Black and White Cat

No, not the Xinhua News Agency. The Xinhua Daily. And those demands were made rather a long time ago. The paper was launched in 1938 as the mouthpiece of the Communist Party in KMT-controlled regions. (In Communist-controlled territory, the main official paper was the Liberation Daily.) After the defeat of the KMT, the Xinhua Daily became the official party newspaper of Jiangsu province. Sunday will be its 71st anniversary.

First edition of the Xinhua Daily, January 11, 1938

So what about those demands for democracy and human rights, not to mention universal suffrage, general elections and freedom of speech? These were the subject of many editorials in the Xinhua Daily before 1949. Since all of these things were put into practice after 1949, there was no need for the Xinhua Daily to continue calling for them.

Below is a collection of headlines from the paper during those early years, arranged by number of characters in a blog post by Wang Xiaofeng:

Running for election

Safeguard human rights

On the right to have elections

Democracy first

The spirit of democracy

Democracy and honesty

Strength and democracy

Democracy and the state of the nation

The true meaning of democracy

China needs change

Risk death for democracy

Law and human rights

On academic freedom

Democracy is not an empty slogan

Engineers and democracy

The sword of democracy

No one has monopoly rights on freedom

The sharp blade of democracy

Commemorating Mr. Jefferson

A true democratic warrior

Freedom of expression and democracy

A new theory of democracy and freedom

All honor lies in democracy

Only that which is democratic is legitimate

On the spirit of British and US democracy

US education and democracy

Earnestly protect the people’s rights

Democracy is all that China demands

A day that stands for democracy and freedom

Schools must be a fortress of democracy

China needs a real general election

Innate human rights cannot be violated

The first step in safeguarding personal freedom

Implementing freedom of association

One party dictatorship is a disaster everywhere!

The party cannot give orders to the government

Democracy is the essence of life

Without democracy, everything is mere window-dressing

On the issue of academic freedom of thought

Problems can only be resolved through real democracy

Democracy is the greenhouse for developing production

Does freedom depend on the conditions of the time?

China and the US are natural allies

Only with personal freedom can there be national freedom

The struggle for democracy is everyone’s business

The Chinese students who strive for freedom and liberation

Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy

Political democracy and economic democracy cannot be separated

Only when one-party rule is ended can democracy be possible

Who is making it impossible to stabilize China? The government dictatorship!

We believe in democracy and we’re practicing it

Personal freedom of the common people is the gauge of political democracy

Freedom of expression: the source of vitality of the press

Only when the people have the right to speak can the country be a true republic

In praise of democracy — dedicated to America’s Independence Day

Commemorate May 4th, struggle for democratic freedom

Newspapers must get rid of the dictators who don’t allow the people to speak

Are democratic elections impossible when people’s education level is low?

The main task of the student movement is to struggle for democracy

The right path for democracy: unconditionally return government to the people

The publications law should guarantee the freedom of non-government publishers

American Independence Day — a day dedicated to the great struggle for freedom and democracy

Only when the people can supervise the government will the government not dare to slack off

Let the people think! The greatest threat to democracy is your indifference

The Chinese student movement will not stop until democracy is achieved

We’re not afraid of democratic America’s influence, we welcome it

Art and literature must strive for democracy, only with democracy can creative freedom be guaranteed

Every US soldier in China should be a living advertisement for democracy

China’s shortcoming is its lack of democracy, it should practice democracy in all fields

A political party is not an organ of power, it cannot put itself above the masses and the government

You cannot refuse democracy because the level of the nation’s people is low, use democratic politics to teach the people and raise the level of the people

These headlines were presumably selected from the contents page (see Page 2 of this post) of the 1999 book “Heralds of History - Solemn Promises Over Half a Century Ago.” In order to safeguard democracy, the book was banned. However, almost all the articles can be found online. I haven’t got a copy of the book, but I suspect one or two of the above quotes are actually from other party publications from the 1940s and not the Xinhua Daily.

Special edition of the Xinhua Daily, Sept. 30, 1949

Finally, I’ve translated a potted history of the paper, (Chinese text here) which is attributed to the Yangtse Evening Post in 2001:

The Xinhua Daily, a newspaper with a glorious revolutionary history, a history of more than 60 years of struggle.

In Summer-Autumn, 1937, the Central Committee of the CPC proposed its plan to publish the Xinhua Daily in Nanjing. However, shortly afterward, Nanjing fell to the Japanese. On January 11, 1938, the Xinhua Daily was published in Wuhan, becoming the only [Communist] party newspaper to be openly distributed in Kuomintang-controlled territory.

After Wuhan fell into Japanese enemy hands in October, 1938, the Xinhua Daily continued to publish in Chongqing, becoming an important battlefront for Chinese Communist Party propaganda in KMT-ruled areas. In January 1942, the KMT launched the Southern Anhui Incident. The Xinhua Daily escaped KMT government censorship, publishing Zhou Enlai’s poem “Mourn the martyrs south of Yangtze River. A wrong as great as history has ever known, suffered by Ye Ting and his army in the south of the Yangtze River, why do family members draw swords on one another, and so torment a brother!!”* revealing the criminal actions of the KMT in manufacturing the Southern Anhui Incident. This had a significant influence in Chongqing. After the victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the party central committee decided to move the headquarters of the Xinhua Daily to Shanghai, to issue an evening edition of the Xinhua Daily in Nanjing and to make Chongqing’s Xinhua Daily a party paper led by the Sichuan provincial party committee. Due to obstruction by the KMT, the Xinhua Daily was unable to publish in Shanghai and Nanjing, and the Chongqing edition was shut down in February 1942.

On April 23, 1949, Nanjing was liberated. On the 24th, in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, Commrade Zhou Enlai met with well known party and non-party figures in the cultural and press world who were preparing for work in the south. On behalf of the party central committee, he announced that the name of the Xinhua Daily, with its glorious history, would used for Nanjing’s party newspaper. On the 26th, Comrade Shi Ximin arrived in Nanjing and, representing the army, assumed control of the KMT’s Central Daily newspaper. On April 30th, the Xinhua Daily began publishing on the site originally occupied by the Central Daily.

At first, the Xinhua Daily was the official paper of the Nanjing party committee. At the end of 1952, the Jiangnan and Jiangbei administrative regions were merged, once again becoming Jiangsu province. The Xinhua Daily then became the official newspaper of the Jiangsu party committee. Over the last 50 years, under the leadership of the Jiangsu party committee, following the guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, it has performed its task well as a mouthpiece of the party and the people, publicizing party policy and reporting current events, reflecting the opinions of the masses. After the party’s Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, the leadership of the Xinhua Daily liberated their thinking and set their minds firmly on reform and opening up. They focused closely on main work of the provincial party committee and performed their task well in guiding public opinion, making a major contribution to reform and opening up and to the building of material and spiritual civilization.

*”Mourn the martyrs…. a brother” - Not my translation, so don’t blame me for turning Zhou’s poem into doggerel! Poetry is way beyond my limited capabilities, so I copied the translation from here. Zhou Enlai wrote the original by hand in two blank spaces left by the censor who had refused permission to publish Zhou’s original account of the incident:

“Mourn the martyrs,” Xinhua Daily, January 18, 1941