Abstract
This article explores the intricate relationship among print capitalism, war, and the popularization of newspapers in 1930s China by analyzing the motivations for publishing the Libao 立报 and the reasons behind its success. Most of the print capitalists publishing major broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai in the early 1930s did not have a strong financial motivation to popularize such broadsheets especially because of the relatively small circulation of printed materials, the underdevelopment of communications infrastructures, the low level of literacy, and the small size of the middle class. However, this study of the Libao published in the mid-1930s demonstrates that the simultaneity of the commercialization of print media and the outbreak of the national crisis in the 1930s gave rise to the expansion of a politicized reading public and to popular nationalism, and provided print capitalists with financial motives to popularize and politicize newspapers.
In China in the 1930s, there was an intricate relationship among print capitalism, war, and the popularization of newspapers. Even in the midst of the accelerated commercialization of the newspaper industry in the 1930s, major broadsheet newspapers 大报, folio-size papers, published in Shanghai, then a center of the national newspaper market, were still far from written completely in vernacular Chinese, were pricey, catered only to a small segment of China’s readership, and thus were inaccessible to a broader readership. Tabloids 小报, or “mosquito papers,” which were cheaper and easier to read, also flourished, but they were often condemned for their low quality, sensationalism, and unfounded news offered purely for entertainment. What is most striking, however, is that most of the print capitalists publishing major broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai did not have a strong financial motivation to popularize such broadsheets. In the history of newspapers in Britain and the United States, the popularization of newspapers and the rise of popular dailies with a massive circulation are often explained as a natural result of intensified commercialization in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries (Schudson, 1978; Boyce et al., 1978). In China, however, commercialization itself did not automatically lead to the popularization of newspapers, which results in mass circulation. Rather, political, social, and cultural changes, which were given impetus by the imminent war and the national crisis in the mid-1930s, had to take place to motivate print capitalists to popularize newspapers.
The national crisis and the imminent war triggered by the Japanese military encroachment in the mid-1930s facilitated the popularization of broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai and enabled the success of a popularized format of broadsheet newspaper, namely, the compact newspaper. After that, the compact newspaper became one of the most viable formats of popular dailies in China. Thus, the mid-1930s was a critical juncture in the remaking of the mass media in twentieth-century China. The case of the Libao demonstrates the distinctive feature of the popularization that took place in the 1930s. The simultaneity of commercialization of print media and the outbreak of the national crisis in the 1930s accelerated the expansion of a politicized reading public and the rise of popular nationalism, and provided print capitalists with a financial motive to popularize and politicize newspapers. The success of the Libao, published in Shanghai by Cheng Shewo 成舍我 (1898–1991), a media mogul of Beijing and Nanjing, shows how this print capitalist sensed the economic potential of the popularized format of broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai, 1 and tried to capitalize on the specific historical circumstances to make the paper commercially successful. Cheng launched the Libao 立报 in Shanghai in 1935, calling for the “popularization of newspapers” 报纸大众化 and advocating anti-Japanese resistance, both of which intensified in the mid-1930s. The Libao described itself as a compact newspaper 小型报, 2 a broadsheet-quality tabloid-size newspaper. The Libao, boasting of its conciseness and accuracy, carried a digest of political and social news usually published in broadsheet newspapers, while, in its effort to reach the lowbrow readership, it was cheaper and easier to read. At the same time, the Libao maintained an anti-Japanese stance in its editorials and news coverage, catering to the politicized readership of the time. The Libao was not the first compact newspaper in China. In Beijing and Nanjing, earlier compact newspapers, such as the Qunqiangbao, the Shibao, and the Minshengbao, gained considerable success, but the Libao was the first compact newspaper in Shanghai, and became influential enough to compete with major Shanghai broadsheet newspapers. Thus, the Libao represented one of the most successful cases of the popularization of newspapers. Furthermore, the compact format it adopted had a lasting impact on newspapers for a mass readership. Indeed, the origins of the evening newspapers, such as the Xinmin wanbao of Shanghai and the Beijing Evening News, which enjoyed a higher circulation than morning party organs, such as the People’s Daily and the Liberation Daily in contemporary China, can be traced back to the compact newspapers of the mid-1930s. In this sense, even though mainly focusing on Shanghai, this article addresses the issue of the popularization of newspapers in China because of the success of the compact newspaper. The Libao had a lasting impact on the popularization of newspapers in the national market.
The English-language literature on the popularization of newspapers in the mid-1930s is scant and there is even less on the significance of compact newspapers in the history of newspapers in China, despite the importance of such newspapers in political, social, and cultural history. 3 Chinese scholars, such as Ding Jinlin, Fang Hanqi, Ma Guangren, and Liu Yanfeng, recognized the significance of the Libao and other compact newspapers, but did not closely analyze the impact of the national crisis and the imminent war on the success of the compact newspaper nor did they put the Libao in the broader context of the Shanghai newspaper industry and political and social history (Ding, 1987; Fang, 1996; Ma, 1996; Liu, 2009). 4 Chang-tai Hung, in his study of the impact of war on the rise of popular culture, insightfully recognized that the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War triggered the popularization of newspapers especially because newspaper publishers saw the importance of newspapers as a medium for mass mobilization (Hung, 1994). Stephen MacKinnon also discussed the intellectuals’ contending advocacy of the popularization of culture in the freer cultural atmosphere of the United Front in wartime Wuhan in 1938 (MacKinnon, 2008: 62–82). 5 Hung, however, claimed that the popularization of newspapers took place only after the outbreak of the war, and did not closely analyze the financial motivations of the print capitalists in popularizing newspapers in the context of war. Regarding the popular press, Juan Wang, Haiyan Lee, Bryna Gooman, Eugenia Lean, and Catherine Yeh have produced excellent studies on the role of the popular press in the constitution of the public and political, social, and cultural change (Wang, 2007, 2009; Lee, 2001; Goodman, 2005, 2006; Lean, 2007; Yeh, 2006: 178–219). 6 However, the business side of the newspaper industry is not central, and in fact is often secondary, in these studies. In order to understand the nature of the popular press and the implications of popularization in the mid-1930s, it is important to analyze the financial motivations of the print capitalists and their responses to specific historical circumstances, especially when we consider the print capitalists as business entrepreneurs. I consider the newspaper industry as one of the important fields of print capitalism, which in China emerged as a “mechanized and industrialized” printing business late in the nineteenth century, as Christopher Reed compellingly demonstrates (Reed, 2004: 8–9).
