Guangming ribao

[Enlightenment Daily]

Newspaper

Guangming ribao is the official newspaper for China’s intellectuals who focus on science, education and culture. Launched in June 1949, the paper has its roots in a free-thinking and critically oriented tradition. It was originally the paper of the China Democratic League and in 1953 represented the eight minority ‘democratic’ parties in China. In 1957, the newspaper reported widely on the various forums critical of the Communist Party which followed Mao Zedong’s exhortation to ‘let one hundred flowers bloom’. As a result, the paper was severely criticized for its ‘bourgeois tendencies’ in the succeeding Anti-Rightist Movement (1958). Subsequently the paper joined the mainstream of Party publications.

In the 1980s, a period of flourishing intellectual debate, the Guangming ribao became a mouthpiece for the interests of intellectuals, focusing editorials on their political status and working and living conditions. In this period the paper returned, to some extent, to its critical roots, writing various editorials directly criticizing certain senior Party figures even though the paper remained under Party control. In 1994, the paper became a central Party organ under the direct supervision of the Central Party Propaganda Committee. In the early 2000s, the paper is still read widely in intellectual and academic circles, but has had some difficulty redefining its position in China’s new commercially oriented newspaper market. It relies heavily upon obligatory subscriptions from Party and state work units such as schools, universities, and publishing and cultural organizations.

See also: newspapers

KEVIN LATHAM