Between 'Official Organization' And 'Newspaper':Research On Peiyang Kuan Pao In The New Deal Period Of Late Qing

From ancient to modern times,Newspapers can be roughly divided into two kinds: official newspapers(or Kuan Pao)and commercial newspapers,according to different sponsors.Modern times is an era of the rise of commercial newspapers and the decline of official newspapers.However,The new Kuan Pao in the last ten years of Late Qing Dynasty,among which the most representative was Peiyang Kuan Pao,flourished in China and became an unique spectacle.Compared with the commercial newspapers,Peiyang Kuan Pao seems to be very backward and maybe doesn't deserve attention.But it can't be ignored that,from the prospect of evolution of ancient official newspapers,the progressiveness of Peiyang Kuan Pao is very striking.A lot of questions should be answered concerning this newspaper: what kind of roles did it play in the New Deal in Chihli province? How did it interact with the imperial government,the Chihli Governor,lower officials,the gentry and the Chihli council? The main purpose to this paper is to find out the new relationship between Peiyang Kuan Pao and the politics at that time.To seek that relationship,this paper divided the history of Peiyang Kuan Pao into four periods: rise period,thrive period,decline period and transfer period.The analysis of this relationship runs through the whole four periods.To be specific,the following matters will be discussed in the four periods: the relationship between Peiyang Kuan Pao and Chihli governor or Chihli Council,the personnel changes and financial conditions of the Kuan Pao,and the columns or text.In each chapter,the historical materials that were collected through all kinds of methods will be carefully analyzed and interpreted.Each period of the Peiyang Kuan Pao will be put in the specific scene,so as to depict a basic picture of the Kuan Pao and be helpful to draw a conclusion.Through analysis,the paper finds that Peiyang Kuan Pao is not merely an official newspaper,it was also integrated into the New Deal reform and played a variety of roles.It was a news organization and supplied basic information,and was a government documents publicity agency.It also published colloquial periodicals and carried out social education.Meanwhile,it was a donor and gave assistance to school in the form of money,and a fund-raiser when there was drought or other disasters.The various functions that Peiyang Kuan Pao performed,shows the close relationship between it and the New Deal reform.That is a new type of media-politics relation.This relationship can be summarized as the following: Peiyang Kuan Pao gained initial funds from political power.Using this fund and the newspaper sale privilege,Peiyang Kuan Pao achieved financial independence and increased returns to the New Deal reform.This relationship is not unchangeable.From the beginning of its establishment,the Chihli congress tried to cut the ties between Peiyang Kuan Pao and politics by proposing abolishing the newspaper's political privileges.In response,Peiyang Kuan Pao deepened the ties with politics,and became an organ of Chihli Provincial Administration.There are two innovations in this paper.First,relying on the newly published Peiyang Kuan Pao for National Library and complete works of Yuan Shikai,the paper completely presents the whole progress of the Peiyang Kuan Pao's transformation from Late Qing to ROC and enriches research on this newspaper.Second,embarked from the media practice path,the paper brings Peiyang Kuan Pao into a macroscopic frame of political reform in Late Qing,and analyses the interaction between them,therefore builds a new model of ties between official newspapers and the politics.