Journalism Studies, Volume 1, Number 4, 2000, pp. 549–558

Chinese Journalism and the Academy: the politicsand pedagogy of the media

HUGO DE BURGH

Nottingham Trent University, UK

In the mid-1980s it appeared, to ideal-ists at least, as if Chinese journalismmight achieve recognition as a pro-fession, might manage to slough off thestrict controls of the Communist Party.Then came the participation of journal-ists in the 1989 protests, the crushingof the Democracy Movement and thereimposition of orthodoxy.

In the decade since then the Chinesemedia have changed in ways whichappear to give more freedom to jour-nalists. There are thousands of mediachannels, where there were hundreds;the norm is economic independence,not state subsidy; typically reportersare employed under free market rulesrather than as civil servants; muchmore is permissible as content thanever before. Where this leaves journal-ists and journalism is the subject of thisthemed issue. Is the professionalautonomy which the 1980s demonstra-tors hankered after being achieved?Does the emergence of investigativejournalism signal a watchdog role? Isthe fact that journalists may no longerbe of� cials indicative of the Party’s will-ingness to give up its view of journalistsas propagandists? These are some ofthe questions raised in the followingpages; the variety of answers providedmakes for a lively debate.

The Road to 1989

Although claims may be made for an

indigenous ancestry for Chinese jour-nalism, the examples cited bear littlemore relationship to modern journalismthan do those produced to demonstratethat the Romans or even the AncientEgyptians had their equivalents tomodern media.1 Modern journalism de-veloped in China largely as it did inEurope, during the nineteenth century,although it lagged behind until the1920s when the exigencies of the busi-ness classes, the success of the ver-nacular language movement and theenthusiasms of nationalism conjoinedto produce a thriving and varied press.In the 1930s Chinese intellectual andcultural life, despite haphazard re-pression from the Nationalist govern-ment, was of a richness that thePeople’s Republic has never emu-lated.2 Nevertheless, frustration at thefailure of that government to achievemodernization more quickly and to re-sist the Japanese threat morestaunchly sent many intellectuals intothe Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The position of the CCP on journal-ists and the media was establishedduring the Recti� cation Campaign of1942–44 in Yenan. The objective ofthat campaign was to absorb theheterogeneous intellectuals into theLeninist party being consolidatedunder Mao Zedong. In his then writ-ings, in particular “On Literature andthe Arts”, Mao clari� ed that the mediawere to serve propaganda purposes

ISSN 1461-670X print/ISSN 1469-9699 online/00/040549-10 Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

550 HUGO DE BURGH

and that journalists were to be the pro-pagandists. In theory ideas comingfrom the masses would inspire theleadership who would brief the journal-ists who would clarify their own ideasback to the masses. By means of thismetaphysic the mass media were to beused to shape public opinion.

At the founding of the People’s Re-public in 1949 the media were national-ized or abolished and the Xinhua NewsAgency, Red Flag (theoretical maga-zine) and The People’s Daily estab-lished as the authoritative voices of theCentral Committee, to which all othermedia should defer. Journalists wereincorporated into the bureaucracy,ranked in equivalence with soldiers orcadres in the executive (ministries) orlocal administration. The executivestructure was paralleled by a mediastructure. At the apex were the threeabove-mentioned media. Each Prov-ince and locality had its equivalentsand there was a range of comparablepublications produced by of� cial bodiesin such areas of interest as agriculture,youth, trades unions, medicine, coalmining or education. As broadcastingdeveloped, it adopted the same struc-ture.

The popularity of newspapers plum-meted as they became ever moredreary, containing little but standard-ized political bulletins. In responsePresident Liu Shaoqi called for mediawhich could, within a general consen-sus, criticize and debate and act as abridge between leadership and citi-zenry (Liu, 1984, p. 395). For a periodduring the 1950s journalists were al-lowed such leeway, but then werecrushed in the Anti-Rightist campaignof 1957. A second period of analyticaland critical journalism came aboutonce it had become possible to ac-knowledge the Great Leap Forward of1959 as a disaster and the media’scover up. The Cultural Revolution of1965–78 put paid to that; the media

shrank to pitiful numbers and terror en-sured that the lower-level organs oftenmerely reproduced what was beingprinted in Beijing.

