Research On Ethical Characteristics Of Ancient Chinese Official Information Communication

Why are our ancient Chinese newspaper called Bao(?, forth tone)?After researching, the author finds that Bao(?, third tone) and Bao(?, forth tone) are both opposite and complementary:the original meaning of Bao(?, third tone) is "to carry a child on the back" and then extended as protection, upbringing and education. Bao(?, third tone), which means the Bao(?, third tone)of protection, upbringing and education from the upper to the lower, similar to the treatment of parents to their children, comes before Bao(?, forth tone), which means the return from the lower to the upper, similar to the return of children to their parents. Thus, Bao(?, forth tone)have been mostly used to transmit information from the lower to the upper since the pre-Qin period and the official newspapers of Tang dynasty which are the earliest newspapers of China, also belong to such information transmission. Therefore, the Bao(?, forth tone) of newspaper reflects the ethical characteristics of ancient Chinese official information communication.Based on inspecting and interpreting the historical relationship between Bao(?, third tone) and Bao(?, forth tone), the main task of this research is to apply the methods of historical literature research, deep description and contrast to deepen people's cognition to the ethical characteristics of ancient Chinese official information communication in virtue of the theoretical perspective of historical semantics. In order to cover both vertical and horizontal to some extent, this research selects another two key words:Gao(?) and Zou(?), which are closely relative to Bao(?, forth tone), to express the official information communication. Therefore, the main problems to resolve in this research are as follows:1. What relationship on earth are between Bao(?, third tone) and Gao(?) as well as Bao(?, forth tone) and Zou(?) during different historical periods? This includes both the semantic relationship between them and the relationship between Bao(?, third tone) and the official information communication system and media related to Gao(?), Bao(?, forth tone) and Zou(?). 2. What rules are there among these relationship during the evolution?This is not only a kind of exploration to historical semantics of official information communication key words, but also a crossover study on journalism and political communication.In this research, the central argument is that the relationship between Bao(?, third tone) and Bao(?, forth tone) can be explained as a theoretical paradigm of our ancient Chinese official information communication. Bao(?, third tone) means the material protection and upbringing as well as spiritual education, similar to the treatment of parents to their children, while Bao(?, forth tone) means the material return and upwards information communication, similar to the treatment of children to their parents. They two are both opposite and complementary in terms of ethical significance. In our ancient China, the Son of Heaven, namely the emperor, is regarded as the national "father", whose role is Bao(?, third tone) which means protecting and nurturing his people. Thus his liegeman's finishing compulsory task is a reward or a return for the Son of Heaven. Accordingly, the information feedback to the emperor after liegeman's completing himself's task is called Bao(?, forth tone). Different from Bao(?, forth tone), which mostly means material return as well as simple and direct upwards information communication, Zou(?) originally means spiritual reward of entertainment and is usually used to denote more complex information communication to the emperor. The information communication dominated by emperores, whether the system of Gao(?)in the western Zhou Dynasty and Chunqiu period, the carved stone in Qin Dynasty, the cloth notice after Han Dynasty or official newspapers of Song dynasty, all have the characteristics of Bao(?, third tone) in ethical significance,and among them both the system of Gao(?) in the western Zhou Dynasty and the cloth notice after Han Dynasty have a certain amount of characteristics of Bao(?, third tone) in protection significance too. The first purpose is to facilitate liegeman and people's return and the second one is to endow the practitioners of Bao(?, third tone)with a deserved quality, who are treated as local representatives of emperores.Ancient Chinese official information communication's ethical characteristics of Bao(?, third tone) and Bao(?, forth tone), have influenced our national culture and character to some extent as well as today's journalism. Therefore, Bao(?, third tone) can be regarded as a key concept in the communication sciences with Chinese characteristics and should go down in history.