Political cartoons featuring China’s state leaders started to become popular among the public when China's famous Fuxinglushang Animation Studio released a cartoon called "Following Uncle Xi to SCO-BRICS 2015 Summit,” which hit the headlines in Chinese media early July.
The Beijing Times reported that the cartoon about Xi and the international event he attended caught too much public attention, and from then, political news reports in China have the cartoon images of Party and government heads.
The report said that the practice of using cartoon to depict Chinese leaders has started in the country during the 1980s.
According to the report, Jiefang Daily published a cartoon of Deng Xiaoping playing bridge and holding a card that reads, "Modernization with Chinese characteristics" on Aug. 15, 1986. It was created by caricaturist Zhang Weiping.
The newspaper also printed a cartoon image of then-Shanghai mayor Jiang Zemin, the following day, with the caption, "Mayor of Shanghai Jiang Zemin is also a bookworm."
After that, due to rigid regulation during that time, cartoon images of leaders disappeared, the report said.
In 1990, the government issued the Provisions on Reinforcing the Publication Management of Party and Government Leaders, which highlights the serious photos of the leaders and stipulates the application and approval procedures of such photos.
On Sept. 11, 2006, a cartoon image of then Chinese President Hu Jintao appeared on New Express Daily, which some commentators regarded as more of a portraiture than of a caricature.
According to the report, cartoon images of new leaders enjoy great popularity today. On Oct. 14, 2013, Fuxinglushang Studio made an animation video titled "How Leaders Are Made," wherein seven members of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee appeared as cartoon characters for the first time, overturning people's normal perception of them.
The report said that the short film had been watched more than a million times within 10 days after its release.
According to a subsequent survey, changing the conventional stereotypes of leaders who are generally thought to be cold and aloof has been found effective by most Web users. Later, a number of cartoon and animation images of President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang have started to appear on various media outlets.
In Feb. 2014, the official website of the Central People's Government of China displayed a cartoon character of Li Keqiang, wearing a dark-blue suit, a light-blue tie, and a pair of glasses, with a smile in his mouth.
"With the development of new media, if we still stick to the cliché approach to publicity, we will probably lose the market of the young generation," said Chen Mingming from the Public Diplomacy Advisory Committee of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to Chen, today's news should be lively, terse and forceful, and must adapt to the communication manner of new media.
Many people remarked that the new generation of Chinese leaders are more tolerant of their various cartoon and animation images, which shows that Chinese society is becoming increasingly confident and open and the leaders are adopting a "man-of-the-people" style.