Exile or adapt? Two Chinese political cartoonists' responses to the Xi era

Probing the question of how political satirists respond to authoritarian state controls, this comparative study examines the practices of two renowned political cartoonists from China: Rebel Pepper and Kuang Biao. The study utilises frameworks suggested by Jacques Rancière’s concept of disensus and Judith Butler’s theory of performativity.

Rebel Pepper and Kuang Biao came to prominence during the so-called golden age of Chinese institutional and citizen journalism, from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Both men were able to use their art in openly critical ways. But in the 2010s, media companies and citizen journalists faced greater restrictions, as Xi Jinping's government began asserting more control over public debate. The two cartoonists responded in markedly different ways. Rebel Pepper left the country and now enjoys First Amendment freedoms as a cartoonist for Voice of America. Kuang Biao resigned from his newspaper but remains in China, continuing to work as a politically engaged artist within the narrowed political limits.

Through in-depth interviews with the two cartoonists and an analysis of their cartoons, we compare their different paths. In their own ways, both artists have challenged the politically determined configurations limiting what can be said and seen through political cartoons. Both of their strategies entail trade offs; their performances as political cartoonists have side effects. For Rebel Pepper, the artist’s exercise of the right of free speech without having it reconfirms the state’s power to confer that right. Able to rely on the patronage of an American media organisation allows him to engage in more direct critique than before, but it also means that his work caters more to an international audience and, arguably, speaks less to his countrymen in China. As for Kuang Biao, he remains embedded in his own society, but his work has had to become less direct and more subtle, making him less prominent in the public sphere.