Animalizing the political other: Qian Binghe’s caricatures of Yuan Shikai and revolutionary propaganda in early Republican China

Abstract

This article examines Chinese political caricature in the early 1910s, focusing on Qian Binghe (1879–1944) and his caricatured depictions of Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), the first president of the Republic of China. A staunch revolutionary aligned with Sun Yat-sen, Qian opposed both the Manchu dynasty and Yuan’s authoritarian rule. Despite his contributions, his political caricatures remain underexamined. This article investigates how Qian Binghe’s revolutionary engagements intersected with his deployment of animalized imagery to visually construct political otherness in early Republican China. Central to this analysis is Qian’s use of animal imagery, particularly the homophonic association between ‘ape’ (yuan) and Yuan Shikai’s surname, in his collections A Pictorial History of the Yuan Shikai Government (1913) and A Hundred Performances of Old Ape (1913). I argue that Qian’s caricatures, by animalizing Yuan Shikai and circulating this representation through revolutionary propaganda networks, constructed the president as a political other. His work reflects broader political struggles between pro-Sun revolutionaries and Yuan’s government, as well as tensions among various political and ethnic factions in early Republican China. By bestializing Yuan Shikai, Qian’s drawings offer a dissident perspective on Republican politics, particularly opposition to Yuan’s imperial ambitions. As one of the earliest political cartoon collections of the Republican era, Qian’s works provide a critical lens for understanding the entanglements between visual culture, print media, and politics in China’s transitional years.