Chairman Mao badge

Chairman Mao badge (Chinese: 毛主席像章; pinyin: Máo zhǔxí xiàngzhāng) is the name given to a type of pin badge displaying an image of CCP chairman Mao Zedong that was ubiquitous in the People's Republic of China during the active phase of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1971. The term is also used for badges associated with Mao that do not actually have a picture of him on them. It is estimated that several billion Chairman Mao badges were produced during the period of the Cultural Revolution.

History

Badges depicting Mao Zedong first appeared at the Chinese People's Anti-Japanese Military and Political College (中国人民抗日军事政治大学) at Yan'an during the 1930s. These early badges were homemade, usually being constructed out of the metal from used toothpaste tubes.

By the 1940s badges showing Mao by himself or together with other important people were being produced in small numbers as commemorative medals or as awards for service to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or to the army. Unlike the later Cultural Revolution period badges, which normally portrayed Mao by himself, these badges frequently portrayed Mao side by side with other Chinese revolutionary figures such as Zhu De, Chen Yi, He Long, Lin Biao and Lu Xun, or showed Mao with communist leaders from other countries, such as Stalin and Kim Il Sung. During this period badges were smaller but more robust than the Cultural Revolution period badges, and some badges produced during the 1950s were even made of gold (initially 22 carat, but later reduced to 13 or 14 carat).

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, badges showing an image of Mao were produced mainly for special occasions, for example Chinese soldiers were given star-shaped badges with a portrait of Mao when they returned to China from the Korean War, and labourers working on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway were given gold-plated copper badges with a bilingual inscription in Chinese and Tibetan on completion of the road in December 1954. By the mid-1960s Mao badges began to become more prevalent, and were even distributed at international events such as the 1965 Leipzig Trade Fair, but it was not until the end of 1965 that small aluminium Mao badges, similar to the Cultural Revolution badges, first started to be produced in Shanghai.