The second-generation editor-in-chief, Wang Yunsheng, was famous for his broad vision, sharp writing, and for defending the tradition of “literati discussing politics” in a private newspaper. In his article “The Passionate Wang Yunsheng,” Yu Songhua, a non-partisan newspaper Writer, said, “Wang Yunsheng’s articles are well known to the world. His strength is that he often takes the state as his premise, but stands on the people’s side and says what the people generally have to say. Although he may not be able to speak his mind freely due to the circumstances, he gives passion to his words, and his words often hit the readers’ heart. That is why his articles always move the hearts of people and are not out of touch with the public opinion without party affiliation.”
In addition to the newspaper Ta Kung Pao, the influence of the Republican-era magazine Observation was also enormous, founded in 1946, and from its inception it became an important forum for Chinese liberal intellectuals to promote Western democracy and was known as a “high level speech publication. The president and editor-in-chief of Observer was Chu Anping, the famous “Great Rightist” who was later defeated by the Chinese Communist Party.
Wang Yunsheng’s childish choice after seeing the Chinese Communist Party
Born in 1901, Wang Yunsheng was wanted for his anti-imperialist propaganda in 1926, so he went south to Shanghai and became the deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai Special City Party of the Kuomintang. After the “April 12” Nationalist purge of the Communist Party, he lost contact with the CCP.
In 1928, Wang Yunsheng was appointed as the chief editor of the Tianjin Business Daily, and from then on he officially started his journalistic career. In 1929, he met Zhang Jiluan, then editor-in-chief of Tianjin Dagong, through a battle of pens, and was so impressed by him that he joined the newspaper on August 22, 1929. Since then, he has had an inseparable relationship with Dagong Bao.
Dagong Bao was founded in 1902 by Ying Zizhi, and its registration took the meaning of “forgetting oneself as the great, selfless as the public”, and entered a glorious period after Zhang Jiluan and three others took over. It was reported that Chiang Kai-shek kept a copy of Ta Kung Pao in his office, bedroom and dining room, which shows the importance of the paper. And in terms of political orientation, Zhang Jiluan and others did not favor communism, but they regarded the Communist Party as the party in power and gave it some coverage.
In 1931, after the September 18 Incident, Ta Kung Pao established the editorial policy of “teaching war through shame”, and Wang Yunsheng edited the history of Sino-Japanese relations. It was proposed to write the history from 1871, when the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Reconciliation was written, until 1931, which was exactly 60 years ago, so it was titled “China and Japan in the past 60 years” (finally written until 1919). In order to get hold of detailed materials, Wang Yunsheng worked tirelessly to travel around, and at night he worked on collating and editing. He wrote one paragraph a day and published it serially in Ta Kung Pao for three years, spilling two million words. As a result, Wang became an expert on Japanese issues and established his position in Ta Kung Pao.
In 1935, Wang became the editorial director of Ta Kung Pao, just below Zhang Jiluan and Hu Zhengzhi, and in 1936, when the Shanghai edition of Ta Kung Pao was established, Wang was appointed to preside over the newspaper’s operations and began to write a lot of editorial commentaries. Before the fall of Shanghai, he was evacuated to Hankow and participated in the editing of the Hankow edition of Dagong Bao, which was basically written by Wang Yunsheng when the Chongqing edition was launched in 1938, and he became the successor of Zhang Jiluan after his death in 1941.
Wang Yunsheng lived a simple Life, not drinking, not smoking, not even drinking tea. He always adhered to Zhang Jiluan’s “four noes” policy of “no party, no private, no sale, no Blindness” of Ta Kung Pao, that is, to express opinions purely as a citizen and not to associate with parties; to run the newspaper without any intention, but only to speak for the public; not to trade on speech; not to go along with the crowd, but not to make a deal. He was more radical than Zhang Jiluan, but it is obvious that he did not go along with the crowd.
When a prominent member of the Kuomintang sent a generous gift for an article to be published in Dagong, Wang Yunsheng was furious with the Family member who would receive the gift and immediately wrote a letter asking for the gift back. Chen Cheng and Zhang Zhizhong of the Kuomintang had invited him to come out as an official, but he refused. In his view, “not being a Chiang official and not taking Chiang’s money” was the only way to preserve his position as an independent thinker and independent speaker.
