Review Article : The Public Sphere in Modern China

Engaging in Civic Life: Confucianism, Republicanism, and Ordinary Chinese in the 1940s

“…If so, how? William Rowe (1990) noted that the growth of the public sphere in China was much earlier and faster than the formation of a modern state apparatus. The Chinese public sphere grew out of two related concepts, "public" (gong) and "people" (min), the former being defined by and derived from the latter, so that the word "public" in China carries a strong sense of "collective" or "communal."…”

News media use, credibility, and efficacy: an analysis of media participation intention in China

“…The interaction between market force and party control was highlighted, and an emphasis on state-corporatism can be observed in many works. Many Sinostudies scholars have been paying more attention to the issue of social power and are more fairly weighing civil force when studying Chinese public spheres (Rowe, 1990), market economies (Francis, 2001), and government institutions (Ding, 1994). We consider it sensible to conceptualize the media in China as a special political institution, where various social forces from the state, the market, and the audience converge and negotiate.…”

The Journalist in China: looking to the past for inspiration

“…It was in this period too that scholars started to learn western languages-previously only uneducated (in a Chinese sense) servants of foreigners had done so-and to translate western books into Chinese. Such changes broadened the traditional public sphere in China into something more akin to what Habermas identified in Europe, according to Rowe [9].…”