China's media industry: past, present and future
- Source: Global Times
- [18:21 September 29 2009]
- Comments
By Xia Yubing
China’s media industry has experienced tumultuous times along with the setting up of new China, recording the milestones along the way. The three periods that stand out are during the Sino-Japanese War, reform and opening up, and today.
Need for National Unity
During the Sino-Japanese War, the most challenging job for Chinese journalists was the safety and efficiency of delivering information.
Out in the field, journalists used pens or pencils to write their stories which they then usually mailed by post. This led to stories being behind by a couple of days or even a week, and by that time, the articles were no longer news. Not all news arrived on the editors’ desks either, as letters were easy to lose during wartime.
Nevertheless, China’s media industry did play a positive role in the society, because people longed for victory and national unity so much that they were anxious to hear any kind of information that was encouraging to the Chinese side.
One of the top journalists at the time was Fan Changjiang who worked for Ta Kung Pao, a paper set up in the Kuomintang (KMT) ruled area.
Fan went to Yan’an to interview Mao Zedong before the KMT and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to cooperate together to fight the Japanese. When the Xi’an Incident happened on December 12, 1936, when one of Chiang Kai-shek’s subordinates arrested him and encouraged him to cooperate with the CCP. Fan rushed to the ancient capital and immediately interviewed Zhou Enlai.
As a reporter who was not only passionate about uniting China, but also a keen observer, Fan wrote a series of articles about Mao, the Red Army, the CCP, relationship between different ethnic groups, and the life of people in northwestern China.
Fan’s articles pointed out that all kinds of interest groups and different parties in China should unite together, to make the nation a better place for all people, even calling for democracy. Such insight made him nationally famous, popular and respected.
