The Newspapers of China

New Zealand Tablet, 20 September 1906, Page 15

The Newspapers of China

cxt M h Arcmb ald R. Colquhoun contributes to the <£u rtn ™^ meri^ n - Review " an ■ interesting article on 'The Chinese Press „of To-day.! Pekin is the home of the oldest newspaper in the world, the ' Pekin Gazette : and, long before the modern newspapers made its appearance in China, there was an extensive use of ..placards and broad-sheets, which, though they often contained criticisms of the government, were " not censored, and, indeed, there are no press laws' in exist.ence in the middle kingdom -to-day. • TS?n fix v st . m ° dej:n newspaper was . published in China in 1870, but the growth of the Chinese press was slow until after the • Boxer rising. Now Pekin has SSI PaP o? and fortnightly ones; Tientsin three dailies ; Shanghai 16 daily papers ; ' Foochbw, • Soochow and Canton between ,them toave some six or seven dailies, .while there are five in Hong Kong and on « ™ K ? aochow. Besides, several papers -are now published in the interior. _ In' all these, there are, as 1 in American and*" JEnelish papers, leaders - and leaderets, news items, telegrams, scraps of general information and advertisements. ' «v« n . d r^n ibin + ? i he Chl ' nese P a Per, Mr. Colquhoun says. Along the top, where we are accustomed to see

the title, runs the pious exhortation to ' respect the written word,' and the custom of reverently collecting and burning all printed matter still survives, although it is neglected in some of the treaty ports. Special correspondence is. ' conveyed ' from, the foreign press, and -not always well translated, which leads to many ludicrous mistakes. The acknowledgment is made to a ' Western 1 Friend,' an-d the" leading papers- have a foreigner ' to advise on foreign news, but some of .the more advanced statesmen have men to translate direct to them, as had Li Hung Chang. . . & Advertisements in the more popular papers are much in evidence, as in our own papers, and war news' is given prominence. This is a modern "develbpmentrfor at the time of the China-Japanese war the defeats of China were never chronicled, but imaginary victories were dithyramb ically described, and the same happened in some parts of China at the time oi- the Boxer movement. As a rule, the articles in Chinese papers and magazines are not signed, but - the niceties of '• style are such that the authors are soon recognised locally ; whereas,- in Japan, the leading > writers enjoy quite a national reputation. ■ ' " *-_