With the death of Mao Zedong(1976) and the fall of his accomplicesdebate and criticism re-emerged alongwith acceptance that journalism mustbe allowed to report unpalatable truths,always accepting the general consen-sus that the purpose of journalism is toadvance China and not undermine theParty, which the Chinese were ex-pected to acknowledge as the besthope for the future. The DemocracyMovement of 1979–80 went too far forthe liking of Deng Xiaoping—or, in an-other interpretation, he had to fell it toplacate his own critics on the left, al-ready itchy at his economic reforms—and was replaced by an uneasy modusvivendi until the mid-1980s brought anupsurge of optimism and radical think-ing. The discussions extended little bylittle to cover not only demands foreven faster economic changes but toargue that further progress and assur-ance that China would not return to thehorrors of the Cultural Revolution re-quired political changes too. Journal-ists, in particular those working on theestablishment’s own key organs, took aprominent part in the demonstrationspreceding the Tienanmen Massacreand many suffered in the subsequentrepression.

Journalism Since 1989

The consensus achieved by DengXiaoping’s successor, Jiang Zemin,has been more tolerant and, when sen-sitive, sensitive differently. The mainconcern of the Jiang era has been topromote the free market as the bestmeans by which the economy may de-velop; the media are seen as liberatingminds and inciting entrepreneurialism.The cultural and ethical conservatism

551CHINESE JOURNALISM AND THE ACADEMY

associated with Jiang has meant thatthe media are called upon to upholdmoral values and to serve as theguardians of the interests of both peo-ple and Party.

As to the economic and institutionalenvironment, in 1992 new guidelinesfrom the Ministry of Culture made forthe ending of government subsidies formuch of the media, the engagement ofstaff on private sector contracts andpermission to diversify. It also allowedthat advertising revenues be largely re-tained by the media organizationsthemselves. Between 1978 and 1989the media had expanded out of allrecognition; following the con� rmationof the free market direction made ex-plicit by Deng Xiaoping during hisSouthern Tour in 1992 the explosion ofnew titles, new channels and new ad-vertising has been phenomenal. Themanner in which one newspaper, theprovincial pioneering Chengdu Busi-ness News, has exploited the opportu-nities thus provided, is well illustrated inHuang Chengju’s study in this SpecialIssue.

As to content, before 1978 Chinesenews programmes famously eschewednegative stories and favoured those in-tended to inspire or awe the masses.Today there is still plenty of room forof� cial, positive stories but there hasalso developed a new genre, in-depthor investigative programming, corre-sponding to the UK’s current affairsand sometimes consciously modeledon 60 Minutes, The Cook Report orPanorama.

Already in 1979 it was possible tocriticize aspects of of� cial behaviourand to expose of� cial malpractice; pro-grammes giving space for ordinarypeople to voice their opinions and hu-man interest stories appeared and, witha brief hiatus in 1989–90, there hasbeen a continuous development, withthe media encouraged to become morerealistic. Since 1993 in particular there

have been many more stories bothcloser to the lives of ordinary peopleand more re� ective of the society. Ra-dio showed how the media could beaudience-led rather than leadership-led(Polumbaum, 1990, p. 3) and � rststarted phone-in shows, opinionatedchat hosts and the airing of every kindof grouse or inquiry of the public au-thorities (Crook, 1997). Accidents, dis-asters, crime, price rises, in� ation andenvironmental problems have becomeroutine (Jiang, 1995, p. 73) and suchcoverage has been theorized as theprinciple of “Three Proximities”, mean-ing proximity to the public, proximity toreality and proximity to day-to-day lifeas well as incorporated into missionstatements (Du, 1998). How the Chi-nese media have taken on board theconcept of “audience” to complement,and perhaps replace that of the“people/masses” of communist typol-ogy and how this process of “hailing” oridentifying people in a new way ischanging politics and society is thetheme of Zhang Yong in this issue ofJournalism Studies.

