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In step with China

By Wu Jingshu (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-02 11:08

On June 1, 1981, China Daily made its debut, after months of strenuous efforts by dozens of newly trained domestic staff with the help of foreign experts. It was indeed a product of international cooperation made possible by and designed to serve the new reform and opening-up policy.

Since its inauguration, China Daily has emerged as a pioneer in the reform of the country's print media. Most remarkable was its introduction of commercial advertisements, breaking an old taboo for official publications.

With special approval by the Chinese government, the English-language newspaper was the first to be allowed to have an advertisement occupying as much as one-fourth of its pages at a time when all of other State newspapers, such as the People's Daily, the Economic Daily and the Guangming Daily, were not sanctioned to do so.

China Daily's use of large news photos also set an example for its domestic peers who soon followed suit and brought a new look to Chinese newspapers.

"The aim of the media and the aim of the media reform is to give people the news they need and to make the media the voice of the people. Their mission is to give a voice to the people for the matters they want to raise," said a professor of the School of Journalism and Communication, at Renmin University of China.

Content is king

However, due to its limited resources, China Daily had only four pages during its trial-run period. Nevertheless, its small but energetic editorial staff availed themselves of the opportunity created by the country's reform and tried to fill its limited pages with interesting stories reflecting their fast-changing country.

Their efforts paid off as China Daily soon established itself as the most-read-and-quoted English-language mass media on the Chinese mainland.

An example was the publication of Deng Xiaoping's statement regarding the abolition of the Party's old policy of life-long tenure for its leading cadres. When the story appeared on the front page of China Daily on the same day as it also ran in the Party's Chinese-language Red Flag magazine, it caused a big "bang" in the international media circles, and boosted the clout of the young newspaper.

The young China Daily also tried its best to help push the reform forward by exposing hurdles that hampered the newly arriving foreign investors.

In late 1982, a China Daily reporter heard a visiting foreign businessman complain that it took him longer to get a phone call through to his friend in another hotel than to go there by taxi. Our reporter immediately arranged an interview with the director of the Beijing Telecommunication Administration and had the interview published in next day's China Daily.

The report soon caught the attention of both the business sector and the State authorities and resulted in an immediate project to renovate the capital's telephone system.

Since the day it was born, China Daily's progress has been closely linked with the country's changes. There were twists and turns along the path but in 1990 it got a big boost from Beijing's Asian Games, when it moved into a new building site near the Asian Games Village. The paper was only eight pages in 1981 but expanded to 12 pages in 1995 and 16 pages in 2004. In early 1990s it began to recruit more younger staff and published more financially lucrative special supplements for its expansion.

Its growth picked up speed during the 1990s as the country made fresh efforts to host the Olympic Games as well as the membership in the World Trade Organization.

In coordination with the restoration of China's sovereignty over Hong Kong, China Daily began publishing a Hong Kong edition in 1997. Since China formally joined the WTO, the newspaper has become more business-oriented with an expansion of its China Business Weekly edition, and enlarged itself to 24 pages.

Now, China is facing the challenge of digital media. A recent survey shows that out of the Chinese residents under 35, only 10 percent who did read newspapers are now getting most of their news from the Internet.

Another challenge comes from satellite TV. China is putting a satellite in space that is capable of transmitting 300 channels. Internet TV and 3G are also having impacts.

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