Manhua

• 1. Introduction

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  Manhua are Chinese-language comics produced in Greater China, and they carry a history that stretches back far beyond the printing press. Stone reliefs from the 11th century BC and pottery from 5000 to 3000 BC are among the oldest surviving examples of Chinese visual storytelling. The question that runs through this documentary is not just when manhua began, but how a form that has been dismissed as "pulpy imitations of films" became the medium through which some of the most pointed political speech in modern China gets made.

  The word itself has a layered story. It traveled from Chinese literati painting into Japanese culture as manga before returning home in a 1925 magazine called Zikai Manhua. Today it names everything from children's comics to satirical strips that get deleted within minutes of posting online. What forces shaped it? Who fought to keep it alive? And what happens when a government tries to control a medium that fits in the palm of a smartphone?

• 2. A Word With Many Lives

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  Feng Zikai gave the modern Chinese comics world its name in 1925, when he published a series of political cartoons called Zikai Manhua in the Wenxue Zhoubao, or Literature Weekly. Before that publication, dozens of competing terms described cartoon art in Chinese. "Allegorical Pictures", "Satirical Pictures", "Current Pictures", "Amusement Pictures" - each phrase staked a different claim on what the medium was for. Feng's work settled the question. His Zikai Manhua displaced all rivals, and the word manhua came to stand for all Chinese comic materials.

  The Chinese characters for manhua are identical to those used for the Japanese manga and Korean manhwa. A person who draws or writes manhua is a manhuajia. The shared script across these three traditions reflects deep cultural exchange across East Asia, though each form developed its own distinct visual logic and reading direction. Manhua from mainland China is read left to right, like Western comics, while Taiwanese and Hong Kong manhua read right to left, following the Japanese model. These differences trace directly to government policy in each territory.

• 3. From Stone to Shanghai

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  Tse Tsan-tai drew The Situation in the Far East in 1899, and it was printed in Japan - the first piece of cartoon work drawn by a person of Chinese nationality. That single image arrived decades before a proper comics industry existed in China, but it signaled what was coming. By the 1870s, satirical drawings had begun appearing in newspapers and periodicals, and by the 1920s, palm-sized picture books called Lianhuanhua were popular in Shanghai.

  Sun Yat-Sen established the Republic of China in 1911 partly by using Hong Kong's manhua to circulate anti-Qing propaganda. Comics were never just entertainment. The introduction of lithographic printing from the West was what made mass distribution possible, allowing a single image to reach readers across a city. The Shanghai Sketch Society formed in 1927, and the following year, Shanghai Sketch - also called Shanghai Manhua - became the first successful manhua magazine. Between 1934 and 1937, roughly 17 manhua magazines were being published in Shanghai alone.

  Zhang Leping's Sanmao, first published in 1935, became one of the most popular and enduring comics of that era. It was born into turbulence. When the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, cartoonists including Ye Qianyu fled Shanghai and waged what contemporaries called "cartoon guerilla warfare" against the Japanese - mounting roving exhibitions and publishing magazines in inland cities like Hankou. By the time Japan occupied Hong Kong in 1941, all manhua activity had stopped entirely.

• 4. Hong Kong's Separate World

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  After Japan's surrender in 1945, political turmoil between Chinese Nationalists and Communists created a new backdrop for comics. A manhua called This Is a Cartoon Era by Renjian Huahui took direct note of that moment. Since the 1950s, Hong Kong's manhua market has developed separately from mainland China's, and that separation gave it room to breathe.

  The most influential Hong Kong manhua magazine for adults was Cartoons World, launched in 1956, which fueled the popularity of the best-selling Uncle Choi. The market faced immediate pressure: Japanese and Taiwanese comics sold in Hong Kong at a pirated price of 10 cents, undercutting local work. Old Master Q was among the titles credited with helping revive the local industry. The arrival of television in the 1970s changed the landscape again. Bruce Lee's films dominated the era and his popularity launched a new wave of Kung Fu manhua. Graphic violence drove sales, but it also drew government attention. Hong Kong intervened with the Indecent Publication Law in 1975. Little Rascals was one of the titles that absorbed those social shifts.

