Literary reading reached its peak in China in the 1980s. From the 1990s on, however, it underwent a slow decline which has gained speed in the new century. The new media have played an important role in the process of...Literary reading reached its peak in China in the 1980s. From the 1990s on, however, it underwent a slow decline which has gained speed in the new century. The new media have played an important role in the process of its decline. Their influence is mainly seen in the reshaping of the receiver's perceptual structure because of the change from text to image and in the lack of stimulus to reflection and thought because of the change from page to screen. At the same time, the new media have broken down the "solitary" state of reading and lessened the depth of the reception model. From the perspective of media culture, the decline of literary reading is a result of the serious damage inflicted upon print culture by visual culture. The new generation is already living in an environment of visual culture; they will inevitably drift away from literary reading. This will have an impact on both production and research in literature. The private memory, perceptual structure and even bodily habits of those who preserve literary reading and resist the new media are precisely those established by print culture. Therefore, behind the clash between preserving and forsaking literary reading lies a clash between different media cultures.展开更多
The Nationalist Party (GMD) had been writing and issuing documents of many types for some years before Nanjing was established as the capital of the Republic of China in 1927/1928. From its earliest days, doctrines ...The Nationalist Party (GMD) had been writing and issuing documents of many types for some years before Nanjing was established as the capital of the Republic of China in 1927/1928. From its earliest days, doctrines were advanced via cause-oriented newspapers and journals. Even more important, the Soviet-sponsored reorganization of the GMD in the early 1920s had yielded a far-reaching party propaganda operation tied to Sun Yat-sen's notion of political tutelage. But how was propaganda to work in practice? And at whom was it to be aimed? This article seeks to address aspects of these questions by assessing a textbook for propaganda workers that was issued in the name of the GMD's Zhejiang Provincial Executive Committee's Propaganda Department in October 1929, half a year after the GMD's foundational right-wing Third Party Congress. Although Essentials for Propaganda Workers does not fully operationalize Sun's version of political tutelage, it can nonetheless be seen to reflect the central party's efforts to implement tutelage and supervision, not only of the Chinese masses suggested by Sun's program, but also of party propaganda workers in Zhejiang. in that regard, it reveals the astonishingly rapid ideological realignment of the GMD into an anti-Communist party, not only at the national level, which is well known, but also on the provincial and lower levels. Drawing on material from the GMD Archives in Taipei, this article addresses issues of party organization, control, mobilization, inner party dynamics, and message content in the GMD's propaganda activities in Zhejiang province in the late 1920s. "Propaganda by the Book" adds to our knowledge of the organizational practices of both the central GMD in Nanjing and the Zhejiang provincial GMD as well as to the social history of Republican China's official print culture.展开更多
文摘Literary reading reached its peak in China in the 1980s. From the 1990s on, however, it underwent a slow decline which has gained speed in the new century. The new media have played an important role in the process of its decline. Their influence is mainly seen in the reshaping of the receiver's perceptual structure because of the change from text to image and in the lack of stimulus to reflection and thought because of the change from page to screen. At the same time, the new media have broken down the "solitary" state of reading and lessened the depth of the reception model. From the perspective of media culture, the decline of literary reading is a result of the serious damage inflicted upon print culture by visual culture. The new generation is already living in an environment of visual culture; they will inevitably drift away from literary reading. This will have an impact on both production and research in literature. The private memory, perceptual structure and even bodily habits of those who preserve literary reading and resist the new media are precisely those established by print culture. Therefore, behind the clash between preserving and forsaking literary reading lies a clash between different media cultures.
文摘The Nationalist Party (GMD) had been writing and issuing documents of many types for some years before Nanjing was established as the capital of the Republic of China in 1927/1928. From its earliest days, doctrines were advanced via cause-oriented newspapers and journals. Even more important, the Soviet-sponsored reorganization of the GMD in the early 1920s had yielded a far-reaching party propaganda operation tied to Sun Yat-sen's notion of political tutelage. But how was propaganda to work in practice? And at whom was it to be aimed? This article seeks to address aspects of these questions by assessing a textbook for propaganda workers that was issued in the name of the GMD's Zhejiang Provincial Executive Committee's Propaganda Department in October 1929, half a year after the GMD's foundational right-wing Third Party Congress. Although Essentials for Propaganda Workers does not fully operationalize Sun's version of political tutelage, it can nonetheless be seen to reflect the central party's efforts to implement tutelage and supervision, not only of the Chinese masses suggested by Sun's program, but also of party propaganda workers in Zhejiang. in that regard, it reveals the astonishingly rapid ideological realignment of the GMD into an anti-Communist party, not only at the national level, which is well known, but also on the provincial and lower levels. Drawing on material from the GMD Archives in Taipei, this article addresses issues of party organization, control, mobilization, inner party dynamics, and message content in the GMD's propaganda activities in Zhejiang province in the late 1920s. "Propaganda by the Book" adds to our knowledge of the organizational practices of both the central GMD in Nanjing and the Zhejiang provincial GMD as well as to the social history of Republican China's official print culture.