The Role Of Party Newspapers In The Discussion Of The Standard Of Trut

The 1978 debate on truth criterion in Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) newspapers is generally regarded as an introspection of the ideology during the "Cultural Revolution", and a movement of emancipation of the mind and its early trend toward China’s reform and opening-up as well. This thesis states in detail the causes and processes of the 1978 debate and the important role the then Party newspapers played in it, analyses the causes of its great success and the significant position of the Party’s newspapers in the history of great debates, and reveals the theoretical implication this debate held -it is a return of the Party’s newspapers’ biased interpretation of the Party principles to their full and unbiased interpretation—the success of this great debate is ascribed to the Party’s newspapers’ integration of ideological content with political nature and organizational principles.Starting from a careful retrospection of the situation in which Party’s newspapers were after the "Cultural Revolution", this thesis finds that the ideology of the "Cultural Revolution" still existed about two years after 1976. Meanwhile there was a strong will in the Party’s newspapers to oppose "two whatever’s". This was combined with the force of the correct ideology in CCP, resulting in the great debate on truth criterion in the Party’s newspapers. Along with the "two whatever’s" criticized and overthrown, the theory of the continuing revolution and class struggle was being diluted in the newspapers, and such words as reform and opening-up began to appear. Through analyzing the historical materials, the different phases in the great debate emerged.This thesis outlines the debate from a time and space perspective and reveals that the great debate was a process, not just one or a few points, during which a series of theoretical articles were published. The debate took place not only in the Central Party’s newspapers, but also spread out to the majority of the provincial newspapers. These local newspapers’ and their superiors’ response or resistance to the central newspapers’ debate formed many complicated articulations and intertwined power fields. In order to conduct the debate effectively, the central newspapers such as People’s Daily had propagated democracy and law in 1978. Their aim was to remove obstacles in the process, thus paving the way for the truth criterion debate. Therefore, the 1978 debate was carried out in two aspects in the Party’s newspapers.