  The 1982 Chinese Hero is credited with establishing the characteristics of modern Chinese-style manhua. Unlike manga, it featured more realistic drawings with details resembling actual people, and most manhua began appearing in full color with some panels rendered entirely as paintings. Work continued to grow through the 1990s with titles like McMug and three-part stories including "Teddy Boy", "Portland Street", and "Red Light District".

• 5. Censorship and the Cartoon Underground

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  Rebel Pepper's account on Sina Weibo, where he posted satirical cartoons critical of the Communist Party, had been deleted over 180 times by 2012. That number captures the texture of life for politically-minded manhua artists in mainland China. Despite decades of readership, the medium has never been recognized there as "serious works of art." R. Martin of The Comics Journal described the Chinese view of comics as "pulpy imitations of films."

  The government controls print publishing strictly, which is precisely why social media became the route around it. Douban launched in 2005 and Sina Weibo in 2009; both became major venues for web manhua. By September 2013, Reuters reported that roughly 150 graduates were employed to censor Sina Weibo around the clock, while automatic systems processed around three million posts per day. A research team from Rice University described the system as one where "human power is amplified by computer automation, capable of removing sensitive posts within minutes." Images targeted included a portrait of Mao Zedong wearing a pollution mask, photos documenting the expensive watches of supposedly low-waged officials, and criticism of the one-child policy.

  Cartoonist Pi San criticized web portals for being "pretty cowardly" and "too sensitive", arguing they acted as a first line of censorship through self-censorship. David Bandurski of the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project offered a different view: social media had "dramatically changed the environment for cartoonists," giving them "a really good platform to find an audience" that print never offered.

• 6. The Web Manhua Era

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  Beijing cartoonist Bu Er Miao sells her webcomic Electric Cat and Lightning Dog on Douban's eBook service for 1.99 CNY, which works out to roughly 0.30 USD. Of that, she keeps 1.79 CNY per sale. When asked whether she profits, Miao described that amount as "an amount of money that if you saw it on the street, no one would bother to pick it up." The economics of web manhua are, at best, modest.

  The Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival declared a "webcomics era" in 2015, and smartphone adoption among younger readers has driven the format's growth. Popular platforms for web manhua include QQ Comic and U17, and the lower barrier to entry - no printing costs, no editorial gatekeepers in the same way - has opened the field to more artists. In Taiwan, prize-winning cartoonists like Chung Yun-de and Yeh Yu-tung were pushed toward webcomics because their monthly incomes from print were too low to live on.

  Si loin et si proche by the Chinese writer and illustrator Xiao Bai won the Gold Award at the 4th International Manga Award in 2011, and several other manhua have taken Silver and Bronze Awards at the same ceremony. From the late 2010s onward, South Korean webtoon platforms have also gained significant ground in China, with companies like Kakao's Daum Webtoon collaborating with Chinese producers like the Huace Group to create live-action adaptations of Korean webtoons for Chinese-language audiences.

• 7. Adaptations and Crossovers

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  The Chinese webcomic One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes became a film in 2014. In 2016, the web manhua Under One Person by Dong Man Tang was adapted as the anime series Hitori no Shita: The Outcast, and Bloodivores drew from another web manhua the same year. Pingzi's web manhua became the donghua series Spiritpact. The Silver Guardian, based on the manhua of the same name, premiered in 2017, and Ultramarine Magmell reached anime form in 2019. Chang Ge Xing, a live-action adaptation of the manhua by Xia Da, began filming in 2019.

  Taiwanese manhua has its own adaptation story. The Brave Series became an animated television series in 2021, earned positive reviews, and won the Award of Best Animated Series at the 57th Golden Bell Awards. A second season followed in 2025. Taiwanese manhua's roots trace to the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945, and the first comic-style magazines on the island - Taiwan Puck in 1911, Tetsuwan Puck in 1912, and Takasago Puck in 1916 - were all shaped by Japanese publishing models. The Taiwan Daily News began running a comic section in 1921, and after democratization in the 1990s, manhua gained wider recognition as a legitimate art form. The cross-industry collaboration between Korean webtoon portals and Chinese production companies now positions manhua not just as a print or web medium but as source material for a broader entertainment pipeline.