The most famous vehicle for investi-gation is Focal Point, within CCTV’smagazine Oriental Horizon. While rat-ings for network news are 40 per centof the maximum audience of 900 mil-lion, for investigative and critical fea-tures on Focal Point they can be ashigh as 70 per cent (Li, 1998). Eightyper cent of CCTV’s mail comes to Fo-cal Point, 3–4,000 letters a week, alongwith many thousands of calls dealt withby a full-time staff. It is widely believedthat ministers watch the programmebefore making policy. President JiangZemin has been known to call in, andPremier Zhu is believed to have in-structed ministers to watch it (Jiang,1998); in late 1997 Li Peng visited theof� ces and expressed his appreciationof the team’s work (Li, 1998). Theseobservations support Gordon’s con-tention that the leadership perceives no

552 HUGO DE BURGH

contradiction between investigativemedia and its own authority (Gordon,1997).

In trying to understand what theseinnovations mean Zhao Yuezhi hasbroken new ground, analysing their so-cial and cultural signi� cance in her1998 book, reviewed in this issue byMichael Yahuda. Her article in this edi-tion of Journalism Studies takes to-day’s Chinese investigative journalism,rather as Ettema and Glasser (1998)have done in the United states, and Imyself in a modest way for the UnitedKingdom (deBurgh, 2000), and showshow it can serve the status quo no lessin China than in other societies, that itis by no means always the unorthodoxits practitioners sometimes believe it tobe. With many concrete instances,Zhao demonstrates how exposure ofcorruption or administrative blundersserves the purposes of government al-though she does assign journalistssome critical functions independent ofthe power holders. Also in this issue,Xu Hua’s culturalist interpretation is an-other stimulating approach to makingsense of Oriental Horizon.

It remains only to add that in this newclimate of varied, competitive andsometimes iconoclastic journalism, theof� cial organs of the Party arebeached. They are losing money be-cause they are less able to respond tothe market pressures which haveforced the changes on their peers. Al-though they have improved the qualityof their information their veracity is indoubt; the politically minded probablyget their news from Voice of America,the BBC or the Internet. The unpoliticalhave a host of competitors from whichto choose.

Homo Journalisticus in China

Chinese media education, compared toEurope’s, has a long history which can

be traced back to 1918. This can beattributed to the predilections of theearly reformers, the example of theUnited States and the Bolshevik originsof both Nationalist and Communist par-ties. The Anglophone distinction be-tween Media Studies and JournalismEducation does not exist. For conve-nience I will refer to the departments inwhich these things are taught and re-searched today as schools of media.

The Beijing University JournalismSociety was founded in 1918; one ofthe initiators was a graduate in journal-ism from the University of Michigan. Itheld classes, organized visits to news-rooms and gave students opportunitiesfor practical training through work on aweekly publication (Chang, 1989,p. 232). A journalism department at StJohn’s University in Shanghai took itsplace in 1920, followed by one atYenching University (Beijing) in 1924and at Fudan University (Shanghai) in1929. There were close connectionswith US journalism schools and USteachers were common. The Depart-ment of Journalism of Chengchih Uni-versity, originally the Nationalist PartyAcademy, was founded in 1935 buttransferred to Taiwan in 1949, where itis the most distinguished such depart-ment in the Republic of China.

The pre-eminent university schoolsof media in the People’s Republic to-day are those of Fudan University andRenmin (People’s) University. Renmin,in Beijing, incorporates Yenching’s de-partment. In 1959, independent of theuniversity system, the Beijing School ofJournalism was set up; in 1996 thiswas incorporated within the (National)Beijing Broadcasting Institute whichhad been established in 1959 to traintechnical, managerial and presentationstaff.

