Industrial and Chinese: Exhibiting Mao’s China at the Leipzig Trade Fairs

Abstract

Between 1951 and 1965, the People’s Republic of China regularly exhibited at the international trade fairs in the East German city of Leipzig. One of the major attractions of the fairs, China’s grand pavilion was second in size only to the pavilion of the Soviet Union. This article examines the planning and execution of China’s exhibitions, illustrating how the young communist regime displayed its products and political system abroad and how citizens of other socialist and capitalist countries experienced China through objects, materials, images and narratives. Because the People's Republic of China was a new revolutionary state of enormous political and economic significance and yet also a state that other socialist regimes deemed too poorly developed to transition to socialism, these exhibitions were the site of constant negotiations and tension between Chinese and East German organizers and other local decision-makers and participants. As such, the People's Republic of China’s engagement with the fairs sheds further light on its international activities after 1949 and on the local history of the Sino-Soviet split. It is also a case study that calls attention to the historical significance of materiality that underpinned China’s interactions with the wider world, from minute quotidian things to grand gifts and major export goods.