Bellicose Peace

China’s Peace Signature Campaign and Discourses about “Peace” in the Early 1950s

Bibliographic Data

ID6008202
AuthorsElisabeth Forster (0000-0003-1540-3139, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume46
Issue3
Pages250-280
Publication date2020-05-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern China (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0097700419851460
OpenAlexW2948755298
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited32

In the early 1950s, China engaged in several military actions, most notably in the Korean War. Nevertheless, the World Peace Council, an international organization sponsored by the Soviet Union, praised the country as a “fortress for the protection of world peace” in 1954. This hinged upon a very specific, bellicose understanding of “peacefulness,” which did not mean the rejection of war, but war against the “right” enemy. I discuss this understanding, its function within the international community, its embeddedness in international political thinking, and its promulgation among the Chinese population, using the example of a campaign in 1950 to collect signatures on a World Peace Council–authored appeal against the atomic bomb. Self-promotion as a peaceful nation in the bellicose sense served a variety of purposes for the young People’s Republic of China (PRC), most importantly the goal to instill bloc thinking in the PRC’s population and to gain prestige within the new international order of the Cold War

Alliance · China · Development economics · Peacekeeping · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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