 At age seventeen, he enlisted in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during a recruitment drive to support the Sino-Vietnamese war, initiated by the country’s then leader Deng Xiaoping.A central theme to Guo Jian’s art derives from his observations of the application of propaganda and the arts to both motivate soldiers and sway public opinion.His perspective comes from his experiences as a propaganda poster painter in the PLA and propaganda officer in a transport company, then later from the outside looking back in as a student demonstrator during the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989.