It was this lack of control that allowed journals to exist that later set the stage for the 1911 Republican Revolution which took the place of the once powerful Qing dynasty. Press freedom under the Republic varied widely due to Chiang Kai-shek’s use of warlords as local officials and generals. As each warlord had a different agenda, press control became very erratic and inconsistent. General Han Fuju allowed the press in his province to criticize the current government as long as they promoted his image as a reformer and did not support the fledgling Communist movement. This time of peaceful ignorance would not last long when, beginning as early as 1938, Mao Zedong and other party members were enforcing media control in areas already under Communist rule (Mackinnan 16).
Early party press can be traced back to the late 1910s when students and intellectuals voiced their opposition to Imperialism and Chinese warlords. The Party realized very early on the necessity of independent commercial papers in urban areas due to the fact that the existing Party press was very rural-oriented and thus did not satisfy urban tastes. Yet as the Party supported independent press in theory, they implemented rules that forced the editors to design coverage to support the Party. Private journalists were refused access to news sources and competition for advertising was overwhelmingly in favor of the Communist papers, so very few independent papers survived (Zhao 2).
These policies agreed with Marxist thought in that Marx believed that the definition of a ethical journalist was one who was completely loyal to the Communist system. The media system should exist solely to perpetuate and expand the social system, not dig unnecessarily for the objective truth, thus mass media should only be a tool of the Party. Though, Marx also believed that the media was an important tool in the hand’s of the working class as “an agitator and propagandist for change and revolution” and the Party gave little press control to the general public, thereby selectively maintaining Marxist theory (Merrill 97).
There is no place for revolutionary thought if journalists are so strictly regulated as a censored press is bad for society because it “kills the political spirit.” The subsequent ignorance due to lack of sufficient information turns the people into a “private mob” as they begin to exclude themselves from those that are operating behind the closed doors of the Communist government (Jansen 93). These regulations are an example of the Chinese Communist Party’s wide interpretation of the original Marxist thought that backed Communism.
In regard to the Party’s approach to the news media, it takes a very Leninist stance. The Party expanded on Lenin’s notion that a Party paper should be the Party’s collective “propagandist, agitator, and organizer” by issuing the “Party Principle” for news media. The “Party Principle” stated that the news media should accept the Party’s guiding ideology as its own, propagate Party programs and policies, and accept Party leadership (Zhao 19). These policies were used by Mao as the Communist Party came into power in order to completely control the information being given to the people. Blatant fallacies were implemented to fool the general public into thinking that Communist ideas were being carried out in a more successful manner than they actually were.
News was often selected purely on the basis of its relevance to the central tasks of the Party. These stories were reported from the perspective of the Party so subject matter often became extremely narrow and overly technical. Occasionally, the story was merely given a slight pro-Party leaning such as the 1957 dispatch about extremely cold weather in Shanghai which describes a pre-Liberation snowstorm that caused the deaths of hundreds of children and compares it with the much colder conditions in 1957 when nobody froze to death (Zhao, 27).
By 1958 this exaggeration had throughly permeated news coverage of the Great Leap Forward as journalists competed to see who could invent the highest agricultural output figures. While the highest actual output was approximately 500 kilograms per mu, reports ranged from 1,000 kilograms to an impossible figure of 65,000 kilograms per mu (Xupei, 3). This only succeeding in making communes needlessly strive for a preposterous goal which could never be achieved by sacrificing rice that was needed to feed the village in order to make their own output look higher.
Obviously, the Party papers that were designed to be “for the people” were having a negative affect on the public that would not have occurred if there had been another source of news. The existence of private papers free of the Communist control would allow for a more truthful account of rice output, which would have allowed the country to avoid the mass starvation that resulted from the Great Leap Forward. This trend of newspapers filled with lies and berated by fanatical press control only worsened during the decade of the Cultural Revolution as a policy was implemented requiring that all articles have the same style and content and that all newspapers have the same general layout. Reporters were required to check wording against the two newspaper and one journal that the Communist Party had officially sanctioned: “The People’s Daily,” the “Liberation Army Daily,” and “Red Flag.” These publications were referred to by editors across the country before designing the layout of their own papers to ensure identical publications, also editors called “The People’s Daily” for advice on everything from placement of headlines and number of columns to even the size of print (Xupei 15).
