CHINA'S OLD-TIME PRESS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1912, Page 14

CHINA'S OLD-TIME PRESS

It eeenW n. pity (writes an. 'American paper) .that the dawn of democratic.gov> eminent in China should bo marked by the arbitrary suppression of a newspaper,' sixteen hundred yeats old. When* Great Britain Was peopled by sa-vages and , Christianity was % first finding ii» f«et in the world .the King-Bao was being regiu larly printed from type mad© from, lead and silver. It occupied^ tea pages of yellow silk and if ite circulation was. small it was highly select. The position, of editor of the Rmg*Bao "was not with-, out its dangers. Somewhere 3>* the 1. eighth tefttuty the editor was prosecuted for libel on the Royal family, and by way of encouraging other editors he Was first tortured and tlien beheaded. In the twelfth century another editor was'disas' trolisly "abbreviated for Tecoinniending iho Government to acquaint itself with European progress, and now President .Yuan Shi'Kai has o&eted that the King' Bao be suppressed altogether. It seems 1 a pity, but no doubt Yuan Shi-Kai is determined to show that the new Chinese Government ie a real democracy, and that it, can be depended upon to. act with , the full-flavoured despotism proper Jo democracies!