China’s secret plan to use the force of Star Wars to revive science
Guangzhou artist was instructed to turn first film into a comic book that would popularise scientific achievements after the stagnation of the Cultural Revolution
A long time ago in a country far, far away, Chinese authorities managed to obtain a copy of America’s ultimate cultural weapon, a blockbuster movie with enough special effects to wow an entire planet.
Summoned to a small theatre in Guangzhou in 1980, artist Song Feideng was shown Star Wars and instructed to transform it into a traditional Chinese comic book, known as a lianhuanhua, to promote scientific achievement to China.
Song was one of the first people in China to see George Lucas’ opus, at a time when it was still banned – a marked contrast to the status of the series’ most recent instalment in a market Hollywood increasingly sees as crucial to success.
“The objective was to take the world’s advanced science and popularise it in China,” says Song, who worked for a state-owned publisher at the time.
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He replaced the movie’s X-wing spacecraft with Soviet rockets and jet fighters. In one illustration, Luke Skywalker wears a cosmonaut’s bulky spacesuit, while rebel leaders are dressed in Western business suits. Darth Vader even appears alongside a triceratops.