Great sound makes no noise -- Creeping Freedoms in Chinese Press

Abstract

In contrast to recent Western criticism of China's tightened social control and the crack-down on dissent, a liberalizing tendency has rippled in the most dangerous water in China: the press. The birth and growth of a freer press is inconceivable 10 years ago.

Since the spring of 1998, "a quiet revolution" is undergoing in the Chinese media, which some describes it as "in the face of a communist regime that runs a closed society and a censored press, more modern, lively newspapers are drawing in readers."

As China is embracing a free market economy, its press begins to embrace a new journalism, which is not a planned move on the agenda of China's reform. This new trend has been largely ignored by both the western scholars of China studies. The new journalism is becoming a media for the communications of news and formations of new ideas. The rise of such a new journalism and its influence on Chinese society and China's politics cannot be ignored. The creeping freedoms, which have slowly come into being in radical economic and social changes in China, can also be seen as the inevitable and unplanned results of social and economic forces unleashed by the Chinese Communist Party itself. In a sense, they are not simply to add spice to the dull format and content of the party media or to meet insatiable demand for information from the public. By analyzing their content and studying their effects, we will discover that they are functioning as media of mass communications, unlike the party journalism as mean of mass propaganda.

We need a realistic picture of what the Chinese press is like today. Not an abstract or foggy views of the Chinese press. We can neither idealize nor belittle or even ignore such a dramatic change. There are really a lot of nuances than a simple still picture of the Chinese press nowadays. We must try to avoid subjective analysis of the press reform in China. You may well use the "bird cage" metaphor invented by a Chinese professor to describe the press freedoms in China: a substantial freedom within a limited space.