Press Thought In Modern China: Its Origins And Structural Transformation

The origins of modern Chinese press thought has been a durable subject in modern Chinese press history study. As we have known, Wang Tao and his XunHuan daily was generally considered as one origin of modern Chinese press thought, another origin was LinZeXu and his business of translating foreign language newspapers. This paper regard the origins of modern Chinese press thought as a quite long nurturing process, this process begins from the advent of foreign missionary press till the Reform period of late 19^th century. In this regard, I think that the missionary press functioned as an illuminating element to the Chinese press thought, and foreign business newspapers were also has significance to modern Chinese press development. Some editors worked for their foreign employers wrote many articles discussing western press ideas ,but their opinions neglected by their peers due to epoch limitation. Press booming during the WuXu Reform era indicated that modern Chinese journalism in late 19^th century reached its peak, as many higher literati enter journalism to became editors and chief writers, modern Chinese press were widely recognized by both officialdom and ordinary society and gradually became a robust social power. Furthermore ,modern Chinese press thought nearly finished its process of origins till this time, with the so-called wen ren lun zheng press model(style of essay and political commentary of the press)as its emblem. Since this model stemmed from and functioned within the existing political system, it could not be exercised fully, and always incline to be absorbed into this political system. After the Qing government issued its New Polices in 1903 and especially after 1906, when Qing court declared constitutional preparation, a whole new breed of literati begun to apply western constitutional thought to reform old autocratic political system, with the aim of establishing parliament. In this constitutional movement, social power aroused to some degree by constitutionalists and their press activities, thus forming a new type of politics of public opinion. Slogans such as press freedom and free expression were utilized as powerful weapons to supervise government activities. The constitutional movement means to reconstruct the existing power system, so the constitutionalists were fundamentally contrary to the existing power, so as the press founded by the constitutionalists, this situation led the constitutionalists to ultimate ruptured with the imperial Qing government. For this reason, Liang Qichao called the press functioned as "revolution of ink" in late Qing revolution movement. We can conclude that during the constitutional movement, modern Chinese press thought finished its structural transformation, i.e. from petition to upper power to criticize and supervise political power and struggle to incorporate the media to be structural element within the politics structure and remain an independent power.