Non-Alignment and Maoist China: Eastern Horizon in the Era of Decolonisation, 1960-1981

Tickell, Alex and Wetherilt, Anne (2024). Non-Alignment and Maoist China: Eastern Horizon in the Era of Decolonisation, 1960-1981. In: Finkelstein, David; Johnson, David and Davis, Caroline eds. The Edinburgh Companion to British Colonial Periodicals. Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 446–462.

URL: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edin...

Abstract

Founded at the height of the Cold War, the radical English language magazine Eastern Horizon was published from Hong Kong for over two decades from 1960 until 1981. Started by Liu Pengju, a journalist previously employed on Chinese Communist Party newspapers, Eastern Horizon was pro Communist China and broadly pro-Mao, but also reflected a Bandung-era solidarity with decolonisation movements and non-alignment by carrying articles on culture and politics from across Asia and Africa. The magazine’s editor was Lee Tsung-Ying but the well-known pro-CCP writer Han Suyin also allegedly fulfilled a covert editorial influence. The magazine remained supportive of the CCP throughout the Cultural Revolution until Mao’s death in 1976, when its editorial policy became less openly celebratory.
This case study examines the paradoxical position of Eastern Horizon as both a late ‘colonial’ periodical and a magazine devoted to the radical project of revolution and the cause of political and cultural decolonisation. A number of pro-Chinese writers and intellectuals such as Rewy Alley and David Crook contributed, and the magazine also carried art and poetry criticism by figures who would later contribute to postcolonial critical thought such as E. San Juan Jr. Unusually, the magazine also carried articles by Han Suyin that detailed her work teaching Asian literature in Singapore, and is thus significant for its evidence of a nascent postcolonial curriculum developed outside the European and North American academy.

Plain Language Summary

The co-authored article is a survey of the politics and editorial development of the Eastern Horizon magazine.

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