In the early 1980s Xinhua set up itsown school and the People’s Daily in-vested in the Institute of Journalism ofthe Academy of Social Sciences, which

553CHINESE JOURNALISM AND THE ACADEMY

is the principal producer of Masters andDoctorates in media studies. Today,under the Ministry of Education, thereare altogether some 120 specialistschools of media (He, 1998). This� gure excludes lower level, employerand Chinese Association of Journalists’courses. In 1982 453 journalism gradu-ates were produced (Zhang, 1999); in1996, 9200.3 Academic staff totalled1303 and most of them are engaged inresearch, ensuring substantial productin media studies which remains to beanalysed.4 As to the theoretical issuesraised by the study of the Chinese me-dia, these are re� ected upon carefullyin our � rst contribution, from the lead-ing international scholar in the � eld ofChinese media studies, Lee Chin-Chuan.

There is eager competition to studyto be a journalist, particularly a tele-vision journalist, in China today. Theyenjoy high pay, status and opportuni-ties to advance in many directions. Atypical undergraduate student studiesfor 4 years, across seven semesters.The eighth semester is a placement ina media organization which takes placein the third year. This is the“Culminating Placement”. Students willusually have carried out one or more“Taster Placements” of a few weeksmuch earlier in their Course. Theplacements are chosen in consultationwith the student and it is expected byall parties that a successful placementwill lead to a job upon graduation(Zhongguo Renmin, 1998; FudanDaxue, nd).

At Fudan Journalism Department,students divide into four streams, NewsJournalism, Broadcast Journalism, In-ternational Journalism and CommercialCommunications. Modules at bothRenmin and Fudan are of three types,those required under the national cur-riculum and including Philosophy, His-tory, current political principles, theClassics, World History, Chinese His-

tory and Foreign Languages (of whichone is selected from Japanese, En-glish, Russian French and German5).The core subjects for the degree injournalism include Theory of News, In-terviewing, Editing and News Analysis.Finally there are options selected fromother departments. Compared to theUS and UK courses with which I amfamiliar, there is more cultural back-ground; compared to Spanish coursesthere is more practice.

In China it is appropriate to lumptogether media school academics, me-dia managers and journalists as “mediapeople” and to regard the accounts ofacademics as being at one with practi-tioners in a way that would not be thecase in the West. This is because theywork together in rather closer relation-ships than their western equivalents.Most journalists6 practicing in the elitemedia have graduated from mediaschools7 where they have undertaken arigorous curriculum, which will usuallyinclude a grounding in Chinese litera-ture. Theory and practice are combinedmore than in the very vocational Anglo-phone Departments of Journalism.Aside from a common literary ground-ing and other modules more immedi-ately related to current media, in thethird year they go on to select one ofusually two or three pathways, typicallybroadcast journalism, print journalismor commercial journalism (advertising/public relations), yet these distinctionsdo not appear to diminish the sense ofsolidarity among students, graduatesand teachers of the faculties.8

The relationship between politics andthe media world is quite different in theUnited Kingdom and is probably itself asubject worth studying. It is well knownthat senior journalists in the nationalmedia such as People’s Daily and Xin-hua News Agency obtain executive po-sitions in party and government inBeijing. Something similar seems topertain in the provinces. The Deputy

554 HUGO DE BURGH

Mayor of Shanghai—a national political� gure—was formerly of the JournalismDepartment of Fudan University; thepresent Dean’s last job was as a seniorgovernment of� cial in Anwei.

On a recent visit to Fudan I experi-enced the way in which media person-nel are reminded of their position whenI attended the Seventieth AnniversaryCelebration Meeting of Fudan Univer-sity School of Journalism and the SixthNational Conference of Communica-tions Research which followed it. Pre-sent were, as you might expect, thecream of journalism academics con-cerned with the electronic media, in-cluding the Internet. In addition therewas a large number of media person-nel including the Chief Executives of,inter alia, Liberation Daily, ShanghaiTelevision and Wenhui Daily, seniorexecutives of the New China NewsAgency, People’s Daily, GuangmingDaily and many others; as the celebra-tory meeting went on the announcerread out the names of the “top leaders”who were arriving continuously plusmessages of solidarity from those whosent their apologies.

