To Control the Uncontrollable

Chapter 3 highlights the Nationalist government’s attempts to build an international propaganda system and to control the extraterritoriality-protected treaty-port papers from 1928 to 1932.The top-down information control exercised by the party-led propaganda system conflicted with the liberal journalism practiced in the treaty ports. Unable to achieve diplomatic progress in abolishing extraterritoriality, the Nanjing government made inroads into the extraterritorial system in specific fronts. Press control was one of them. By issuing postal bans, deporting journalists, and reviewing treaties with foreign cable companies, the government sought to strengthen its censorship power. It also adapted to the treaty-port press environment by camouflaging the party’s involvement through transnational covers.

Confronting Encirclement

Chapter 8 examines the Nationalist government’s foreign propaganda activities after Chiang Kai-shek moved the capital to Chongqing. Despite Japan’s constant air attacks and the lack of news infrastructure in the inner land, the International Department managed to transmit the Chongqing government’s view abroad via wireless devices. Tong continued to nurture friendship with foreign journalists by providing them comfortable living conditions despite the austerity and hardship in wartime. Yet he had to compromise his liberal control of the press following Chiang Kai-shek’s spy master Dai Li’s attempt to heighten scrutiny of the journalists’ activities. Tong also competed with the Communist party for foreign correspondents’ attention and challenged the propaganda efforts of the Wang Jingwei regime through his clandestine propaganda branch office in Shanghai. The International Department led by Tong successfully broke Japan’s encirclement of China’s out-going information and won US public’s sympathy to China’s case.

Conclusion

The period between 1928 and 1941 witnessed two marked trends: the growing sympathy for China’s anti-Japanese cause in the English-language press and the development of China’s foreign propaganda system. The two processes were closely connected. Even before China became a military ally of the United States and Britain after Pearl Harbor, it had already become an emotional ally. A change in national image is always a complex process. Other elements, such as the conflict of interests between the Western powers and Japan as well as Japanese atrocities in China, may well have contributed to the shift in public opinion. Yet it is undeniable that China’s continuous propaganda efforts intensified the existing tensions between Japan and the Western powers and strongly promoted the change. History does not allow “what if” questions. Yet some hypothetical scenarios are useful in urging us toward a reevaluation of the significance of certain stories and events that are absent from current history telling. Would the United States have entered the war in 1941 without any propaganda effort from the Nationalist government? Had the United States delayed confrontation with Japan and stayed out of East Asia, could Chiang Kai-shek’s government have survived Japan’s encirclement? If the Chiang Kai-shek regime had collapsed in the early 1940s, would World War II have ended with the same result?...

Friend or Foe

Chapter 6 employs discourse analysis of the response to the statement of the Amō Doctrine (1934) in the English-language press as a case study to reflect a highly contentious and disunited media environment during the appeasement period. Periodicals operated by different political groups in China expressed diverse views about Japan’s plan of domination in Asia. The multiple voices reflected the struggles among the Nationalist leaders in devising an effective policy to deal with Japan’s coercion. Equally disturbed by the rivalry between the state and the military, however, Japanese-controlled papers also failed to provide a definite interpretation of the statement. Japan’s ambiguous position further estranged the treaty-port audience whose suspicion of its imperial plan in China grew stronger. The metropolitan papers, again, reacted differently from the treaty-port press by evincing little interest in reading into the Doctrine.

Introduction

It was one o’clock in the morning of December 8, 1941. Peng Leshan, the head of the radio office of the Ministry of Information’s International Department in Chongqing, was waiting in front of the wireless receiver in his office to pick up news updates from contacts in Los Angeles. Suddenly a message came through his headphone—the Japanese army had attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States would wage war against the Japanese Empire. Alone in the office, he wondered whether the news was true or whether he had simply misheard it on account of his fatigue. Hesitating to report it to his superior Hollington Tong, vice minister of information, he decided to reflect on what he had heard before dialing Tong’s number. Around four o’clock, the phone at Chiang Kai-shek’s mansion rang—Tong reported the attack on Pearl Harbor to Chiang....

From Nanjing to Chongqing

Chapter 7 looks into the government’s efforts to further centralize the international propaganda system. Hollington Tong became the key person in charge of the process. With the support of Chiang Kai-shek and Madam Chiang, he prevented Chiang’s political rivals from making further inroads into the propaganda system. He established the International Department that oversaw the government’s international propaganda at home and abroad. Based on his personal networks in the treaty ports, Tong effectively expanded China’s propaganda network in the United States and Britain. The propaganda activities organized by Tong after the Nanjing Incident of 1937 testified to the efficacy of the new department.

Facing Dilemmas

Chapter 5 traces the development of China’s international propaganda from mid-1932 to June 1937, a period characterized by the government’s appeasement of Japan. International propaganda efforts were conducted under a complex environment in which Chiang Kai-shek had to address Japan’s call for suppressing anti-Japanese movements and tempered the leftists’ criticism of his appeasement policy. As a result, Chiang ended up speaking with two voices. While restricting the anti-Japanese speech in the domestic press, he secretly subsidized Hollington Tong, editor of the China Press, to maintain the paper’s traditional anti-Japanese policy. To strengthen control over the English-language press in China, the Nationalist government continued to dissolve the extraterritorial protection of treaty-port papers by withdrawing cable rights from foreign companies. It reorganized the Central News Agency to replace Reuters’ service in China and recruited Western-educated journalists to lead the Central News Agency’s English-language branch. In doing so, it tightened control of news transmission abroad and expanded news networks essential for a centralized international propaganda system.

Beyond the Front Line

Chapter 2 examines China and Japan’s confrontation in the English-language press during the Jinan Incident in May 1928. Japan’s swift, consistent and intensive reporting about the event drowned out China’s voice in both the treaty-port and metropolitan papers. But what contributed to Japan’s victory of the propaganda battle was not only its sophisticated news network, but also the favorable context of international public opinion. Japanese-controlled media portrayed Chinese troops as looters, and established Japan as a defender of imperial interests in China. The Nationalist government’s propaganda efforts, in contrast, were hindered by factional struggles among the top leaders, and the anti-foreign tradition of the Nationalist Party.

Shadowed by the Sun

Chapter 4 analyses how English-language newspapers controlled by China and Japan defended their cases during the Mukden and Shanghai incidents. Drawing on the experiences of the Jinan Incident, Chinese-operated papers formed a united anti-Japanese line during the two incidents and endeavored to convince the Western public that the two events were successive steps of Japan’s imperial expansion. Having witnessed the atrocities committed by the Japanese army in Shanghai, Western journalists in the treaty ports gradually withdrew their support for Japan’s case, and warned the international public against Japan’s military expansion in China. Yet the concern was not entirely shared by metropolitan editors who were more eager to downplay the conflict.

Bridge or Barrier

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the treaty-port media environment in China. It sketches the background of the key British and American-owned English-language papers in China’s treaty ports, particularly the North China Daily News, the China Press, and the China Weekly Review, and reveals the transnational feature of the treaty-port newspapers. By exploring China’s efforts to complete with Japan in establishing international news networks during the 1910s and the 1920s, it explores the intricate rivalries among various interest groups in the English-language press, and tensions between the treaty-port press and metropolitan papers.