 61. Zeng, Guochan zhanzheng pian zhong shaonian ertong xingxiang de shanbian, 155–7; Zheng Huanhuan, Xin Zhongguo 60 nian zhanzheng ticai ertong pian de chuangzuo zhuanxing, 20–4; Liu, Lun xin Zhongguo shaonian ertong zhanzheng ticai dianying, 118–21; and Chen Xujiao and Chen Lu, Lun Zhongguo zhanzheng dianying de rendao zhuyi shijiao (On the humanistic perspective of Chinese war films), Jiangsu jishu shifan xueyuan xuebao (Journal of Jiangsu Teachers University of Technology) 17(1), 2011: 43–7. 62. Liu Yingming, Zhanzheng beijing xia de ertong youxi: Zai lun ‘Xiaobing Zhangga’ de dianshiju gaibian (Children’s games in the context of war: On the TV adaptation of Little Soldier Zhangga), Yancheng gong xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Yancheng Institute of Technology (social sciences edition)) 23(3), 2010: 42–6. 63. Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 391–2. 64. Compare Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema, 148. 65. Ibid. 66. See, for example, Fang E, Yige ke’ai de xiao yingxiong: Ping dianying ‘Shanshan de hongxing’ (A cute little hero: A review of the film Sparkling Red Star), Renmin ribao (People’s daily), 22 October 1974, 2. 67. On this point, I differ from Xu who argues that in the 1974 version of the film, the protagonist ‘retains the “special characteristics” of a child’ since he does not ‘physically confront his enemies’ (Xu, ‘Chairman Mao’s child’, 400). Notably, while Dongzi may not partake in proper military battle, he does initiate and actively participate in the act of killing the landlord. Moreover, in the context of guerrilla warfare, even actions such as assassinations of enemy leaders can be considered a form of physical confrontation. 68. Sabine Frühstück, Uneasy Warriors: Gender, Memory, and Popular Culture in the Japanese Army, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007, 128. 69. Cheung, Engineering human souls, 138. 70. Yongnian Zheng, Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity, and International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 102. 71. Eligibility for conscription in the PLA extends from ages 18 to 22 for males, with females inducted according to the needs of its units. The minimum educational requirement is middle school graduation; students enrolled in full-time education programmes may be deferred from conscription. See Dennis J. Blasko, PLA conscript and noncommissioned officer individual training, in Kamphausen, Scobell, and Tanner (eds) The ‘People’ in the PLA, 103, 126. 72. John F. Corbett, Jr., Edward C. O’Dowd, and David D. Chen, Building the fighting strength: PLA officer accession, education, training, and utilization, in ibid., 139–89; James Mulvenon, Naftali 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 21 ‘True is false, false is true, virtual is reality, reality is virtual’: Technology and simulation in the Chinese military training revolution, in ibid., 49–98. Anthony H. Cordesman and Nicholas S. Yarosh, Chinese military modernization and force development: A Western perspective, Centre for Strategic and International Studies Report, 30 July 2012, http://csis.org/files/publication/120727_Chinese_Military_Modernization_ Force_Dvlpment.pdf, accessed 5 February 2013, 60. An, Young soldiers rewrite rules. Ibid., 7; see also MacLeod, Chinese kids undergo required military training. Huang, Liu, and Shi, Portrayal of children in the news, 47–64; Liu, Lun xin Zhongguo shaonian ertong zhanzheng ticai dianying, 118–21; Naftali, Children, Rights, and Modernity in China; and Naftali, Recovering childhood, 589–616. Lebeau, Childhood and Cinema, 176; Jenks, Childhood, 125; and Rosen, Armies of the Young, 7. Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995, xi. Catherine Lutz, Making war at home in the United States: Militarization and the current crisis, American Anthropologist 104(3), 2002: 723. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Crazy rabbits! Children’s media culture and socialization, in Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Michael Keane, and Yin Hong (eds) Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, 128–39; Stanley Rosen, Film and China’s youth culture, Education About Asia 13(3), 2008: 38–43; and Laikwan Pang, The transgression of sharing and copying: Pirating Japanese animation in China, in Chris Berry, Nicola Liscuting, and Jonathan D. Mackintosh (eds) Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009, 119–34. Frühstück, Uneasy Warriors, 119; Henry A. Giroux, War on terror: The militarising of public space and culture in the United States, Third Text 18(4), 2004: 217. Most recently, in August 2013, the PLA also released a civilian, online version of a war-themed computer game called Guangrong shiming (Glorious mission). 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