From Mao’s Art Soldier to Xi’s Cartoonist Shaomin Li’s Political Cartoons

The book is in original Chinese.In the book’s first half, the author and artist Shaomin Li tells the story of his unique experiences in China and the United States in a well-illustrated way. In the book’s second half, he includes some 60 cartoons of contemporary political and current affairs that he has drawn in recent years. These cartoons include international events, US-China relations, corruption, collusion between officials and business people, and various characters such as Xi Jinping, Biden, Putin, Kim Jong-un, Musk, Cook, Gates, and others.Li was born in China in 1956 during the Mao Zedong era, loved painting since childhood, studied portraits under famous artists during the Cultural Revolution, joined the army in 1975, and became Chairman Mao’s art soldier. He was admitted to the Department of Economics of Peking University in 1977. He came to the United States in 1982 to study for a doctorate and postdoctoral degree at the State University of New York, Princeton University, and Harvard University, mainly studying political and economic systems. When he went to China in 2001, he was accused of “endangering state security” and was imprisoned for five months. He is an Eminent Scholar and Chair of the Department of Management at Old Dominion University Strome College of Business. But his favorite thing is still painting; of course, he doesn’t paint Chairman Mao now, but Xi. Someone asked Li why he drew Xi. His simplest answer was: “Why not?” His longer answer quoted a political joke from the former Soviet Union: “An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free that he can stand outside the White House and yell “to hell with Ronald Reagan. The Russian replies: ‘That’s nothing, I can stand outside the Kremlin and yell “to hell with Ronald Reagan too!””It’s because people in dictatorships can’t draw caricatures of dictators,” Li said, “and that’s why I do.”