Listening to New China: The Art-Tune Records Company, Cultural Propaganda, and Music Transplantation in Early Cold War Hong Kong (1950s-1960s)

ABSTRACT: This paper explores how the Art-Tune Records Company (Yisheng changpian gongsi 藝聲唱片公司), a Hong Kong-based private corporation and a shadow agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s China Records Factory, fostered the circulation of Chinese music to Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Against the colonial government’s political censorship and US-imposed sanctions on the PRC, Art-Tune sought to remaster and reproduce the recordings of China Records Factory by deploying tactics of depoliticisation and underscoring Chineseness. It also delivered gramophone music with multiregional and multilingual versions to foster listeners’ emotional sympathy with cultural China and the new PRC regime. The successful migration of PRC music abroad contributed to dynamic intermedia practice with the reformulation of socialist Chinese music into Hong Kong martial arts movies. The paper discusses how socialist music was transformed from a propaganda medium to Chinese symbols that appealed to diasporic Chinese across Cold War geopolitical divides. KEYWORDS: cultural Cold War, People’s Republic of China’s overseas propaganda, Art-Tune Records Company, folk songs, socialist music, depoliticisation, Hong Kong martial arts movies.