The Study Of Cigarette Advertisements On The Min Kuo Daily News Canton

The Min Kuo Daily News Canton was started in 1923 and it is significant for the study of Guangzhou in 1920 s and 1930 s. Various advertisements are one of the important parts of this newspaper. The advertisements were not only the source of income for the newspaper, but also the reflection of social civilization. There have been a lot of study about The Min Kuo Daily News Canton, however none of them include the study of cigarette advertisements. As an effort of filling this gap, in this paper the author will summarize the characteristics of cigarette advertisements and analyze them in depth. The cigarette advertisements on The Min Kuo Daily News Canton were in line with the development of cigarette industry in Republic of China. With the May 30 th Movement becoming more and more fierce, many cigarette enterprises were founded after 1925, and the number of cigarette advertisements in The Min Kuo Daily News Canton also increased dramatically. Most of these advertisements had elaborate images and copy. Moreover some elements that can be observed a lot in modern advertisements had already been used at that time. Under the influence of the Chinese national goods movement, patriotic advertisements were the favorite style of national cigarette enterprises. However patriotic advertisements concealed the disadvantage of cigarette, leading people into a vigorous mass fervor which was so fancied and had detriment to the seriousness of patriotism. At the same time, because of the women’s liberation movement, the images of “new women” were used a lot in the advertisements. As the consumers of cigarette were mostly men, in order to draw their interest, these images of beautiful women were used in large numbers. Using women’s beauty as the means of business promotion was making them under the shade of patriarchy culture. In southern China, the British American Tobacco company was not as aggressive as in other cities. As a result, the advertisement competition between foreign cigarette enterprises and Chinese cigarette enterprises on The Min Kuo Daily News Canton was not as fierce as that on other newspapers. In brief, under the influence of social movement in 1920 s and 1930 s, the cigarette advertisements on The Min Kuo Daily News Canton tended to be nationalized and localized. As the result, during the spread of western culture, new life style was advocated and women’s image in cigarette advertisements changed greatly. More importantly, these cigarette advertisements can be viewed as a representation of the great development of national cigarette enterprises under the press of western capitalism.