On February 2, 1943, he wrote an editorial entitled “Look at Chungking, think of the Central Plains”, describing the suffering of the people in the Central Plains caused by the war and criticizing the authorities. The Ta Kung Pao was fined a three-day suspension, but soon regained its freedom.
Just after the war was won, the Chinese Communist Party stirred up the civil war again. During this period, Wang Yunsheng published a number of current commentaries critical of the CCP and the Kuomintang. For example, on October 25, 1945, he published an editorial entitled “Anxious for Transportation”, criticizing the Communist Party, and on November 20, he published an editorial entitled “Quality of the Chinese Communist Party”, calling for peace, while on April 16, 1946, he published an editorial entitled “The Shameful Battle of Changchun”. In response, the Chinese Communist Party’s Xinhua Daily issued an article to refute it.
For the Kuomintang, Ta Kung Pao was also unfazed, and its reports supported the student movement and advocated the “Third Way”, which had many negative effects on the Kuomintang. Chiang Kai-shek once lamented to Chen Bre: “When Zhang Jiluan was alive, Dagong Bao made some good suggestions and was still relatively friendly. After Wang Yunsheng came to power, especially now, it is cursing us viciously.”
But even though the Kuomintang authorities had arrested Dagong journalists and censored the Tianjin newspaper, Dagong was not shut down, and when Dagong’s Shanghai correspondent Tang Zhenchang was arrested in July 1947, Wang Yunsheng immediately called Shanghai Mayor Wu Guozhen and said, “If we don’t release him tonight, he will be in the newspaper tomorrow. He said, “If you don’t let him go tonight, you will see the newspaper tomorrow. Wu Guozhen immediately released him. Such boldness and the officials’ fear of the media were not seen in Wang Yunsheng or the CCP officials after 1949. The CCP’s clampdown on the media is evident.
Wang Yunsheng once told his family, “As a spokesman for a civilian newspaper, I have to maintain my independent personality so that I can have an independent voice and so that I am qualified to speak the truth and to laugh and joke at the Kuomintang. At the same Time, treating both the Nationalists and Communists the same must be my consistent principle.” In fact, it is also true that he has always maintained an independent civil position, criticizing not only the Kuomintang in power but also the revolutionary Communist Party without giving up his criticism of it.
There is no doubt that the fate of any individual cannot be disconnected from the times either. With the help of various Communist spies lurking in the Kuomintang, the Kuomintang began to lose ground, and Dagong Bao, led by Wang Yunsheng, was faced with a choice. Perhaps out of disappointment with the Kuomintang, or perhaps because he still had some hope in the Communist Party, he was invited by Mao, “persuaded” by the Communists in Dagong Bao, and promised by the Communist Party that “the four libraries in Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing and Hong Kong would not be renamed or replaced, and would be published as they were”. Under the promise of “not changing the names of the four museums in Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing and Hong Kong, but publishing as they were”, Wang Yunsheng decided to go north to Beiping and “join” the Communist Party.
This is a puzzling choice for future generations, because as early as September 1945, Wang Yunsheng had a fairly deep understanding of Mao. When Wang Yunsheng and other Ta Kung Pao people met with Mao in Chongqing, they told Mao straightforwardly, “Don’t start another stove,” and Mao replied, “It’s not that we want to start another stove, but we are not allowed to cook in the Kuomintang stove. It is saddening that this conversation laid the groundwork for Wang Yunsheng’s “counter-revolutionary” charges for the rest of his life.
Soon after, after Wang Yunsheng read Mao’s “Qin Yuan Chun – Snow”, he wrote to Fu Sinian, expressing the sentiment that “I can see that this man is full of ideas” (imperial ideas). After that, he published a long article “My View on Chinese History” in the Chongqing and Shanghai editions of Ta Kung Pao for four consecutive days, putting forward the idea that “governance is not enough unless the people themselves take charge of things, and democracy is not enough unless the people themselves take charge of things”.
However, Wang Yunsheng eventually turned to this man who was full of imperial ideas, and his own explanation later was to “surrender to the people’s camp”. But did Mao really create a kingdom that represented the people? What happened to Wang Yusheng afterwards proved how naive his choice was.