Finally, this study will shed new light on the reasons behind the politicization of the popular press and its implication for understanding popular culture in the 1930s. The politicization of the press in response to the national crisis in the 1930s has been recognized by Yeh Wen-hsin, Terry Narramore, and Parks Coble (Yeh, 1992; Narramore, 1998; Coble, 1991). However, in their works, the financial motivation of print capitalists as business entrepreneurs to politicize the press and to promote anti-Japanese sentiment in the context of commercialization in the 1930s remains ambiguous. Often it has been explained as a personal political cause of publishers and journalists. However, the case of the Libao demonstrates that due to the impact on print capitalism of the national crisis and the imminent war, the popular dailies intentionally carried politicized anti-Japanese content to generate profits. Northcliffe, a media mogul of Britain, also promoted jingoism in his popular daily, the Daily Mail, to churn up profits (Seymour-Ure, 2000). Nevertheless, I do not intend to argue that the politicized popular press in the 1930s was simply a representation of the “authentic voices” of the masses, and thus had a liberating role for the masses as they became available for the broader population and gave rise to a “critical” and participatory mass readership. 7 Rather, in the context of the commercialization and popularization of newspapers, the “masses” became more vulnerable to the manipulation of Chinese elites, who controlled the popular press, as Karl Gerth has vividly demonstrated in his discussion of the Shanghai capitalists’ manipulations of consumer culture through the promotion of the national products movements (Gerth, 2003). Furthermore, Hsiao-t’i Li has persuasively elaborated on Chinese intellectuals’ manipulation of popular culture for political and social mobilization since the late Qing and throughout the twentieth century (Li, 2001). Habermas also pointed out that the intensified commercialization of the press in the late nineteenth century in the United States and Europe made the public more vulnerable to the manipulation of private interests in contrast to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century bourgeois public sphere (Habermas, 2000). Of course, the mass readership’s own reading and appropriating of the popular press should be also recognized. Robert Culp has demonstrated how the meaning of citizenship during the Republican era was “articulated” as a result of the dialectical processes of various political forces’ manipulation of citizenship by accommodating popular sentiments and students’ fashioning of their own modes of citizenship (Culp, 2007). At the same time, as the case of the Libao shows, the “masses,” either as an “imagined authority” or actual subjectivity, also were empowered to shape print capitalism to a certain extent.
Why Was There No Popularization of Newspapers? Newspaper Readership and Print Capitalism in 1930s Shanghai
The Shanghai newspaper market was highly commercialized by the 1930s even in the context of the state building and the expansion of state power in the Nationalist period. Most broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai were owned and managed by Shanghai capitalists, except for a couple of party organs and politically affiliated newspapers, such as the Minbao and the Zhonghua ribao, whose circulation was lower than that of independent newspapers, although some newspapers, such as the Shishi xinbao, were funded by bureaucrats by the mid-1930s and came under the control of the minister of finance, Kong Xiangxi. Advertisements provided a significant portion of the revenues of newspapers. Competition among broadsheet newspapers was intensified in the context of commercialization. Indeed, by the 1930s the circulation of the largest newspapers, such as Shenbao and Xinwenbao, reached 150,000, the largest in their history (see Table 1). These broadsheet newspapers enjoyed their dominant position both in terms of national circulation and in their political authority as representing national public opinion and influencing government policy making (Liu, 1934: 155; Chin, 2007). In addition to broadsheet newspapers, numerous tabloids flourished in Shanghai, but their circulation rarely went beyond 30,000 (see Table 2).
Circulation of Shanghai Broadsheet Newspapers, 1936.
Source. Shanghai shi nianjian, 1936: T60.
Circulation of Shanghai Tabloids, 1933.
Source. Shanghai shi difang xiehui, 1933: 10.
Nevertheless, if we put the circulation figures in a global context, it is clear that the readership of the major Shanghai newspapers was still confined to a small segment of the population. As mentioned above, even though the Shanghai newspaper industry may have entered its golden age in the 1930s in the context of commercialization and state building, the circulation of even the largest broadsheet newspapers, such as the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao, which reached 150,000 copies a day, was relatively low in comparison with other countries of the time. In Japan, the circulation of the leading newspapers, the Osaka Asahi shinbun and the Osaka Mainichi shinbun, was more than a million by 1927 (Young, 1998: 60–61). As Cheng Shewo pointed out, “if we look at Britain, which has a population of less than 50 million, we see that they have three popular newspapers, each with a daily circulation of two million” (Cheng, 1935). The Chinese population in the 1930s was approximately 400 million, eight times more than Britain, yet the circulation of the largest newspaper in China was thirteen times less than Britain’s largest. Even if we include both broadsheet newspapers and tabloids, the total circulation of daily newspapers in China was about 3 million, according to a survey conducted by Carl Crow Inc., an advertising agency founded by Carl Crow, an American businessman in Shanghai in 1934. A Chinese article which analyzed the survey pointed out that each copy of a newspaper was read by about five to ten people on average, and thus, 3 million copies of a newspaper had the effect of 9 million to 18 million copies. Even so, the article concluded that only one out of a thousand people read newspapers (“Survey,” 1934). Of course, this number is an estimate of readership nationwide. The rate of readership in the cities, especially Shanghai, must have been much higher. Based on Carl Crow’s estimation, Wei-pin Tsai (2010) argued that newspaper readership consisted of only 7 percent of the population. In any case, the circulation numbers themselves demonstrate that the readership of dailies was confined to a small portion of the total population (Table 3).
Survey of Readers of Daily Newspapers in China, 1934.
Note. The computation errors are in the original source.
Source. “Survey,” 1934.
In addition, contemporary intellectuals were concerned that newspaper readership was bifurcated into highbrow readers of broadsheet newspaper and middle- or lowbrow readers of tabloids. Left-leaning journalist Yun Yiqun pointed out that readers of broadsheet newspapers did not extend beyond officials, politicians, educators, students, businessmen, and professionals, which we might call highbrow readers. Yun estimated that these readers, most of whom probably had a secondary or advanced education and who possessed some means, made up less than ten percent of the Chinese population (Yun, 1934). According to Sa Kongliao, who was to become the editor-in-chief of the Libao in 1935, newspaper readership in China was bifurcated along class lines into highbrow readers of broadsheet newspapers and lowbrow readers of tabloids. Sa claimed that in Beijing in 1929, “readers of broadsheet newspapers were mostly intellectuals (zhishi jieji), or men of property of the middle or upper class (zhongdeng yishang zhi zichanzhe), while readers of tabloids are mostly workers (laodongzhe).” Thus, he said that “tabloids became influential among workers, and broadsheet newspapers became an authority holding sway over the middle class” (Sa, 1929). This perception of a bifurcated newspaper readership proved not necessarily accurate. Weipin Tsai has pointed out that readers of mosquito papers were not necessarily separate from readers of broadsheet newspapers such as the Shenbao because the Shenbao also carried popular literary supplements and its advertisements “appealed to the full spectrum of readers; to the literate, the less literate, and even to illiterate people” (Tsai, 2010). Perry Link also claimed that popular fiction, which was often serialized in the popular press, was also read by Chinese elites (Link, 1981: 189–95). Nevertheless, Chinese intellectuals’ perception of a bifurcated newspaper readership created anxiety that the structure of the commercial newspaper industry until the mid-1930s was not yet suitable for inculcating national consciousness among the masses. In this context, Chinese intellectuals, both liberal and leftist, called for the popularization of newspapers and attracting the masses to newspaper readership.
