Mao portrait and Party slogan on the Beijing airport terminal, Nixon arrival, 21 February 1972
Photograph taken as President Nixon's party arrived: army honour-guard in greatcoats in the foreground, a roped-off crowd beneath the terminal, a large framed portrait of Mao on the facade, the national flag on a pole, and a tall red banner at right with a Party slogan. The display binds the leader's portrait, the flag and a claim of Party leadership into one backdrop at the point of arrival (transfer).
- Date
- February 21, 1972
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- People's Republic of China (state display on the Beijing airport terminal); photographed by the White House Photo Office
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- China
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- State
- Leader
- Mao Zedong
- Audience
- Mixed
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Techniques
- Transfer
- Leader
- Mao Zedong
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (White House Photo Office, Richard Nixon Presidential Library, via NARA and DPLA), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work: White House Photo Office, Commons PD-US tag)
White House Photo Office, 21 February 1972; Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum / National Archives, via DPLA and Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the US only per Commons.
Text on the object
北京 领导我们事业的核心力量是中国共产党。
Beijing. The force at the core leading our cause is the Chinese Communist Party.
Roof characters read left to right. The banner at right is read in three vertical columns from right to left and matches the 1954 sentence the poster text quotes; the lowest characters are slightly blurred at 960 px.
