Visual Mao Zedong and new world order

This study explores the ideological contentions about peace behind the contrasting projections of Mao Zedong’s images, especially his standard portraits, and photos of him and Western leaders (including those of the Soviet Union directly or indirectly). The analyses focus on the complicated spectatorship of Mao Zedong’s images in the international activisms that were intended to change the political power structure of the world. This involves the contradictory visualisations from both the socialist and capitalist ideologies. From Nixon’s visits to Mao Zedong and Gorbachev’s visit to the Portrait of Mao Zedong in the 1989 student movement, the concepts of nationalism and internationalism, new world order, and Mao Zedong’s theories of contradiction and three worlds are examined to better understand the visual realities of ‘peaceful evolution’.