Even when recognizing the overlapping of highbrow and lowbrow readership, it is still beneficial to make a distinction among highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow readership in order to understand the newspaper readership of early twentieth-century China in terms of education, economic means, and occupation. Highbrow readers included officials, politicians, educators, students, businessmen, and professionals, who obtained a higher education and had the economic means of the middle class or higher. Middlebrow readers consisted of what Yeh Wen-hsin would call petty urbanites, such as shop clerks, office workers, trade apprentices, business trainees, and elementary school teachers, “whose formal education had ended before university, but who were working in jobs that required literacy” (Yeh, 2007: 129). Lowbrow readers were workers, rickshaw pullers, and other menial laborers, who gained minimum literacy through formal or informal education in urban China. Of course, these readers could often overlap. Table 4 lists the occupations of readers of the Shenbao Mobile Library, which was established in December 1932 in the aftermath of the Shanghai Incident. Because the Shenbao opened this library for the purpose of expanding the education of the masses, who did not have a chance to obtain much schooling, it is reasonable to surmise that these people were middle- or lowbrow readers. The library indeed targeted shopkeepers, apprentices, and workers as its major readers (Second Annual Report, 1935).
Occupations of Readers at the Shenbao Mobile Library, 1935.
Note. The percentages do not add up to 100 presumably because of rounding.
Source. Second Annual Report, 1935.
There were two major reasons why the readership of broadsheet newspapers was confined to a small number of highbrow readers and thus the circulation of those papers was limited. Tang Bingzheng, then a professor of Minguo University, argued that there were two obstacles that prevented China from producing newspapers for the majority of people, “from high officials and nobles at the top to peddlers and lackeys at the bottom,” not as commodities for a small number of people. One was an economic problem and the other was a knowledge problem (Tang, 1935). First of all, broadsheet newspapers were too expensive for the majority of the population. The buying power of an average family in Beijing can be found in a senior thesis of a student of the Journalism Department of Yanjing University written in 1936: In the case of Beijing, a family of Beijing residents earned about 25 yuan per month. Most families had about five people on average, and each family member was given about 4 yuan. Thus, if the living expense for clothing, food, and housing is included, how could there be a room to buy broadsheet newspapers, which cost about 1 yuan or more [per month]? The price of tabloids was low and cost about 1 fen a month, which was one-fifth or one-fourth of a broadsheet newspaper. (Zheng, 1936: 11–12)
Broadsheet newspapers were indeed quite expensive, as can be seen in Table 5. Thus, it is understandable that middle- or lowbrow readers, with a relatively meager income, would prefer to read tabloids. The tabloids of Shanghai, such as the Jingbao or the Fu’ermosibao, cost about 0.028 yuan per copy, which was much cheaper than the price of broadsheet newspapers (see Table 6). Readers of tabloids included middle and small merchants, shop clerks, apprentices, and workers, unemployed youth, or youth deprived of education (“Xiaobao nian,” 1935). Readers of tabloids coincided with readers of Shenghuo or Dushushenghuo, who were “elementary and normal school teachers and petty urbanites (xiao shimin)—literate clerks, apprentices in trade, manufacturing, the professions, and public and private sectors who were members of the old as well as the new middle classes” (Yeh, 2007: 101–51).
Price of Major Broadsheet Newspapers in Shanghai, 1936.
Note. After 1933, one yuan (silver dollar, yinyuan) was one hundred fen, and one fen was ten li. See Pan Liangui, 2004: 217–18.
Source. Shanghai shi nianjian, 1936: T62.
Price of Tabloids in Shanghai, 1936.
Source. Shanghai shi nianjian, 1936: T67–69.
Second, the content and language of broadsheet newspapers were too difficult for the majority of the population to comprehend. In terms of contents, broadsheet newspapers covered serious political, social, and international news, yet lowbrow readers’ interest in politics was relatively low (Sa, 1929). Furthermore, broadsheet newspapers maintained the practice of using both literary Chinese and vernacular Chinese. The influential liberal intellectual Hu Shi, in an article calling for the complete vernacularization of newspapers, pointed out that only 38 percent of news content was written in vernacular Chinese. To make his point, Hu analyzed the January 4, 1934, issue of the Dagongbao. Out of 6.5 pages of the newspaper, the news content written in vernacular Chinese took up only 2.5 pages, or 38 percent (Hu, 1934). Thus, broadsheet newspapers were challenging for middle- or lowbrow readers, most of whom had only attended elementary school or were entirely deprived of a regular education. Huang Tianpeng, a well-respected scholar of journalism, estimated that there were about 87,218,000 literate people out of the total Chinese population of 436,094,000, which is less than 20 percent of the total population (Huang, 1933: 115–18). Among that 20 percent, it is fair to say that less than 10 percent were educated enough to be able to read broadsheet newspapers, especially when they were written in both literary Chinese and vernacular Chinese. These people managed to learn how to read after several years of effort. Newspapers used about 3,000 or 4,000 characters, which just about encompassed all the commonly used characters (around 5,000) in Chinese. Usually, it takes about a year to master 1,000 characters. Thus it was only after four or five years of study that one could read and understand a newspaper (Huang, 1933: 115–18). Although the Shenbao made various attempts to cater to a broader readership by adding more pictures in its advertisements and publishing supplements for women and children (Tsai, 2010: 158–84), a considerable portion of the contents was still not easy for the middle- or lowbrow readers to comprehend.
If the circulation of broadsheet newspapers was to expand, they had to be cheaper and easier to read. And indeed many intellectuals such as Hu Shi called for the popularization and vernacularization of newspapers (Hu, 1934). Intriguingly, however, Shanghai’s most influential print capitalists, such as Shi Liangcai and Wang Boqi, who were proprietors of Shanghai’s largest broadsheet newspapers (the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao, respectively), were not so enthusiastic about publishing compact newspapers nor of popularizing newspapers, especially in Shanghai, where print capitalism was the most advanced in China in the early twentieth century. A day after the launch of the Libao in 1935, Cao Juren recalled how Shi Liangcai and Wang Boqi had little interest in it.
Xie Liuyi [then a professor in the Journalism Department at Fudan University] while discussing the prospects of the newspaper industry with Shi Liangcai and Wang Boqi, proprietors of the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao, five or six years ago, said that “there can be two new directions. One direction is to publish evening newspapers, and the other is to publish compact newspapers.” The two owners did not seem to agree with Professor Xie’s opinion and believed that publishing evening newspapers and compact newspapers did not have a future. Who could have known that Shi Liangcai could see the development of evening newspapers with his own eyes and compact newspapers started to blossom in the newspaper world a year after the assassination of Shi Liangcai? (Cao, 1935)
If we assume that the ultimate goal of print capitalists was to make a profit, we cannot but wonder why the print capitalists publishing major broadsheet newspapers did not seek to increase circulation by catering to a broader readership. A greater circulation would also attract more advertisements.