Aside from the obvious point that theFudan School and its Dean wished toemphasize the importance of theSchool and its excellent political con-nections to all those present, the im-mediate signi� cance of all this did notcome home to me until I had heard allthe speeches, especially the � nal oneby Mr Gong Xueping. Mr Gong’sspeech was preceded by that of Pro-fessor Chen Guilan, Dean, FudanSchool of Journalism, and those of se-nior leaders from the National Journal-ists Association, PropagandaDepartment, Beijing Committee of theChinese Communist Party (CCP), Can-ton Daily (the CEO of which presentedan enormous cheque, of 1 billion RMB,for bursaries), Beijing Daily, the CCP’sBeijing Committee, the CCP Branch ofLiberation Daily, Shanghai CCP Propa-

ganda Department, the Wenhui-Xin-ming Press Group, ShanghaiTelevision, the Fudan University CCPBranch, Alumni, the Fudan staff andthe Fudan students and the Propa-ganda Department of the ShanghaiCCP.

Finally came Mr Gong Xueping,“Honorary Dean of the JournalismSchool of Fudan University and ViceGeneral Secretary of the ShanghaiCCP”, Shanghai’s Deputy Mayor.While the preceding speakers limitedthemselves to platitudes he departedfrom his set text often; he presentedhimself as someone who well under-stood the aspirations and frustrations ofjournalists and academic journalistsand was on their side, yet in the pro-cess probably left many rather be-mused. He declared that the task of thereporters was to report anything, to re-spond to the needs and demands ofordinary people and cover matters theycare about from poor housing to cor-ruption to pollution. However, he ar-gued that there was not much point inmaking general accusations against agovernment which was struggling tocope with huge problems and he gavethe example of water.

Don’t tell people that only 40 per centof the water of this city is � t to drink [hedid not make clear if this was off-the-cuff or an of� cial statistic!] but go outand � nd the factories, the individuals,the communities who are polluting thewater and expose them.

In other words, get at the manifesta-tions but not the system, a scepticmight interpret. From an administrator’spoint of view, the reporter who doesthis is a help rather than a pain; theyare on the same side, all for betterwater. Mr. Gong also discoursed atlength upon the nature of truth, sug-

555CHINESE JOURNALISM AND THE ACADEMY

gesting that the vaunted impartiality of,e.g. the BBC, was not so impartialwhen you considered some particularexamples. Truth, he opined, can besubjective; it depends from what angleyou look at it. “Truth serves purposesso do not be taken in” seems to me tosummarize his message.

While appearing to be unambiguousand forthright and indeed being tailoredto please his audience by its advocacyof journalism as a key mechanism bywhich China might modernize, thespeech was in fact quite contradictory.It was noticeable less for any clearguidelines than for the sight of a poli-tician courting the constituency bothwith gifts—he called upon the mediaexecutives present to emulate CantonDaily and give money to Fudan—andwith � attery; and the whole event andhis presence at it was loaded with pol-itical innuendo. For example the todayalmost-unheard word “comrade” wasused every moment; references toMarxism, Mao Thought and Deng The-ory were plentiful and the intimate rela-tionship between the media and politicswas the common premise. Finally, thehectoring tone of the political speecheswas not only curious to me but con-sidered rather out of order by at leastsome visiting academics, who thoughtit most inappropriate for a university, athrowback to the “bad old days” whenpolitics dominated everything. It islikely, however, that the students wereless sceptical; at least they applaudedMr Gong enthusiastically, in contrastwith their teachers.

Two Key Issues Today: “lawand regulation” and “what is ajournalist?”

In 1989, before the Tienanmen Inci-dent, Chinese journalists were hopingfor a Press Law which would establishtheir right to report, criticize and investi-

gate according to professional criteria.They had identi� ed three contradic-tions: professional values were madesubject to politicians’ agendas; owner-ship was too concentrated to allow ofvariety; journalists’ work was not man-aged by professionals. (Polumbaum,1990). They argued that journalists hadan important social function which wasbeing thwarted.

