The Middle Class and Publishing Industry 05

作者：admin  点击次数：23  发布时间：2025-02-20

China's reform discourse has thus become a combination of traditional principles and foreign ideas. Under the influence of a series of Western ideas, journalists have redefined the classical principle of "public", which used to refer to "openness", "fairness" and "justice", but now includes a series of meanings redefined under Western influence, such as "state", "civil rights" and "discussion". While they continue to uphold the principle of people-centeredness, they have re-recognized that "the people" are powerful subjects of government policies, rather than passive objects under the emperor's grace. The cultural principles that the Chinese have used for many centuries to explain their world became tools for reformist journalists in early 20th century China to transform social and political practices.
Fresh foreign ideas were also combined with classical principles and translated into culturally acceptable and familiar discourses to fit the social context of the late Qing Dynasty. Rooted in inherent networks of meaning, these concepts were re-invented in a way that was easily understandable in the historical and cultural context of China. For example, when they were inspired by Western ideas of civil rights and democracy, the core meaning of civil rights reforms was given a more collectivist and loyal to the imperial power within the Chinese interpretive framework. Institutions such as the national parliament and foreign political practices such as parliamentary procedures were also transformed into forms that reflected fundamental cultural concerns.
While translating foreign ideas into familiar cultural structures seems to ease the reformed, injecting some new meaning into the ancient system does not generate the force that leads to drastic changes. In the reform discourse, just as the policies and measures advocated by the reform journalists pointed to decentralization and redistribution, the "public", or "higher good" (or "macro-interest"), was to be transferred from the court to the people, including freedom of speech, universal education, and greater participation in local government governance. By politicizing the inherent rhetoric and creating a new vocabulary, the reformist journalists in the late Qing Dynasty expanded the culturally imaginable and politically possible middle ground.
In addition to reimagining the culture and politics of the late Qing Dynasty, the reformist journalists also attempted to change the widely accepted social boundaries. They placed themselves in the middle class between two groups - officials and civilians - and tried to complete the social task of bridging the "above" and "below". One of the core components of the journalists' ideal of "new citizens" is to represent, contact and mobilize what the journalists called "the people": represent the interests of the people, make social demands known to the court power, educate and inspire their compatriots, spread reform agendas and knowledge, and gradually form a strategy to integrate the "people" and incorporate them into the political process.