This paper examines the content and form of foreign advertisements in two promi nent Chinese daily newspapers from 1985 to 1993.1 The study indicates that the quantity of foreign advertising in the Chinese newspapers remained constant during the period under study. With pleasure-seeking and consumption for modernity as their recurring themes, the foreign advertisements mainly focused on advertising consumer goods and employed more attention-getting tactics than Chinese domestic advertisements. This study argues that the rise of consumer culture in China, which involved foreign advertising, signaled the historical rever sal of the hyper-politicization of communist ideology during the pre-economic reform era, and that the presence of foreign advertising in China epitomized an increasing influx of Western cultural products in that country.
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