Writing from 1930’s Shanghai, China’s great essayist Lu Xun once observed: “Today there are all kinds of weeklies. Although their distribution is not very wide, they are shining in the darkness like daggers, letting their comrades know who is attacking the old, strong castles.” Muckraking broadsheets in the first half of the last century played cat-and-mouse games with Chinese government censors, ultimately helping to expose the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the Nationalist (KMT) government and contributing to the Communist victory in 1949.
Writing from 1930’s Shanghai, China’s great essayist Lu Xun once observed: “Today there are all kinds of weeklies. Although their distribution is not very wide, they are shining in the darkness like daggers, letting their comrades know who is attacking the old, strong castles.” Muckraking broadsheets in the first half of the last century played cat-and-mouse games with Chinese government censors, ultimately helping to expose the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the Nationalist (KMT) government and contributing to the Communist victory in 1949.