Chu Anping, who thought the CCP was “anti-democratic”, entered the tiger’s den
Similarly naive as Wang Yunsheng is Cui Anping. He was educated in traditional Chinese Culture since childhood, and then enrolled in the English Department of Shanghai Guanghua University. After graduation, he first worked as a sub-editor at the Central Daily News in Nanjing, then went to England to explore the world and studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science. After returning to China, he served as a writer and editor of the Central Daily News, a professor at Fudan University, a researcher at the Central University of Political Science, and as president and editor-in-chief of the magazine Observation, which he founded.
And as early as the 1940s, Chu Anping, a fierce critic of the Kuomintang, had already seen through the Communist Party. In his article “The Political Situation in China” (Observation, Vol. 2, No. 2) in the 1940s, he wrote: “Frankly speaking, we are now fighting for freedom, and under the Kuomintang rule, this ‘freedom’ is still a question of ‘more’ If the Communist Party comes to power, this ‘freedom’ will become a question of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. If the Communist Party comes to power, this ‘freedom’ will become a question of ‘yes’ and ‘no’.” “Frankly speaking, the Communist Party today sings about its ‘democracy’, but we must realize that the Communist Party is really an anti-democratic party in its basic spirit.”
He also pointed out that “there is a fundamental prerequisite for the promotion of democratic politics, and this prerequisite cannot be compromised at all, and that is the recognition of the freedom of the people’s will (freedom of thought, as it is commonly called); only when everyone is given freedom of will can he freely express his will and truly carry out the spirit of democracy.” “But in terms of the true spirit of the Communist Party, what the Communist Party advocates is also ‘party mastery’ and never ‘democracy’.”
After 1949, he became the manager of the Xinhua Bookstore, editor-in-chief of the Guangming Daily, and deputy director of the propaganda department of the Jiu San Society.
The death of Cui Anping, who said “party world”, may be tragic
In early 1957, in order to purge the intellectuals, Mao adopted the method of “luring snakes out of holes” and asked the heads of democratic parties and intellectuals to give their opinions to the Communist Party. He not only sent a large number of reporters to some major cities to cover the issue, held seminars for experts and scholars to encourage them to give their opinions to the Communist Party, and personally arranged for the publication of a number of strongly worded articles; he himself also made a speech at a seminar held on June 1.
Chu An-ping raised the issue of “party world”. He argued that “leading the country does not mean that the country is owned by the party, and that people support the party, but do not forget that they are also the masters of the country”. “The main purpose of a political party in gaining power is to realize its ideals and implement its policies. In order to ensure the implementation of policies and consolidate the power already gained, the party needs to control certain pivots in the state organs, which is all natural. Such a practice, is not too much?” He thus concluded, “The party is not doing this, is not ‘not the king’s land’ like the idea, thus forming the current situation of such a family of a clear color.”
What shocked the participants even more was that Chu Anping also directed his criticism at Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and called them “old monks” in a very disrespectful way. The question he wanted to ask Mao and Zhou was, “Why is there no one outside the Party among the current senior leaders of the country?”
Cui Anping’s phrase “the world of the Party” not only shocked the whole court, but also kept the Communist Party leader Mao Zedong awake for several days. Because of this shocking statement, he was branded as a rightist and became one of the top five rightists who could not be “rehabilitated” so far; because of this shocking action, his wife divorced him, his children drew a line in the sand with him, and his colleagues “denounced” him. Cui Anping was removed from his post and plunged into an unprecedented predicament.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Cui Anping was taken out and made the object of criticism, not only ordered to clean the streets every day, but also subjected to the beatings and insults of the Red Guards, and at the end of August, Cui Anping attempted suicide by throwing himself into the river.
The public security department had organized a special investigation team to find Cui Anping’s whereabouts. But two years have passed, he is still not seen alive, not seen dead, and finally had to be shelved as an unsolved case. However, a recent article published in the overseas media, signed by Yu Kaiwei, revealed that Cui Anping was most likely killed alive by the Red Guards. It is also very possible that the Red Guards killed someone and then destroyed the body.
Wang Yunsheng’s deathbed remorse
In May, Wang returned to Shanghai, and on June 17, he published the “New Life of Ta Kung Pao Manifesto”, which used “class analysis” to analyze the “reaction” of the old Ta Kung Pao’s “literati on politics” and declared that the newspaper would be owned by the people, and in fact, by the CCP.
