The China Friendship traveller in the 1970s and the dilemma of propaganda: memory, emotional response and narrative
In: Twentieth century communism: a journal of international history, Band 22, Heft 22, S. 117-140
ISSN: 1758-6437
During the 1960s and 1970s, radicals from the west travelling to socialist countries in the 'Third World' tried to create an alternative pool of expertise, often with a utopian agenda. This leftwing tourism later became the subject of academic discussion and analysis. One prominent
standpoint is that the travellers involved agreed with the propaganda to which they were subjected, or at least believed in it. Others regard the travellers' loyalty to the socialist country in question as a way of improving the prospects for hegemony within left organisations at home. Another
view is that the travellers contained their criticism amongst themselves, while struggling with their experiences in the country in question. The aim of this text is to examine, through a case study, how travellers not tied up in any partybuilding struggles back home perceived and explained
their experience in China, and how this experience was understood and interpreted – and reinterpreted – in hindsight. The study is focused on the Swedish social worker Elsa Larsson, who went to China in 1977. Her impressions and reflections were documented in a short film made
with a small hand camera, in letters and notes, and in two speaker texts to her film, one from 1977 and one from 2005. The study shows that Larsson did harbour some scepticism about what was presented during her visit – but also that the expectations of friends and colleagues in Sweden
were important in how she came to tell the story of her trip. This points to a more general picture, whereby the preconceptions of the traveller's own communities were of great significance in creating the western image of Red China, in addition to the Chinese state's own propaganda. The study
contributes a tentative explanation as to why China as an alternative welfare society was so favourably received in Sweden (and in Europe) in the 1970s. When Larsson reinterpreted her material many years later she added in analysis of the problematic issue of how the travellers had in general
failed to grasp the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda. It seems that, in this later phase, it was important for Larsson to continue to create a frame for her experiences, rather than to uncritically adapt to any contemporary interpretation.