The community was receptive. Manyof those returned to power after theCultural Revolution had suffered fromthe lack of legality and had seen howabuses and failings could be coveredup when the media was terrorized intosilence. It has become increasinglypossible to �nd out the truth about theterrible 50 years past, at least for intel-lectuals in the cities.9

Although there was a hiatus after theTienanmen incident, journalists havecontinued to argue for media law, en-couraged by the government’s declara-tions about the need for “the rule oflaw”, by which it means rule by law, orrule according to regulation rather thanaccording to individual whim (Cullenand Hua, 1998, p. 156). This is notnecessarily to argue for greater free-dom, but for less arbitrariness. Thejournalists call on all the usual argu-ments to justify their case: a betterinformed citizenry; political partici-pation; social stability; checks on auth-ority. In practice, their concrete aimsare modest. The Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences (CASS) Working Partyon Media Law Reform, which spent amonth at Nottingham Trent University,England, in 1999 to study English ap-proaches to media law, has been urg-ing the need for “a national press law toprotect the news media from abusefrom the executive and the Party”(Zhang, 1999, p. 2).

An important in� uence on the mediacame about as a by-product of the � rstCivil Law, effective on 1 January 1987.It became possible for the � rst time to

556 HUGO DE BURGH

sue for defamation of character or in-fringement of privacy. There has beena rapid development in the number oflibel cases (well over 1,000 to date) inwhich journalists and media organiza-tions have been cited as defendants.Of these cases, about one-third werewon by the plaintiffs, one-third by thedefendants, and the rest settled out ofcourt. Zhang Ximin, Director of the Me-dia Law Programme at CASS arguesthat since the media are still in manyrespects extensions of government:

the fact that journalists have lost many ofthe libel suits brought against them incourt does not necessarily mean that it isa setback for freedom of the media. Itcan sometimes mean quite the oppositeas it can imply an increase in legal pro-tection of the rights of individual citizensand an increase in constraints upon thepower of the government” (Zhang, 1999,p. 3).

In what senses are Chinese journal-ists still arms of the government? Thetradition of the Chinese journalist is ofan intellectual engaged with the futureof his or her country. The journalist isnot an outsider, looking in, still lessmerely an individual professional withpersonal mission or ambition, but a so-cial activist. In the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries the early reformers,aiming to change China that it mightresist imperialism, seized upon the me-dia of the day as their means. Thisinstrumental attitude to the media per-sists as surely as the belief that one ofthe tasks of the journalist is to propa-gate the belief of a China wronged andon the path to restitution of its rightfulplace in the world. In this connection,Cao’s thoughtful and engaging analysisof the reporting of the Hong Kong han-dover in the Chinese press helps us togain an insight into fundamental factors

in the mind-set of Chinese journalists,factors as important as the institutionalframework within which they are con-tained, and without which it is probablyimpossible to understand their ap-proach to journalism. Furthermore,while emphasizing the inter-relationsbetween journalism and the politicalprocess, he touches upon the rel-evance of journalism to the repro-duction of social identities.

For Liang Qichao (1873–1929), thedoyen of modern Chinese journalism,journalism was not only the means bywhich he expressed his patriotism butalso a modern vehicle for exercisingthe didactic function of the traditionalliteratus. The � rst newspaper hefounded was the Qing I Bao, namedafter a student movement of the HanDynasty (206 BC–AD 220) which hadcriticized the rulers. So although manyof the reformer-journalists of the earlyyears of the century sought to rejectConfucianism as social ideology, theyremained wedded to the Confucianidea of the function of the literati andarrogated to themselves the right toteach, exhort and berate their fellowChinese. The � rst textbook for tyrojournalists, published in 1919, also heldthat newspapers should monitorgovernment and represent the people(Hao and Zu, 1998, p. 3). It was merelyre� ecting what was established opinionamong the intellectuals. Long beforethe present fashion for Habermas, theyhad identi� ed the roles that the presscould play in social development, werethe rulers but to allow it to do so.10

Today, journalists are moved by thepressure of the market and to someextent by the pressure of a societywhere inhibitions are weakening, tolong for their professional indepen-dence. Perhaps the generation of LiuBinyan11 is the last to see itself asworking totally within the system forParty and government. Today, withthe Leninist system much discredited,

557CHINESE JOURNALISM AND THE ACADEMY

journalists probably � nd it dif� cult tomaintain the facade of orthodoxy. Theynow know other ways of being a Chi-nese journalist (the past, outside thePeople’s Republic) and about how jour-nalists function in other polities. Howdo journalists cope with, on one hand,having professional ideals, and on theother hand failing to live up to them?Cognitive dissonance is not an ex-pression which trips often from the lipsof journalists; He Zhou, in anotherpath-breaking essay in this issue ofJournalism Studies, uses that conceptto help us understand how they may doso.