Close scrutiny of the newspaper industry in 1930s China demonstrates that the thrust of print capitalism did not provide print capitalists publishing broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai with financial incentives to popularize the newspapers by making them easier to read and cheaper to buy. First of all, it was difficult for broadsheet newspapers to lower their price especially because of the low level of circulation. Because advertisements were a more important source of income for newspaper publishers than circulation, the greater the number of pages, the more space for advertisements. The Shenbao and the Xinwenbao usually published about 22–44 pages per copy in 1936 (Shanghai shi nianjian, 1936: T62). However, since newsprint was expensive, adding pages involved a significant cost. Thus, broadsheet newspapers continued to set high prices.
Second, ironically, in the Chinese case, the fact was that using the vernacular in newspapers was uneconomical, even though publishing in vernacular Chinese was critical to popularizing newspapers in the context of the low rate of literacy. 8 One of the factors preventing broadsheet newspapers from completely vernacularizing, according to Yun Yiqun, is that printing vernacular articles in newspapers took up much more space than those written in literary Chinese. As the major source of income for the Shanghai mainstream newspapers came from advertisements, it was inevitable that news items had to compete with advertisements for space (Yun, 1934). Advertisements published in the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao occupied half of the newspaper (see Table 7). Lin Yutang analyzed the contents of a copy of Shenbao of May 30, 1936, and found that advertisements took up about 65 percent of the total contents of this particular issue (18.25 pages out of a total 28 pages) (Lin, 1937: 141). This illustrates that the most important source of revenue was advertisements. The most profitable newspaper in 1933 earned an income of 1,000,000 yuan, most of which came from advertisements. Sales of newspapers did not generate considerable income and sometimes even caused deficits (Wu, 1930: 87). Thus, it was often the case that there was an incentive to reduce news content in order to publish more advertisements (Liu, 1934). In this context, publishing news in vernacular Chinese was not good for business.
Ratio of Advertisements and News in Daily Newspapers, February 1934.
Note. The author corrected some minor computation errors in the original source.
Source. “Benguo xinwen shiye,” ca. 1935: 117.
In addition, sending telegrams in vernacular Chinese was more costly because vernacular Chinese used more characters. In China, news telegrams cost about 0.025 yuan per character in 1928, compared to news telegrams in Japan, which cost only 0.002 yuan per character. Hence, it was costly to send telegrams, and this expense made up a considerable part of the budget of many Chinese newspapers (Shenbao, Nov. 15, 1928). The problem was that editors of newspapers often published news items received in telegrams without much editing or revising (Lin, 1937: 131–49). Thus, news sent by telegraph in literary Chinese was published in literary Chinese.
Third, the mainstream newspapers in the 1930s needed to maintain their highbrow, elite readership. The authority of these major newspapers did not simply spring from their ability to influence the national reading public, but also from their capacity to draw the attention of officials to public discussions that appeared in their pages. Government officials constituted important readers of these newspapers. Commercial newspapers in the Republican period functioned as an important means for political communication, since party newspapers, such as the Zhongyang ribao, were underdeveloped. Consequently, catering to elite readers, who favored literary Chinese, was a crucial way for newspapers to expand their influence. Furthermore, because of the low levels of literacy in Chinese society and the relative underdevelopment of the economy, publishers of broadsheet newspapers could not expect to reach lowbrow readers in any great numbers. Thus, these newspapers could not afford to lose their already-secured readership, and this reinforced their tendency to use literary Chinese, which appealed to elites, rather than the vernacular.
Because of this combination of economic and social factors—a heavy reliance on advertisements, the high cost of communications, and the importance of elite readership—entrepreneurial publishers were largely reluctant to use the vernacular in their newspapers and popularize broadsheet newspapers. In this context, print capitalism in China during the 1930s lacked the thrust to vernacularize broadsheet newspapers. Commercial considerations actually caused major newspapers to be less willing to turn away from literary Chinese in favor of the vernacular. Interestingly, however, Robert Culp’s recent study demonstrates that in the case of commercial textbook publishing, print capitalists were given impetus to adopt the vernacular in their publications as early as 1920, which contributed to the spread and standardization of the vernacular in the 1920s (Culp, 2008). 9 However, in the case of the newspaper industry, specific social and economic conditions mentioned above gave rise to a remarkably different relationship between print capitalism and vernacularization.
War Sells the News: War, Print Capitalism, and the Libao
Cheng Shewo’s launch of the Libao on September 20, 1935, was anomalous. Cheng, a media mogul in Beijing and Nanjing, had been publishing several papers, such as the Shijie ribao and the Shijie wanbao in Beijing and the Minshengbao in Nanjing. As a graduate of Beijing University, Cheng was connected with May Fourth intellectuals, such as Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, and he himself was active in the May Fourth movement (Boorman, 1967: 286–88; MacKinnon, 2005). Thus, even though he later became an entrepreneur, he maintained a strong political and social consciousness. Nevertheless, he was never committed to a particular political faction, either the liberals or the leftists. Rather, as Stephen MacKinnon has pointed out, Cheng avoided direct political involvement (MacKinnon, 2005). Cheng came to Shanghai in 1934 after the Minshengbao had been closed down because it revealed the corruption of Peng Xuepei, head of the Office of Political Affairs in the Executive Yuan, who was a close associate of Wang Jingwei, then head of the Executive Yuan. Cheng Shewo was detained for 40 days and was banned from publishing any newspaper in Nanjing (Zhou, 1998). Encouraged by his former colleagues in media circles in Shanghai, Cheng came up with the idea of publishing a paper like the Minshengbao, a compact newspaper, in Shanghai (Cheng, 1956: 132–34). Given that Cheng was barred from publishing in Nanjing, one of his friends, Wu Zhongyi, a vice president of the Xinsheng News Agency in Shanghai, said, “Then, why don’t you come to Shanghai to publish a newspaper?” And he went on to sound Cheng out on publishing a compact newspaper in Shanghai, while cautioning that if one were to publish a broadsheet newspaper, the paper would not be able to compete with dominant broadsheet newspapers such as the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao unless one had more than a million yuan (US$300,000) in capital (Cheng, 1956: 132–34). Cheng gathered twenty shareholders (Jingbao, May 18, 1935) who were mostly involved in the media industry and pulled together 100,000 yuan (Cheng, 1956: 137). Cheng himself invested 30,000 yuan (Sa, 2002: 25) and established a company limited by shares (Dongfang ribao, Sept. 24, 1935). Finally, he launched the Libao on September 20, 1935. 10
What was the motivation behind Cheng Shewo’s decision to launch the Libao in the cause of popularization? And how and why did the Libao become commercially successful in such a short time? As we have seen, print capitalists did not have a strong financial incentive to publish popularized broadsheet newspapers, that is, compact newspapers. Thus, the vital impetus for Cheng Shewo’s publication of the Libao cannot be explained simply as a commercial decision. As we have also seen, most publishers of broadsheet newspapers did not consider popularization to be lucrative. In other words, these print capitalists did not see the potential of middle- or lowbrow audiences as readers of serious political and social news or editorials that were usually covered by broadsheet newspapers. Rather, a vital source of motivation came from Cheng Shewo’s recognition of a new political, social, and cultural environment created by the military conflicts and the perception of a national crisis set off by the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and the Shanghai Incident in 1932. As a member of the May Fourth generation, Cheng was committed to educating the masses in the face of the national crisis, but as a businessman, he also saw the financial potential of popularized broadsheet newspapers.
