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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: From cave to media conglomerate,China's Xinhua news agency turns 80 BEIJING, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Xiao Yan and her sisters walked more than 300 km from Xi'an to Yan'an, then a Communist stronghold in northwestern Shaanxi province. Xiao didn't expect she would become one of the first radio-broadcasters of the Communist Party of China (CPC). After two years of study in the city of Yan'an, Xiao became an announcer for Xinhua Radio Broadcast Station in 1941. China was at war with the Japanese, and the Nationalists, or Kuomintang (KMT), had blocked the supply and communication lines to and from Communist-controlled areas. Communist newspapers and magazines could not reach Japanese- or KMT-controlled areas. So the CPC Central Committee set up a radio station in Yan'an, which was run by Xinhua News Agency. The first radio broadcast was on Dec. 30, 1940. A simple Soviet transmitter made the broadcast possible. It was donated by the Communist International in the late 1930s and brought to Yan'an by Zhou Enlai, who would later become the premier of New China. The voices of Xiao and her fellow broadcasters came from a cave in Wangpiwan village, 40 km away from Yan'an, and quickly spread to all revolutionary bases and the Japanese and KMT-controlled areas. The broadcasting studio's walls were covered with Yan'an-made grey blankets for sound insulation. Other objects in the cavehouse included a table, a microphone, a dictionary and a hand-controlled phonograph. Mao Zedong had sent some Peking opera phonorecord albums to air during news intervals. It didn't take long before car engines replaced people, who used to spin it by hand, to power the radio station's generator. Without quality gasoline, charcoal burners were used to produce coal gas to generate electricity. Messengers sent Xinhua news reports from its Yan'an headquarters to the cave radio station on horseback each day. When summer rain fell, they wrapped printed news articles in oilcloth and swam across the river holding the package on their heads. The cavehouse radio station broadcast decisions of the CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission as well as war communiques. A listener from the southwestern city of Kunming wrote to Xinhua, describing the radio as "a beacon in the dark." Japanese announcers joined Xinhua radio to broadcast programs to expose Japan's military intentions. But the Japanese troops used high-power equipment to interfere with the transmissions. Yet some signals still were heard by Japanese soldiers. Worried about the influence of Xinhua radio, the KMT authorities used transmitter-receivers to interrupt the radio's signal, and they also deployed secret agents to destroy the station. However, the radio station's equipment was so poor that it had to stop operations in 1943 due to machine malfunction. The development of Xinhua radio gave Xiao Yan, the announcer, a chance to meet her husband, Wu Lengxi, who became president of Xinhua News Agency in December 1951. HARD BEGINNINGS Under the name "Red China News Agency," Xinhua News Agency was established on Nov. 7, 1931, the same day when the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic was set up in Ruijin of east China's Jiangxi province. The first news report of the news agency was to cover the birth of the new regime. Reporters of the Red China News Agency wrote and edited articles and newspapers during the Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927-1937), the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the War of Liberation (1945-1949). A total of 139 Xinhua staff died during the wartime. "Xinhua staff not only learned reporting techniques, but had to know how to fight in war and armed struggles. They usually fought as guerrillas during the daytime and wrote reports at night," according to the official history of Xinhua. During wartime, Xinhua reporters spun generators in turn to provide electricity, including leaders of Xinhua News Agency. Wu Wentao, then Xinhua's vice president, used to spin the generator for an hour before dealing with articles at midnight. Xinhua used this way to provide electricity for seven years. Li Guangyi, a former logistic staff, recalled that a piece of paper was used several times due to shortages, "writing with a pencil first, then red pen and black pen" so that the latter could cover the former trace. In 1937, the news agency's name was changed to the current one. Literally in Chinese, Xinhua means New China. Its Hong Kong and London bureaus were established in 1945, which were in charge of mailing Xinhua articles to other media organizations in Europe and the United States. Xinhua also dispatched the first overseas reporter in 1947. In 1948, the Communist Party-led People's Liberation Army, gained a crucial victory against the KMT, in which many Xinhua reporters who covered the event also fought the battle themselves. STATE/INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCY On Sept. 1, 1944, a radio signal was detected on the western U.S. coast. Datelined "Yan'an, Xinhua," it travelled more than 12,000 km from a small cave in west China. The message was soon relayed to senior officials in Washington, who learned the latest happenings in the war against Japan in China. By sending its first long-distance English-language radio signal, Xinhua News Agency successfully made its overseas debut and started to communicate with the outside world. In December 1949, the CPC Central Committee decided to turn Xinhua into a state news agency and moved its headquarters to Beijing. Xinhua accelerated its expansion after receiving a directive from then-Chairman Mao Zedong to "have our voice heard throughout the world" in October 1955.0 The state-run news agency now employs more than 10,000 people and operates 162 overseas bureaus worldwide. Li Congjun, president of Xinhua, said Xinhua's operation has changed from traditional media services to current new- type ones including Internet, television, financial services and multimedia databases. Li told a grand gathering held Monday to celebrate Xinhua's 80th founding anniversary that all its staff should make greater efforts to develop the agency "in line with international media trends." At the gathering, Li Changchun, a Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, urged Xinhua to build itself into a modernized, top-ranking news agency of global influence. "Xinhua must transform from a traditional press institution to a modernized, multimedia agency in order to better compete with global news agencies," said he. He said Xinhua should use advanced information technologies to improve its international communication capacities. Editor: Zhang Xiang Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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