This introduction has sought to show

how our present edition of JournalismStudies engages with key questionsdealing with those who mediate realityto the country with the world’s largestpopulation. Eventually this topic maybecome mainstream within the Acad-emy. Meanwhile we trust these articleswill stimulate more people into this ab-sorbing � eld.

Acknowledgement

Jiang Xinyi, of the Fudan UniversitySchool of Journalism, read my draftand made comments. I herewith ex-press my thanks to her, while reservingresponsibility for any errors.

Notes1 Lin Yutang (1936) A History of the press and Public Opinion in China Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh. To say this

is not to belittle the signi� cance of, inter alia, the tipao, the most advanced system of information provision atits time (probably current as early as the Later Han), but to distinguish between their content and functionsand those of modern media.

2 Sceptics may refer to Gray (1990), Nathan (1985) and even Judge (1996).3 Includes 3,000 not doing pure, full-time degrees. Excludes 332 master degrees and 30 doctoral completions.

Source: “Quanguo Gaoxiao Xinwenyuan, xi (zhuanye) jiben qingkuang diaocha tongji jieguo 1996” publishedby Renmin University Department of Journalism, Beijing, 1997.

4 Xu Xiaoge, of Nanyang University Singapore, is working on a taxonomy of Chinese media studies which nowincludes many hundreds of books and, quite possibly, as many as 100 academic journals. The mostprestigious journals are probably Academic Journalism (Fudan University) and International Journalism(Renmin University). Lee Chin-chuan (personal communication, May 2000) considers that, after Hu Qiaomuprovided the framework by backing academic study of the subject just after the Cultural Revolution, thegreatest impetus for developing media studies came from the translation of Siebert’s 1956 classic The FourTheories of the Press.

5 At Renmin and Fudan Universities; it may be that other universities offer less choice.6 This assertion was repeated to me both at the Schools and by senior professionals. As in the United Kingdom,

the early years of television saw many people entering the profession without degrees (particularly in thetechnical side, from which they could progress to direction and production as easily as journalists). However,Shanghai TV has declared that its professionals will in future all be graduates. There is therefore a demandfor night-school classes in Shanghai’s schools of journalism.

7 Those who took their � rst degree in Chinese language and literature or Economics (the two main rivals toJournalism) appear mainly to have made up for it by taking the MA in journalism which all the top universitiesoffer. The fact that the MA takes 3 years does not appear to be a disincentive since it would seem that virtuallynobody can be employed as a reporter until their late 20s, so that gaining an MA is a good way to bide time.

8 On a visit to one of China’s biggest and most important TV stations, the lecturer accompanying me bumpedinto 24 people who had been her students or whom she knew as having graduated from her School ofJournalism, one of whom was the Chief Executive (who asked her to lecture the following month on what shehad learned from a recent overseas trip) and others in the senior management team.

9 We cannot be sure how much people know about the bloody and violent repression in the countryside in the1950s, the manner in which the Party sacri� ced the lives of tens of millions in the late 1950s/early 1960s orother periods when power-crazed thugs were let loose. The novels of Zhang Ailing, who wrote what are someof the most moving condemnations of the way the CP brought terror and destruction to the countryside in theearly years, are now on sale in China; whether the kind of factual information contained in Jasper Becker’sHungry Ghosts (London, John Murray, 1997) is available is open to doubt.

558 HUGO DE BURGH

10 It is ironic that, nearly 100 years later, this is still the key issue for journalists.11 The distinguished investigative reporter. On Liu, see Michael S. Duke (1985), Blooming and Contending.

Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

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