In this atmosphere, an interplay of political, social, and cultural factors provided the thrust behind Cheng Shewo’s decision to publish a popularized format of newspaper, the Libao. First of all, because of the national crisis and the perception of imminent war, a broader readership had emerged spontaneously and it was eager to know the latest news about the mounting conflict with Japan. As time went on, the Chinese reading public became increasingly interested in political news and national affairs. War in general has a tendency to stimulate the desire to be informed about the latest news. Leo Ou-Fan Lee and Andrew Nathan have pointed out that the national crisis of 1895, China’s defeat in the war with Japan, and the fear created by the national crisis “stimulated appetite for news and political discussion” (Lee and Nathan, 1985: 363–64). Similarly, the Shenbao’s war reports on the Sino-French War of 1884 spurred an immense increase in sales figures (Vittinghoff, 2002: 111). On the streets of Shanghai in the mid-1930s, one could often observe groups of rickshaw pullers reading newspapers and heatedly debating the political events in North China. On December 8, 1935, a journalist for the China Press, one of the most influential English language newspapers managed by a Chinese publisher, reported that the readership of newspapers in China was growing in response to the mounting sense of national crisis: Political and world troubles may come and go but for the Chinese newspapers, the more trouble, the better. For the past six months, ever since events in North China have gradually proceeded to a state of extreme tension, the sales of Chinese newspapers have grown perceptibly. There is a lot of news in the world and the public demands it—and speedily. . . . Nowadays crowds can be seen before the boards where papers are posted at any hour of the day. . . . Rickshaw coolies discussing and not unintelligently either, the latest silver decree, the strategy of the Italo-Abyssinian war, the significance of Dr. C. T. Wang’s trip to Tokyo, the events of North China. Teahouse gossip is no longer idle chatter but has taken on the appearance of serious political discussions. One who doesn’t speak Chinese may be inclined to laugh at this statement, but one who has made even a superficial round recently of the Chinese masses can say with a certainty that this change has occurred. (China Press, Dec. 8, 1935)
Second, the war created a political and social atmosphere in which national consciousness was actively constructed and enhanced. Chinese intellectuals, capitalists, political activists in the anti-Japanese movement, all had their political and economic interests in promoting anti-Japanese sentiment through print media. For the Chinese elites, mobilization of the public through guiding and educating the masses, which reached a peak during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), became an urgent task as early as 1931 with the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident. As Karl Gerth has demonstrated, Chinese capitalists also contributed to the construction of nationalism by promoting the national products movement, which, not coincidentally, coincided with their economic interests (Gerth, 2003). Thus, the heightening of national consciousness in the 1930s was the result of the promotion of anti-Japanese sentiment through printed media in the wake of national crisis, although one cannot dismiss the spontaneity of the rise of nationalism and interest in national affairs among the Chinese public in the face of imminent war. As a result, potential consumers of serious political and social news dealing with national affairs were no longer confined to officials, urban professionals, merchants, teachers, and students, but now included a broader body of middle- and lowbrow readers that extended to the laboring classes.
Third, lowbrow readership was indeed expanding especially because of the literacy movement launched by the Shanghai municipal government and the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, or GMD) with the nearly forced cooperation of local public organizations in Shanghai in June and July 1935. Any industrial concern, company, or business employing over thirty illiterate workers was required to establish free schools for them. A total of 305 local organizations established schools for the illiterate in compliance with the orders of the Shanghai branch of the GMD. With donations from 72 public organizations in Shanghai, the local GMD established 103 schools in various GMD offices in the city (Shanghai Municipal Archives, U1-1-1221). A journalist of the China Press reported that the average semi-illiterate person could easily learn to read a Chinese newspaper article within three months (China Press, Dec. 8, 1935). This literacy campaign gave common people in Shanghai the ability to read the Libao, thereby contributing to the newspaper’s success.
Finally, Cheng Shewo’s advocacy of the popularization of newspapers can be understood in the broader context of the reemergence of the issue of vernacular Chinese or a “popular language” in the realm of public discussion in the mid-1930s. Intellectuals’ efforts to reach out to the “masses” (dazhong) were greatly facilitated by the political crisis of the mid-1930s. With the national crisis caused by the Japanese invasion, the May Fourth agenda of enlightening the masses and achieving national salvation once again became a critical political agenda for urban intellectuals. In the summer of 1934, public debates about the masses’ language were dominating China’s cultural realm, particularly in Shanghai. For different political reasons, by the mid-1930s, leftist and liberal intellectuals called for the total vernacularization of daily newspapers. In an article in Dagongbao on January 7, 1934, Hu Shi ignited the public discussion of the total vernacularization of newspapers as a way of guiding the nation. In August 1934, Yun Yiqun, 11 a Communist underground worker who was then a journalist with the Xinsheng News Agency and later an editor of the Libao, discussed this issue in his article, “Can’t Newspapers Completely Use Vernacular Chinese?” in the Damei wanbao (Yun, 1934). He argued that newspapers needed to be vernacularized in order to guide and organize the masses.
In this context, the Libao was established to capitalize on the growing demand for national news among people at all levels of the urban literate society that emerged with China’s political and foreign policy crises of the 1930s. Publishing a popularized format of broadsheet newspaper, which would provide accurate news, yet would be cheaper and easier to read, offered a promising business opportunity for Cheng Shewo. Thus, Cheng made sure that the Libao compact newspaper was a miniature of regular broadsheet newspapers, and therefore he valued editorials and competed for news with other newspapers in terms of accuracy and speed. In that sense, Cheng claimed that compact newspapers were different from tabloids because the primary mission of tabloids was to indiscriminately produce unfounded rumors and unmask shameful secrets of individuals. They were like mosquitoes on a summer night, buzzing everywhere, troubling people’s clear dreams, and causing people to detest them (Cheng, 1956: 119–20). However, the Libao was different from broadsheet newspapers in that none of the news items would exceed 500 characters, which made it easy for middle- or lowbrow readers to understand. Concerning the format, the Libao had four pages in total: the first page carried important news and editorials; the second page, national and international news at the top and the supplements for intellectuals at the bottom; the third page, local news and the literary supplements; and the fourth page, news and the supplements for lowbrow readers (Fang, 1996: 507–12). Notably, Cheng Shewo required that all the news items dispatched by the news agencies had to be shortened and revised by the editors of the Libao (Ma, 1986: 229). And the Libao’s editorials consisted of only about 500 characters.
