A Revolutionary Advertisement in Revolutionary Times

On March 15, 1979, readers of Shanghai’s Wen Hui Bao encountered something extraordinary—a full-page advertisement for Swiss-made Rado watches. This seemingly mundane commercial message represented a seismic shift in China’s economic landscape. The illustrated watches (photographs weren’t yet common in Chinese print media) wouldn’t even be available for purchase in China for another four years. Yet the advertisement sparked an immediate frenzy, with over 700 Shanghai residents flocking to Huangpu District stores to inquire about timepieces costing twenty years’ worth of an average worker’s salary.

This watershed moment didn’t emerge in isolation. Just months earlier, on January 28, 1979, Jiefang Daily—Shanghai’s Communist Party organ—had broken a thirteen-year advertising drought with promotions for domestic products like “Buddha’s Hand” brand monosodium glutamate and “Happiness Cola.” These tentative steps heralded China’s reengagement with consumer culture after the austere decades of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when advertisements had been denounced as capitalist decadence.

The Long Freeze: How Advertising Disappeared

China’s commercial advertising tradition actually predated the Communist era. Since the mid-19th century, newspapers like Shenbao had carried advertisements for everything from patent medicines to department stores. Even after 1949, ads persisted—though increasingly for state-produced goods rather than luxury items. The last commercial advertisement before the Cultural Revolution appeared in Jiefang Daily on August 17, 1966, wedged incongruously beneath a report praising Mao Zedong’s writings as “the truth and compass for the world’s people.” The following day, as Mao reviewed Red Guards in Tiananmen Square, commercial messaging vanished from Chinese media.

For thirteen years, Chinese newspapers operated purely as political mouthpieces. The concept of consumer choice became ideologically suspect, with even basic household goods often requiring ration coupons. This changed dramatically after Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 economic reforms, though media institutions remained cautious. As Wen Hui Bao’s deputy editor later recalled: “We knew reforms were coming, but nobody wanted to be first to test the boundaries.”

The Ice Breakers: Jiefang Daily’s Calculated Gamble

The thaw began with an unexpected New Year’s Eve debate in 1979. When Wen Hui Bao proposed publishing a simplified holiday edition to give staff respite, Jiefang Daily’s editor-in-chief Wang Wei countered with a radical alternative: “Why not use commercial ads to cover the costs of full editions?”

This seemingly straightforward idea carried enormous political risk. Without consulting municipal authorities—”Not the Party Committee, not the Propaganda Department, not even informal channels,” Wang later emphasized—he greenlit China’s first post-Cultural Revolution advertisements. The sole existing ad agency, Shanghai Advertising and Decoration Company, scrambled to secure clients, eventually placing promotions for local manufacturers like Shanghai Arts & Crafts Corporation.

The response was electric. Though some readers complained about “wasting newspaper space on unavailable goods,” the advertised products sold out immediately. More tellingly, higher authorities withheld criticism—a tacit endorsement that empowered other publications to follow suit.

Cultural Shockwaves: From Suspicion to Consumer Frenzy

The return of advertising provoked intense societal debate. Critics lambasted the “bourgeois” imagery in early ads, particularly the stylish Western models promoting Rado watches. One irate Jiefang Daily reader protested: “I spend four fen to buy a newspaper for news, not to see Japanese business tricks!” Others questioned the morality of advertising rationed electronics to citizens who couldn’t purchase them freely.

Yet the genie couldn’t be rebottled. By 1980, newspapers nationwide were scrambling to meet advertiser demand. A Xinmin Evening News journalist humorously recalled their ad director “needing only a ruler to allocate precious centimeters of column space to desperate clients.” The economic effects proved transformative—Shanghai’s advertising industry revenue grew eightfold within five years, while Jiefang Daily’s ad income surpassed 200 million yuan by 1995 (equivalent to ~$24 million then).

Legacy: How 1979’s Ads Paved China’s Consumer Revolution

These pioneering advertisements represented more than commercial ventures—they signaled China’s psychological shift from revolutionary asceticism to developmental pragmatism. The Rado campaign particularly exemplified globalization’s advance, with multinationals recognizing China’s market potential years before formal market entry.

Today, as China stands as the world’s second-largest advertising market, the 1979 breakthroughs remind us how profoundly media and commerce intersect with political change. Those hand-drawn watch illustrations and cola promotions didn’t just sell products—they helped reintroduce the very concept of consumer aspiration to a society emerging from decades of enforced austerity. In retrospect, these small commercial acts were among the most visible early indicators of China’s “Reform and Opening” trajectory that would ultimately lift hundreds of millions from poverty and reshape the global economy.

The advertisements’ most enduring lesson may be their demonstration of how economic liberalization often advances through local experimentation rather than top-down decree. As Editor Wang Wei instinctively understood in 1979, sometimes societal transformation begins not with grand pronouncements, but with something as simple as a wristwatch ad in a Shanghai newspaper.