1950년대 초 중국 사회주의 체제 하에서의 미디어의 비판 기능 강화 정책의 함의 : “비평과 자아비평”의 시행 과정을 중심으로

Abstract

This study explores the critical role of the media as a check on the government in the Chinese socialist system by analyzing the process of implementing the criticism and self-criticism in the early 1950s. In 1950, the CCP enforced the policy of the criticism and self-criticism nationally in order to encourage people to publish their criticism against the party and party cadres in the newspapers and get the party and the party cadres to publish self-criticism in response to the criticism. Few study on the media of Mao era paid attention to the role of the media as a check on the government, due to the assumption that the media under the absolute control by the state only played the role of a mouthpiece of the party. With the strong influence of the framework based on the liberal model of the media, the independence of the news media from the state was often regarded as the precondition for the news media’s role as a watchdog of the state and check on the government. However, my study demonstrates that even without maintaining independence from the state, the media could function as a check on the state at the local level to a certain extent in the socialist system in 1950s China. Nevertheless, without the mechanism to protect the newspapers and the people who criticized the party and the party cadres at the local level, media personnel and the people had to be sensitive to the political changes in the central state and appropriate the languages of the central party to construct the criticism that will appeal to the central government. In this way, the people and the papers would participate in the criticism and self-criticism within the boundary that was approved by the central government. Thus, I aruge that the enforcement of the criticism and self-criticism through newspapers contributed to the regime legitimacy and consolidation.