| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article shows that Chinese sensitivity about the way the Western press covers China, a point of obvious relevance today, has a lengthy and rich history. The article focuses on the movement to professionalize Chinese journalism in the late 1910s and early 1920s and on ways in which that movement was bound up in a transnational conversation about journalism reform, as well as in educational institution-building efforts, that flowed from the United States to East Asia. Concentrating on linkages between China, the United States and Japan, the article argues that the effort to transfer American journalistic norms to China was undercut both by the Western-dominated political and economic forces that shaped the flow of information in the world at the time, and by the failure of Western journalism to live up to its own standards insofar as its coverage of China was concerned. Given the rising nationalism in China at that time, such problems proved very consequential. These conclusions are based on an analysis in the last section of the article of Chinese participation in the Press Congress of the World meeting convened in Honolulu, Hawai'i, in 1921. The Chinese who attended that meeting were among the most Westernized and self-consciously professional journalists in China and, as such, were in a unique position to critique Western journalism practice in China on its own terms.
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