These changes reveal that Cheng Shewo saw a great opportunity to expand circulation. The Libao proclaimed its ambition to carry out the “popularization of newspapers” (baozhi dazhonghua) and to achieve a circulation of a million copies a day (Xinwenbao, Sept, 13, 1935). Cheng Shewo also argued that a circulation of a million copies would not be too much to expect: If we calculate in proportion to China’s population, we can only say that [the circulation number] is the minimum number for the popularization of newspapers. If we look at Britain, of which the population is less than 50 million, they have three popular newspapers, of which the daily circulation is 2 million each. In the capital city of Belgium, whose population is less than 1 million, the circulation of an evening newspaper is 400,000. Then, even if we don’t take 450 million, but take Shanghai’s population of 4 million, is a daily circulation number of a million exaggerated? (Cheng, 1935)
Furthermore, Cheng modeled the Libao on the popularization of newspapers that had been going on in the United States and Europe since the late nineteenth century. Cheng Shewo had traveled to Europe and the United States earlier, in 1930, and had gained a better understanding of the popularization of broadsheet newspapers in Europe (Zhou, 1998). Cheng argued that popularization of newspapers is imperative because it is a universal phenomenon in the contemporary world: The popularization of newspapers has been a common and universal principle of the world newspaper industry for about a hundred years since the nineteenth century. From Benjamin Day’s New York Sun in the U.S., established in 1833, to Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail in Britain, established in 1896, the trend of the popularization of newspapers has already spread to every corner of the world newspaper realm. Our isolated and prideful country is the only one in which so-called “spiritual food,” until now, has been circulating among a minority of high-class Chinese people. Only a minority of high-class Chinese people has had the wealth to enjoy such a noble food. The majority of the toiling masses are not only unable to understand the mission of newspapers, but also get baffled when they see a journalist and say, “Best wishes to your profession, but what kind of business exactly do you do?” From the perspective of the trend of the world newspaper industry, popularization here is not only novel, but also overdue. (Cheng, 1935)
Cheng Shewo, however, emphasized that popularization in China was different from popularization in a capitalist country, which prioritized private interests over the interests of the masses. The Libao’s cause of popularization meant “to prepare for struggling for the welfare of the masses” (Cheng, 1935). In that sense, he pointed out that the current situation of broadsheet newspapers was not appropriate for the popularization of newspapers. The price of newspapers was too high, newspapers had too many pages, and their content was too difficult and irrelevant for the majority of the people. Thus, it was urgent to publish a popularized format of newspapers suitable for the new reading public.
Strategies that the Libao adopted to advance its cause of popularizing Chinese newspapers demonstrate that Cheng Shewo found a new economic potential for reaching out to the middle- and lowbrow readers who used to be consumers of tabloids and for increasing the circulation numbers. First of all, Cheng made sure that the contents of the paper catered to the tastes of a middle- or lowbrow readership. As Eileen Chow has pointed out, in order to reach a broader readership, Cheng paid close attention to the supplements of his newspapers since his years in Beijing (Chow, 2009: 60–61). The Libao had three supplements: the Forest of Words (Yanlin), the Huaguo Mountain (Huaguoshan), and the Little Teahouse (Xiaochaguan). He hired his friend Zhang Henshui to edit the literary supplement, the Huaguo Mountain, and serialize his popular fiction for the Libao, targeting middlebrow readers. 12 Serializing popular novels was an important part of Cheng’s strategy for popularizing newspapers. Sa Kongliao edited the Libao’s supplement Little Teahouse, which had three columns within the supplement. “Blood and Sweat” (Xue yu han) introduced the lives of workers: textile workers, print workers, construction workers, hair dressers, and so forth. Sa, as a leftist intellectual, wanted readers to understand the hardships in the lives of the workers, although it is doubtful that workers wanted to read about the hardships of their own kind. In “New Knowledge,” he introduced knowledge from the social sciences and natural sciences. For example, he explained the meaning of “extraterritoriality.” The column “Snacks” (Dianxin) provided commentary on issues of social and political life. Later “Snacks” printed letters from readers to represent the genuine voices of the masses (Sa, 2002: 3–20).
Second, Cheng Shewo made the language of the newspaper easier to read, in line with its motto of “Know a few hundred characters, read the whole paper.” While, as already mentioned, most of the big newspapers in Shanghai focused on advertisements as a major source of income, the Libao proclaimed that it would not publish advertisements until its circulation reached a million copies a day. In the Libao, therefore, news content no longer had to compete with advertisements for space. Thus, writing in vernacular Chinese, which took up more space than literary Chinese, did not influence the profits of the newspaper. Furthermore, news telegrams used by the Libao were rewritten from the original literary Chinese into vernacular Chinese, which solved the problem of the high cost of sending telegrams in the vernacular.
Third, Cheng made the Libao cheaper to buy. “If you smoke one less cigarette, then you can afford to read it.” The Libao was indeed cheaper than other major dailies of the time. It cost only four copper coins (tongyuan) a copy, which, at the prevailing exchange rate of 1 yuan to 300 copper coins, amounted to only about 0.013 yuan, while the Shenbao in 1936 was 0.045 yuan, or more than three times the price of the Libao (Shanghai wujia yuebao, Oct. 1937: 19). With problems that impeded the use of vernacular Chinese effectively solved, lower prices and simpler language significantly broadened the Libao’s readership.
When the China Press celebrated the launch of the Libao, it also drew a distinction between mosquito papers and the Libao: Mosquito papers have always been popular in China and they continue to thrive. For a while, they were forced to decline because the nature of their news was both sensational and inaccurate. Now, however, a different type of mosquito paper has appeared. Issued in four page editions with small type and format, these papers sell for two, three or four coppers. An effort is made by the editors to cover as much news as possible in a brief, terse, laconic and yet interesting way. They are really news summaries and for the most part their news is quite accurate. Their appeal lies in the fact that they are cheap, that several editions, often one-sheet, extras, are issued daily, that all important local, national, and foreign events are touched upon and that all of the material is presented in an interesting and “newsy” way. One local “mosquito” paper here has undoubtedly set a few world records. The first issue appeared on September 20, 1935. . . . Circulation mounted by leaps and bounds. . . . This “mosquito” sheet is a carefully edited little journal. It has its own staff of artists, photographers, and reporters and is “on the jump” as few Chinese papers are. . . . Some of the satirical cartoons accompanying news articles are really gems and show keen wit on the part of its editors and artists. (China Press, Dec. 8, 1935)
It is obvious that the new type of “mosquito” paper mentioned here is the Libao. Although the China Press called the Libao a “mosquito” paper, it clearly noted the distinction between other mosquito papers and the Libao. It applauded the Libao’s accuracy and relatively comprehensive coverage of the news, which made it different from most tabloids or mosquito papers.
