New E-Resource: A History of Journalism in China

New to Penn Libraries E-Resources is A History of Journalism in China, a 10-volume English language overview on the subject, the first of its kind.

This encyclopedic work from Enrich Publishing spans 200 BC to 1991 covering all aspects of journalism in China’s history-- including newspapers, periodicals, news agencies, broadcast television, photography, documentary film, and journals--all against the backdrop of the region's significant historical events. Not only Mainland China is included in this overview, but Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and the larger Chinese diaspora.

All ten volumes were authored by Fang Hanqi, Professor Emeritus in Journalism, who is considered the “Father of China’s Modern Journalism."

  Content Highlights (from the Publisher):

• The Early Newspaper Publishing Activities of Foreigners in China
• Political Standpoints of the Chinese-Operated Newspapers
• Journalism in the era of the 1911 Revolution
• Journalism in the Early Republic Period of China
• Journalism in the May Fourth Movement
• The Founding of the Communist Party in China and Journalism during 1924–1927
• The CPC’s Journalism during the Chinese Civil War
• Kuomintang Journalism and Private Journalism during the Ten-Year Civil War
• Journalism in the Kuomintang-Controlled Areas during Anti-Japanese War
• Anti-Japanese Propaganda in Journalism in Hong Kong and Overseas
• Journalism in the Liberated Areas during the Second Chinese Civil War
• Gargantuan Changes of Journalism in China
• Journalism in the Construction of Socialism (January 1957–May 1966)
• Journalism in the Rectification Movement and the Anti-Rightist Movement

Global Media Worlds and China

The 20th anniversary edition of Javnost - The Public The Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture is devoted to China. 

Global Media Worlds and China

Articles: 

Hu Zhengrong, Ji Deqiang

Retrospection, Prospection and the Pursuit of an Integrated Approach for China’s Communication and Journalism Studies 

Yuezhi Zhao

China’s Quest for “Soft Power”: Imperatives, Impediments and Irreconcilable Tensions? 

Daya Kishan Thussu

De-Americanising Media Studies and the Rise of “Chindia” 

Lena Rydholm

China and the World’s First Freedom of Information Act: The Swedish Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 

Susan Brownell

“Brand China” in the Olympic Context: Communications Challenges of China’s Soft Power Initiative 

Göran Svensson

“China Going Out” or the “World Going In”? The Shanghai World Expo 2010 in the Swedish Media

NOTE: While Javnost is freely available electronically beginning in 1994, the most recent years (last two) are not available online; 2012 and 2013 issues of the Journal in paper are available in the Annenberg Library. 

Assignment: China -- USCI series on American reporting on China

US-China Today, a non-profit student-driven magazine of the USC US-China Institute focusing on the multidimensional and evolving US-China relationship and on significant trends in contemporary China, features a special documentary project on American reporting in China called Assignment China.

Interviews with [the] journalists who covered China are the core of Assignment: China which is illustrated by archival news footage and other images... In addition to interviews with those whose work was featured on American front pages and broadcasts, the series includes interviews with Chinese and American officials who sought to manage coverage of China or of specific events, such as Nixon’s historic 1972 trip.

Mike Chinoy, the distinguished former CNN Asia correspondent and USC U.S.-China Institute Senior Fellow, is the writer and reporter for the series. He is assisted by  USCI staff and students.

Assignment: China has recently published two short documentaries – “The Week That Changed The World” and "Opening Up."

