Research On Sun Xupei’s News Thought

The freedom of the press, the legislation of press, and the reforms of press are the three main parts of Sun Xupei’s ideas on press, of which the core the freedom of the press.First, this paper has a wraparound review about the tough course of the development of the idea "freedom of the press" since, as an exotic, it was introduced to China. Freedom of the press has budded at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, then it was practiced during the Warlord Period and the cooperation and opposition between the KMT and the CPC; however, it never really prevailed in China. Under the influence the founding of the P.R.C. and the ups and downs of the first period of the new country, its situation was more and more complicated.Then, in this paper I card Sun’s personal experiences and his ideas on freedom of the press. Sun proposed the concept of "Socialistic Freedom of the Press" during1980s to1990s, when he was the director of the Journalism Institute, in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The core substance of "Socialistic Freedom of the Press" is:the Press Freedom of Socialist is a kind of moderate and logical freedom, which means the press is not bound by any power except the law; hence it is acceptable for the one-party regime. In some degree, government’s control of the press is necessary in the developing countries like China, but the intervention is only valid when it is authorized by law. As far as Sun is concerned, it’s through the legislation of the press that we realize the constitutional press and people’s supervision of the politics. We can found a variety of newspaper establishments in the center of party organs through the reforms of press, which will also stimulate the development of the freedom of press. Sun’s ideas are initiativeness, gradual, classic and inclusive.From1998to1999, Yu Quanyu and Sun Xupei (the two used to be the director of the Journalism Institute, in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) as well as other scholars launched an academic debate about the definition of press and the freedom of the press. This fully reflects the obvious debate between the new ideas on press which emerged after the Reform and Opening up and the traditional view of the "left", and also reflects that, at that time, the press field had no agreement on how to deal with the freedom of the press. In China, historically, the freedom of the press had congenital deficiency; politically, its connotation was constantly revised because of the political sensibility; plus, the scholars have different translations of the phrase "the press" because of the culture differences.Sun’s ideas on press not only draw the attention of many oversea scholars but also have some positive impact on the formulation of the press policy and the reforms and practice of press during the new period of socialistic construction. Influenced by his ideas, I put forward some suggestions about the conditions to realize the freedom of the press. The more the press system and that of the politic stimulate each other, and the higher the degree of democracy is, the freer and opener the press system will be. Therefore, the conditions to realize the freedom of the press are:the liberal development of economy, the constitutionalism of the politics, the legal protection and the establishments of strong self-regulatory press organizations.