Enchanted Revolution: Religion and Gender Politics in Maoist Propaganda

Religion has been commonly upheld as the archenemy of Communist revolutions around the world. This talk goes beyond the familiar stories of suppression and resistance to examines how Chinese Communist propaganda deployed religious resources to construct a new gendered narrative of salvation for the Maoist revolution. Specifically, it explores how the propaganda machine co-opted traditional ghost lore in the production and dissemination of the White-haired Girl, a 1945 opera that has been hailed as a revolutionary classic up to the present day. The opera invokes the cosmic redemption of female ghosts to make the female body and sexuality emblematic of class exploitations and national liberation. This gender-laden narrative created a renewed ethical and cosmological rationale for CCP leadership. Building on this narrative, Maoist propaganda proliferated to champion the liberation of the Chinese peasants in the land reform (1946-1953), and to legitimize the Communist civilizing mission of the ethnic borderlands in the early PRC. The archetypal storyline of the White-haired Girl thus evolved into a metanarrative of the Chinese revolution and directly contributed to the formation of the Mao Cult. The lasting appeal of the White-haired Girl illustrates that religion was not a mere adversary for the revolution; it also served as a model with which the Party mobilized support and constructed legitimacy.