The Week that Changed the World – President Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip ended more than two decades of Cold War hostility. American and Chinese forces had fought each other in Korea and the United States had refused to formally recognize Beijing’s government and did recognize Taipei’s. From the founding of the People’s Republic until the Nixon trip, American news organizations had virtually no access to the world’s largest and most rapidly changing country. America’s most famous journalists clamored to go with the president, though most had no idea what they might find, telling us “it was like going to the moon.”
USCI website | Chinese subtitled version 中文字幕版
USCI YouTube Channel | Chinese subtitled YouTube version 中文字幕版


Opening Up – With the restoration of U.S.-China diplomatic relations in 1979, American news organizations were finally able to base reporters in China, something that even the Nixon trip hadn’t made possible. By this time, of course, China was embarking on stunning economic and social reforms. Private enterprise was being permitted, foreign investment pursued, and controlling births was made a government priority. There were also stirrings of dissent, which the party-state moved to stifle. Though influential, the reporting corps was small. Delighted to be covering such sweeping changes, reporters sometimes chafed at the restrictions imposed on them by the Chinese government and their own editors and by the technological challenges of reporting from a developing country.
USCI website | Chinese subtitled version 中文字幕版
USCI YouTube Channel | Chinese subtitled YouTube version 中文字幕版

October CommQuote

This month's quote is from a New Yorker piece of this past summer on the rising neocon/nationalist movement among China's youth. The article profiles Tang Jie, a graduate student in Shanghai who made a 6-minute documentary that captures the nationalistic mood that has swept China since the Tibetan uprisings in March. The film has since widely circulated on You Tube.

"When people began rioting in Lhasa in March, Tang followed the news closely. As usual, he was receiving his information from American and European news sites, in addition to China's official media. Like others his age [he is 28], he has no hesitation about tunnelling under the government firewall, a vast infrastructure of digital filters and human censors which blocks politically objectionable content from reaching computers in China. Younger Chinese friends of mine regard the firewall as they would an officious lifeguard at a swimming pool - an occasional, largely irrelevant, intrusion.

To get around it, Tang detours through a proxy server - a digital way station overseas that connects a user with a blocked Web site. He watches television exclusively online, because he doesn't have a TV in his room. Tang also receives foreign news clips from Chinese students abroad....He's baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation are somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship.

'Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed," he said. "We are always eager to get other information from different channels." Then he added, "But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.'"

--Evan Osnos, Letter From China: Angry Youth (The New Yorker, July 28, 2008)

Chinese news translations from FBIS

Penn Libraries has just added a very large collection of translated Chinese news sources in the latest update to the Foreign Broadcast Information Services 1974-1996 NewsBank collection. Here is the New & Noteworthy announcement from the Library homepage.

FBIS goes to China
The latest update to Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports 1974-1996 provides 790,752 news articles translated from Chinese news sources, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao.

FBIS Daily Reports are English-language translated media reports gathered from monitored broadcasts and publications in more than 50 languages. FBIS Daily Reports cover all newsworthy topics and they are invaluable sources of local information on both local events and world affairs.

The fulltext online FBIS Daily Reports are a collection in progress, being converted from microfiche and print originals. The collection is expected to be completed by Summer 2009. Status reports on the conversion process are provided at the NewsBank web site. Next up for release: Asia and the Pacific (APA) and East Asia (EAS).

The Penn Libraries owns the complete run of FBIS Microfiche and the online FBIS Daily Reports index - but the recently acquired online version offers more friendly access to those difficult formats.

Berkeley China Internet Project

The Berkeley China Internet Project of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is a good project for students of Chinese Media to keep an eye on. It's stated goals are ambitious:

"To explore interactive digital media and communication technologies in order to advance the world's understanding of China, and to promote the knowledge, culture and social practices of those technologies which will facilitate China's democratic transition, sustainable development and peaceful emergence in the global community." (website)

The activities of BCIP are centered around the development of a participatory media website, China Digital Times, a collaborative news website covering China’s social and political issues. It aggregates up-to-the-minute news and analysis about China from around the Web, in addition to providing independent reporting, translations from Chinese cyberspace, and perspectives from around the world.

BCIP focuses on two other initiatives, China Digital Pulse, which publishes on, among other subjects, the rise of participatory media in Chinese cyberspace and its effects on politics, and politics, and China Digital Future which offers "classes, forecasting exercises and a virtual community focusing on the interplay of participatory media, collective action and China's democratic transition." (website)