Big-Character Posters, China

Big-character posters are handwritten posters prominent in Chinese politics, typically comprising complaints about governmental officials or policies. The posters are usually just a large piece of white paper, on which the author has written slogans, poems, or even longer essays with ink and brush. The posters are hung on a wall or a post and have historically been a major aspect of political communication in China, used as a means of protest against governmental incompetence or corruption. Because the posters are typically written anonymously, it is a popular means of expressing dissatisfaction with local officials who might be able to exact revenge if a complaint were made in a more public setting. Moreover, because of the low expense of creating a poster, they effectively provide a mechanism for political communication and, if placed in a prominent place, such as a university bulletin board or a city wall, might be viewed by hundreds of people or even reprinted in an official press venue. The term “bigcharacter poster” refers to large posters written in large Chinese characters, but some use it to include “small character posters,” which are written in smaller script (such that it would be difficult to see from a distance of more than a few feet) but are of a typically greater length in terms of content.

Historically, big-character posters have been influential in several important social movements during the communist era, including the Anti-rightist campaign of 1957, the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1975, and the Democracy Wall movement of 1978 to 1980. During the Cultural Revolution, a poster which claimed that Peking University was controlled by antirevolutionaries came to the attention of Mao Zedong, who had its contents re-published nationally. Big-character posters soon became common throughout the nation and typically attacked local officials. Officials who found themselves accused in a poster might find themselves suspended from their jobs, under arrest, or even under physical attack. The famous “Democracy Wall” movement of Beijing began with a big-character poster titled “The Fifth Modernization,” written by a dissident. The right to write big-character posters was guaranteed as one of the “four great rights” in the 1975 state constitution of the People's Republic of China (PRC), but in 1980 this right was removed. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement, and in spite of their illegality, bigcharacter posters again became a symbol of democratic sentiment, as the posters sprang up around the country to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang and to criticize Chinese political leaders.