The Cultural Revolution was a particularly bleak time for press in China in that the government was forbidding press freedom in any form, thus demonstrating the Party’s desperation for validation and respect after the disastrous effects of past campaigns. Since very few of Mao’s reverent followers had ever seen him, much less heard his voice, he relied very heavily on print media to communicate his speeches and thoughts. Therefore newspaper had an almost direct link to the eagerly lead minds of an entire country ravished with Chairman Mao.
This would be an ideal situation if the press had been allowed to educate the public truthfully but in order to critique public officials, journalists had to seek permission from the very officials which they wished to attack. Therefore, those in positions of great power were never openly critiqued because the press did not even ask permission for fear of persecution. Policies like these not only prevented the press from properly reporting on important events but it also prevented the people from even beginning to voice their opinions on the government that was controlling them.
The press had been utilized for informing the public of what they should think, say, and feel for such a long time, that it had ceased to inform the public of the policies that were forming their lives. The people were not allowed access to valid decision-making information so they could not voice their opinions concerning governmental laws and regulations until after these policies had been implemented. The Press had fully become the voice box of the Party and excluded the people, do they had no way to make their own desires known. Despite the lack of their own “voice box,” the people of China’s need for a public outlet was eventually made known to those in power as one committee member at the 1980 National People’s Congress said, “Let all citizens of the country have the freedom to openly express their views and publish newspapers and periodicals” (Xupei 35).
The need for a publicly run newspaper was great due to many factors which were absent in the official Party papers. Most importantly, publicly run papers can provide alternative views on governmental practice and provide a realistic view if those in positions of power begin to deviate from a truthful path. These publicly run papers can also reflect a wide range of views as opposed to the “official” view presented by Party papers which consisted of the ideas of the Communist Party and the Party alone. In these ways, public papers not only service the people by giving them a voice concerning governmental activities but it also allows to government to form policies that are publicly accepted, thus avoiding dissidence among the general public.
While Article 35 of China’s Constitution specifies that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration,” there are still a large number of restrictions placed on how newspaper are allowed to function. “The Newspaper Regulations” require that newspapers in China must primarily “propagate the policies of the Communist Party and the government” and “propagate Marxism, Leninism, and the thought of Mao Zedong,” while the last two regulations are “reflect people’s opinions and suggestions” and “shoulder the responsibility of supervision” (Xupei 87). This shows that the true priorities of the Party are effective propaganda and not the people’s well-being.
Despite these seeming advances in press freedom, the fascist nature of the Chinese government was made completely apparent during the coverage of the Tiananmen Square incident of 1976, when what was merely a spontaneous outpouring of emotion over the death of a highly respected public official, was branded as “a premeditated, planned, and organized counterrevolutionary, political incident” by newspapers across the country. Also, following the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, the Communist Party newspaper “People's Daily” published an editorial accusing a "small handful of plotters" of stirring up student unrest and creating turmoil in order to overthrow the Communist Party and the socialist system. It was obvious that the alternative views of the public press were notably absent during these events. At this time, journalist were restricted to only 20% coverage of current events while 80% had to be dedicated to propagating party achievements, yet even that small amount of space dedicated to “real news” was strictly controlled according to party guidelines (Lee 8).
These regulations, though defying the policies set forth in the constitution, are still being implemented today. In a news report on “Press Freedom in China,” China scholar Orville Schell said, “There are more areas that can be written about more freely than before. At the same time, there is a certain set of core ideas that it is more difficult to write about in a free and open fashion.” While this method of selective censorship is beneficial for short times periods, if it is implemented for a long time then the media will begin to lack diversity and new ideas will cease to be produced. As a particular area is controlled, it will begin to stagnate and there will be no motivation to progress or reform in that area because there is no new information being provided about it. The people will not have a way to voice unrest and the government will have no motivation to appease this unrest.
The Communist government has many excuses for why it has prevented its citizens from criticizing their own government. It seems as though their main reason is that if any doubt is expressed concerning the Party, then respect will dwindle for Party policy and the entire system will fall apart. This is only an excuse made by officials to protect their own power. If a society is meant to be “for the people,” then the people should have a significant role in how the society is administrated, yet in China the people have little to no voice.
As long as the press is repressed under antiquated laws that blatantly disagree with the country’s own Constitution, there will be no development. Only when the Chinese public can thoroughly supervise the upper echelons of those in power through the Communist Party, will the government begin to change its policies to reflect public opinion. The most viable option for the general public is through proper utilization of the public press outlets available to them, thus reform will only occur when the untapped power of the press is utilized to fully empower the people.