The innovation that the Libao introduced was not in the format of newspaper, but in realizing the very idea of a compact newspaper to compete with the major broadsheet newspapers in Shanghai backed by large capital. The Libao was indeed commercially successful and was soon able to compete with the largest broadsheet newspapers, such as the Shenbao and the Xinwenbao. Within six months, the circulation of the Libao reached 100,000 copies a day. When full-scale war broke out between China and Japan in 1937, the Libao sold 200,000 copies a day, which broke the record for the largest newspaper circulation in China at the time (Cheng, 1956: 136). A survey conducted by students at the Shanghai Private School of Journalism from late 1936 to March 1937 showed that among 1,035 readers, 10 percent were readers of the Libao, while 29 percent were readers of the Xinwenbao, and 19 percent were readers of the Shenbao (Wan, 1937). Also, the Dagongbao accounted for 15 percent of the sample readers, the Shishi xinbao for 8 percent, and other newspapers for 19 percent. These figures give an indication of the growing prominence of the Libao in the newspaper market. The number of the Libao’s readers was higher than that of the readers of the Shishi xinbao, one of the major broadsheet newspapers.
Finally, the Libao became a member of the Shanghai Daily Newspaper Association 上海日报公会, a voluntary association established by major commercial daily newspapers in 1909. Before the Libao was admitted as a member, the association had granted membership only to major broadsheet newspapers, such as Shenbao, Xinwenbao, Shibao, Shishixinbao, Minbao, and Zhonghua ribao (Liu, 2009: 116). 13 This meant that the Libao, even though it was a compact newspaper, had gained equal footing with major newspapers in the Shanghai newspaper market.
The Rise of Politicized Readers, Popular Nationalism, and Print Capitalism
In addition to popularization of the format of newspapers, Cheng Shewo also set an editorial policy in response to the public sentiments of the time shaped by the national crisis in North China. In other words, Cheng saw the potential for co-opting politicized lowbrow readers in the midst of a national crisis. In order to cater to these politicized readers, the Libao actively covered political news on the Japanese military activities in North China and the anti-Japanese movement developing throughout all of China. By December 1935, only three months after the launch of the Libao, a National Salvation movement began to evolve all across China, and the Libao actively covered the development of this movement despite the severe censorship imposed by the Nationalist government on any contents instigating anti-Japanese sentiment. 14
This can be seen in the first issue of the Libao when Cheng claimed that the popularization of newspapers and the publication of the Libao were needed “because China continuously suffered from internal disturbances and foreign aggression in the past hundred years, and is even confronting an unprecedented national crisis, but the majority of people still seem to be indifferent and unconcerned [about the crisis]” (Cheng, 1935). Cheng Shewo utilized nationalist rhetoric to explain the newspaper’s significance. In the article “Our Declaration,” published in the first issue of the Libao on September 20, 1935, Cheng claimed that the publication of the Libao was the most important task for the nation, especially with the imminent arrival of the “ferocious war god.” Cheng reminded readers that the date for launching the Libao was two days after the anniversary of the Manchurian Incident, September 18. He continued by arguing, If we want to establish a good country, we need to make all citizens understand their relations with the country. Thus, how to make everyone understand this is our sole objective for establishing the Libao and is our ultimate aim. (Cheng, 1935).
Cheng Shewo explicitly declared that the rise of the national crisis motivated him to devote his publications to the cause of popularization of newspapers in order to make every Chinese citizen informed about current events.
Catering to popular sentiment, the Libao’s tone in its editorials and news on anti-Japanese activities was much more forthright, uninhibited, and open than other broadsheet newspapers of the time. Because of censorship, other broadsheet newspapers were considerably restrained in their coverage of news on the National Salvation movement and their editorials on the issue of Japan after 1934. Censorship of tabloids, however, was relatively loose. And Cheng Shewo seemed to have intentionally invited Nationalist Party officials, such as Xiao Tongzi, president of the Central News Agency, and Cheng Cangbo, president of the Zhongyang ribao, to sit on the board of directors of the Libao in order to bypass severe censorship. Cheng Shewo, as a savvy publisher, sought closer ties to government officials rather than independence from the state, since these Nationalist Party officials could serve both as investors and political patrons in the complicated political circumstances of the 1930s (Chin, 2009: 184–87). Thus, the Libao could be more outspoken in its contents. An editorial published on December 11, 1935, even urged people to get involved in the National Salvation movement initiated by the Beijing students with its title, “Everyone, Stand Up”: Yesterday, a Peiping student demonstration opposed the autonomy movement and called for national unity and national salvation. When we heard the news of the Peiping student demonstration, we were instantly reminded of the May Fourth movement. Student leaders of the May Fourth movement have become important people in the government, and we don’t know if they have any special feeling [for the demonstrators]. The May Fourth movement was successful, and we believe that the demonstration this time will also be considerably successful. The military power of imperialism can only conquer officials, but cannot conquer the patriotic masses. The destiny of the country will be decided by the enlightenment of the masses. The students of Peiping have stood up. We hope that all the masses in the whole country will stand up and follow them. (Editorial: “Dajia qilai,” Libao, Dec. 11, 1935)
As Barbara Mittler has pointed out, the Shenbao in the late Qing rarely urged readers to act. In other words, the tone of broadsheet newspapers was usually reserved and neutral, especially in promoting popular nationalism (Mittler, 2004: 361–407). Although the politicization of the Shenbao in the 1930s was recognized (Narramore, 1998), the Shenbao still was cautious in stirring up the public to take up the anti-imperialist cause. 15
One of the reasons that the tone of the Libao was much more radical in promoting anti-Japanese sentiment and supporting the National Salvation movement is that Cheng strategically hired left-leaning editors, such as Sa Kongliao and Yun Yiqun, who maintained a pro-resistance stance, and later participated in the National Salvation movement in Shanghai in late 1935 and 1936. 16 An editor-in-chief of the Libao, Sa Kongliao, even became a member of the National Salvation Association, and associated closely with the influential leaders of the National Salvation movement, such as Li Gongpu. 17 Yun Yiqun, an editor of international news at the Libao (Sa, 2002: 7), was also active in the National Salvation movement and was an underground member of the Communist Party (Yu, 2002b: 87–93). 18 Xie Liuyi, an editor of the Libao’s Forest of Words supplement and a professor in the Journalism Department of Fudan University, was charged with writing an editorial every day. Xie became an underground Communist in the 1920s and maintained close relations with the Communist members in the National Salvation movement. He was also an important member of the National Salvation Association (Yu, 2002a).
