JOURNALISTS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MODERN CHINESE POLITICAL CULTURE Lu-tao

Foreword This study by Dr. Lu-tao Sophia Wang is one of a series which examines the development of professions as a key to understanding the different patterns in the modernization of Asia. In recent years there has been much glib talk about "technology transfers" to the Third World, as though knowledge and skills could be easily packaged and delivered. Profound historical processes were thus made analogous to shopping expeditions for selecting the "appropriate technology" for the country's resources. The MIT Center for International Studies's project on the Modernization of Asia is premised on a different sociology of knowledge. Our assumption is that the knowledge and skills inherent in the modernization processes take on meaningful historical significance only in the context of the emergence of recognizable professions, which are communities of people that share specialized knowledge and skills and seek to uphold standards. It would seem that much that is distinctive in the various ways in which the different Asian societies have modernized can be found by seeking answers to such questions as: Which were the earlier professions to be established, and which ones came later? What were the political, social and economic consequences of different sequences in the emergence of professions? How well did the professions maintain standards, and how appropriate were the barriers of exclusion? What is the effect on recruitment of the political elite and on their style of politics for specific professions to have high status and others low status? How does it happen that emphasis upon the same professions for achieving the same objectives in modernization can have dramatically-i-ii-different consequences in different societies? (For example, in both Japan and India the legal profession was encouraged early in order to produce government officials, yet India became a litigious society but Japan did not.) Other planned studies in the series include the experience of Japan, possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It will also include a general book on Asia's modernization by the project's director. "Facts, facts, nothing but facts."-Julius Chambers on the penny press in the United States, 1870 "Our political opinions have to be drawn from syntheses of facts.... If we think that we do not have enough facts to make a judgment, we will refrain from making premature judgments and present only the facts...."-Huang Yuanyong on the journalistic responsibility in modern China, 1913 The purpose of the paper is to study of …