Although he later served as editor-in-chief and president of the “new” Shanghai Dagong, and held the titles of Standing Committee Member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and deputy to the National People’s Congress, his newspaper career was effectively over from the moment he made this declaration, which also meant the complete destruction of his long-held principle of running an independent newspaper. He was unable to criticize the ruling party, i.e. the Communist Party, as he had done during the Kuomintang era. Realizing this, Wang Yunsheng also changed his temper.
During the anti-rightist movement in 1957, he insisted, “I have feudal ideas, but I will never betray my friends,” retaining the basic bottom line of intellectuals. At that time, among the three remaining national newspapers outside the Party, the chief editors of Wen Wei Po and Guangming Daily, Xu Chuancheng and Cun Anping, had already been shot down, and he would never have been spared if not for Mao’s “golden words” that the chief editor of Ta Kung Pao should no longer be classified as a rightist.
In 1962, Wang Yunsheng was ordered by Mao to write “The Old Ta Kung Pao from 1926 to 1949”, which criticized Ta Kung Pao and Zhang Jiluan to the core. When Zhang Jiluan was seriously ill, he said, “The only biographer who can write about me is Wang Yusheng.” There are many “criticisms” of the period of history that he is most proud of, of which the heartlessness and pain is difficult for future generations to appreciate.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Ta Kung Pao ceased publication and was later renamed Forward, but only for 103 days, and was also discontinued. After that, some staff members of the former Beijing Ta Kung Pao participated in the establishment of the “Finance and Trade Front” newspaper, which is now the “Economic Daily”. As for Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao, it has been under the control of the Chinese Communist Party and has become the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. Wang Yunsheng was still subjected to “criticism” and “reform through labor” until 1972, when diplomatic relations between China and Japan were restored, because he had published the authoritative book “China and Japan in the Past Sixty Years” in 1934, and Mao himself asked him to He was “pardoned” only because of the publication of the authoritative book “China and Japan in the Past Sixty Years” in 1934, and Mao himself asked him to “participate in friendly exchanges with Japan”, and he has been used as a supporting actor on the political and diplomatic stage ever since.
As for the former journalists of Ta Kung Pao, they also had a hard time, and most of them were swallowed up by the successive campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party. For example, Yang Gang, a well-known female reporter, committed suicide during the anti-rightist movement; Gao Fen and Peng Zigang were branded as rightists; Liu Kling was also said to have been killed when he jumped from the building of the Central Propaganda Department after the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution; and Fan Changjiang, a reporter who left Dagong Bao, also committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.
It can be said that until his sad death on May 30, 1980, Wang Yunsheng could neither speak his mind as much as he used to, write sharp critical articles, nor accomplish much of anything else of value. What pain and despair it must have been for such a man of great talent to spend his time in such a way!
It is said that before he died, Wang Yunsheng recalled the past to his son, and his words were full of remorse. Before he passed away, he destroyed the diary he had written for forty years and refused to let his friends write his biography, which also illustrated his pain. What he could not forgive himself until his death was that he did not have the face to meet Zhang Jiluan. It was Wang Yunsheng who, at the end of his life, in a blurred state of consciousness, holding a blank piece of paper in his hand, could not stop muttering: “Send it to him, send it to him, my blank scroll ……” Who made He had no face to face Zhang Jiluan? The Chinese Communist Party is also.
Conclusion
What did Wang Yusheng regret? Perhaps he “regrets” his naive choice to bury the Ta Kung Pao? After all, under the Kuomintang rule, although there was a press clampdown, the press still had some room for independence and freedom; under the CCP rule, even such room was lost. Or do you hate the Chinese Communist Party’s lack of trust and gullibility? “Do you hate yourself for not being able to resist the political pressure to depreciate yourself? Or did he regret that he did not leave the mainland in the first place?
Probably before Chu Anping’s tragic death, he regretted for a moment that he had trusted the Chinese Communist Party in despair. In fact, Wang Yunsheng and Chu Anping are not the only ones who have suffered such tragedies. How many people have been deceived and how many people have been harmed by the Chinese Communist Party!
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