It is puzzling why Cheng Shewo would hire members of the National Salvation Association and even underground Communists. Was Cheng oblivious of this when he hired these people? He seemed to have been aware of these people’s political position, yet he hired them as editors of the Libao simply because he knew that the political stance of the National Salvation Association was popular and would sell. Sa Kongliao recalled that members on the board of directors of the Libao were not upset by the editors’ editorial stance and political leaning, yet Cheng Shewo was the one who persuaded the board of directors to hire Sa Kongliao to work for the Libao. Cheng Shewo said to the board of directors, “If you want to lose money in business, you can let Sa Kongliao leave, but if you want to make money, you have to let Sa Kongliao publish.” Later, Sa Kongliao learned that Cheng Shewo already knew that he was leaning toward the Communists, and was not happy with this. However, Cheng also knew that Sa was not a Communist Party member and he was clearly aware that he could not withstand the political trend of the time (Sa, 2002: 19–20). Observing the rise of a new reading public, their interest in political affairs, and strong anti-Japanese sentiment, Cheng Shewo found financial potential in co-opting anti-Japanese sentiment and popular nationalism, which were emerging as powerful forces in the mid-1930s.
The Legacy of the Libao and the Rise of Compact Newspapers
The Libao’s success was so phenomenal that the year 1935 was commemorated as the Year of the Compact Newspaper Movement (Xiaoxingbao yundong) by the Shanghai municipal government (Shanghai shi nianjian, 1936), and generated a heated public discussion about compact newspapers. Urban intellectuals exalted the potential of the format of compact newspapers to educate and guide the masses in the national crisis. The Shenbao, in its discussion of compact newspapers, asserted that “gaining support from the masses and taking the responsibility of educating and guiding the masses constitute the only foundation for the establishment and development of compact newspapers.” The same article set out four conditions for compact newspapers. Compact newspapers should be (1) accurate and clear, as rich and comprehensive as broadsheet newspapers, but not as serious; (2) inexpensive and easy to read so that the majority of people can buy and understand them; (3) oriented toward speaking from the interests of the majority of the people and publishing the opinions and writings of workers and small-business owners, as well as even middle school students; and (4) intent on maintaining a solemn attitude toward educating and guiding the masses (“Xiaoxingbao de fazhan jichu,” 1935).
A compact newspaper format had already been experimented with and had gained some success in other parts of China, such as Beijing and Nanjing. The Shibao of Beijing, founded in 1928, one of the most successful and best-made compact newspapers, had a circulation that broke the record in Beijing, reaching 70,000 at a time when the Shijie ribao, formerly the largest newspaper in Beijing, which was published by Cheng Shewo, had a circulation of 35,000 (Cheng, 1956: 128–29). However, the term “compact newspaper” started to be widely used and accepted as a promising format only in the mid-1930s after the success of the Libao in Shanghai (Ding, 1987).
After the outbreak of war, the compact newspaper format was widely used and became quite popular. The Xinminbao, founded in Nanjing in 1929, moved to Chongqing and began publication in a compact format on January 15, 1938 (Chongqing ribaoshe, 1995: 34–35). During the war, the compact newspaper format, which required less paper, fit the circumstances of scarcity of resources and capital. In a book entitled How to Establish Local Compact Newspapers, the author made a distinction between compact newspapers and tabloids in the same ways Cheng Shewo and other intellectuals did in the mid-1930s. The book explains that compact newspapers are quite serious in their stance, whereas tabloids do not pay attention to political news. The format fit fairly well with wartime circumstances in which human and material resources were scarce, especially because publishing compact newspapers did not require big capital and a huge amount of resources. The author also argued that local compact newspapers need to have a correct political stance (Jing, 1942: 1–4). One significant change was that these compact newspapers were much more localized because the national circulation of newspapers had become difficult. During the war, a diverse spectrum of political activists, from the Nationalists to the Communists, saw the political potential of compact newspapers in mobilizing the masses, especially during the war and in looking ahead to the postwar period.
After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, the Xinminbao continued to be published as a newspaper for the masses in Shanghai. The paper was suspended during the Cultural Revolution, along with other papers, but the Xinmin wanbao resumed publication in the reform period and became one of the most commercially successful newspapers in China. Evening newspapers such as the Xinwen wanbao and the Beijing wanbao, commonly available at news vendors, enjoy the highest circulation numbers in the context of commercialization and media reform in post-Mao China. Unlike broadsheet newspapers, such as the Wenhuibao or the Renmin ribao, which are not available at news vendors, these evening newspapers are tabloid-size papers catering to the urban mass readership, while broadsheet newspapers such as the Wenhuibao and the Jiefang ribao are usually subscribed to by government institutions or organizations. These papers are descendants of the compact newspapers of the 1930s and are often called “compact newspapers” (xiaoxingbao). 19
In this sense, the compact newspaper format has been a viable form of newspapers in the reform era in China, especially after the commercialization of the news media. In Basic Knowledge on Compact Newspapers, published in 1984, Shen Shiming provides a definition of compact newspapers (xiaoxing baozhi) as popular newspapers for the masses at the grassroots level, differentiating them from regular broadsheet newspapers. Compact newspapers are generally a quarto, half the size of the broadsheet or folio, and thus they are relatively small. They are also cheap. The content of such papers is closer to the lives of the masses, and the layout is vivid and lively, using abundant photos and pictures. Because compact papers are capable of attracting the masses, their circulation is high. And Shen also finds precedents for such papers in the pre-1949 period, such as the Qunqiangbao of Beijing in the 1920s, and the Libao and the Xinminbao in the 1930s (Shen, 1984: 1–2).
Conclusion
Ding Jinlin, a respected scholar of the history of Chinese media, claimed that “the circumstances of the time created the compact newspaper and the compact newspaper could prosper only when it adapted to the circumstances and propagandized anti-Japanese sentiments” (Ding, 1987). This statement captures the rise of the compact newspaper in the mid-1930s China. The commercialization of newspapers did not automatically lead to their popularization in China in the early twentieth century.
The case of the Libao demonstrates how political, social, and cultural changes in the context of contingent historical events such as war and the perception of a national crisis motivated an entrepreneurial publisher, Cheng Shewo, to publish a vernacular tabloid dedicated to popularizing Chinese newspapers. The Libao as a compact newspaper became even more successful as it carried politicized content catering to the popular readership of the time. Thus, in some sense, print capitalists’ accommodation of popular demand implies that the masses became powerful enough to influence print capitalism. The popularization of newspapers, however, did not necessarily mean that a critical and participatory mass readership emerged in modern China. Rather, the success of the popularized format of newspapers made the masses more susceptible to the manipulation of the Chinese elites.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Christopher Reed and Henrietta Harrison for insightful comments on the article that helped me to entirely reframe it. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees of Modern China for their insightful and constructive comments. The idea for this article was originally conceived in response to my participation in the panel “Creating Baihua, Contesting Baihua: Publishing and the Production of China’s Vernacular Language,” at the 2006 AAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco. I would like to express my special thanks to Robert Culp for inviting me to sit on the panel and providing me with thoughtful comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ewha Womans University Research Grant of 2009.