Introduction
Journalism is a field that can have many faces. One may even go as far as saying that this industry is the best one when it comes to making perfect disguise. Throughout history, it can be attested that journalism and political science has been merged, perhaps subconsciously by the people working in these fields. In modern day politics, for example, a stage where democracy appears to be the dominant player, as evidenced by the fact that the number of counties that are based on a democratic and liberal type of government is far larger than those that are based on monarchy and communism. In modern democratic forms of government, for example, journalism has started to play an important role and that is to inform the public (i.e. the audience) about the different things they have to know (be it related to the country’s economic, political, and social standing). The politicians (representatives of the political side of the story) then make their response by either ignoring or making the necessary actions that are based on what the reaction of the people on the politically relevant news released by the journalists.
The bigger and more serious the issue is, the stronger the call for action for the politicians tends to be. The point is that without the pen that represents journalism, it would be almost impossible for the stakeholders of a democratic government to behave and react in such a way. Another example would be in governments that are based on the principles of monarchy and communism where government power and authority do not rest on the hands of the people but on a selected few individuals in the government or the ruling family (as in the case of monarchy). Even in such cases, the pen that is represented by journalism still plays an important role in the way how politics is managed within the subject country. In the case of modern day China, for example, which is directly relevant to the author of the journalistic and literary works that will be discussed in this paper (i.e. he was a native of China), the communist party is the dominant party. The president of the country is from the dominant communist party.
The largest media and journalism companies in the country are directly controlled by the communism-oriented government; and public exposures to media and internet sources apart from the sources of news that are being fed to the people (within the context of news and information delivery) are censored. In the case of modern day China, it may be argued that journalism is being used as a means to control the way how the citizens of the country think, perceive things, and behave. The objective of this paper is to discuss the relationship between politics or political science and a writing style in a particular work (or in this case a set of works).
Instead of focusing on just a single author’s work, the author of this paper has proposed to focus on an author’s set of works. For this paper, the author who will be the focus of the discussion would be Liang Qichao. The discussion will focus on identify first whether there is indeed a correlation between Liang Qichao’s journalistic and literary works and ideas, principles, and concepts that may be related to politics. This paper has been written based on the assumption that there really is. The discussion would then progress by providing concrete arguments as to what the connections may mean and what may have prompted the author, Liang Qichao, to sow a connection between his literary and journalistic works and politics
Liang Qichao, his journalistic and literary works, and their relation to politics
One of the most common strategies being used by individuals who plan to conduct a literary analysis (or in this case a journalistic and literary works analysis) is the strategy where the early life, roots, culture, and childhood environment of the author of the literary work or works being reviewed is traced. In order to more clearly determine whether Liang Qichao was indeed pertaining to politics (albeit in a spatial sense or point of view) when he was writing his journalistic and literary pieces, or whenever he mentions the terms nation, people, and change in his works.
Liang Qichao was born in China in February 23, 1873. He grew up as a child at a time when the emperor of the Qing Dynasty of China, which was the last imperial dynastic that ruled the country. It is important to note that the Qing dynasty’s hold and control of China lasted for almost three hundred years. Although this was the case, Liang Qichao was born at a time when there were already high possibilities that civil unrest would continuously grow and turn into a revolution because the Qing Dynasty’s hold and control of China was already nearing its end. Nonetheless, it is important to note that Liang Qichao managed to experience how to live in a country that is held and controlled by an imperial dynasty. It was not until he matured and grew up that the said imperial dynasty finally collapsed, leading to the development of a republic type of government which was named the Republic of China. Needless to say, Liang Qichao grew up in China when control of the country and the government was transitioning from being an imperial dynasty-dominated one to a republic.
Knowing how hard it is to grow up in a society that is controlled by an imperial dynasty and how corruption, violence, and inequality could reach new unprecedented highs, Liang Qichao did a lot of things to ultimately change the system one day in a way that living would be fairer for all citizens, corruption would be considerably minimized if not completely obliterated, and incidences of government abuse would not go unseen and unpunished. In an effort to fulfill of all these life goals, he managed to become a renowned scholar, journalist, philosopher, and reformist in his home country. It was not really an easy life for Liang Qichao.
He may have managed to live a decent life by the time that he reached adulthood but being able to do so did not come without any form of physical and emotional sacrifices. His parents were not exactly rich and so he knew he had to study in order to have an edge against the other Chinese when it comes to talent acquisition and employability. This is where he was able to develop his political ideologies. Basically, all he wanted was for the government to adopt democracy just like what he knew was already happening in the west, to curb the corruption and for the government to be more responsible with its actions. He developed this sense of idealism and radicalism.
One of the most significant parts of his life was when he decided that he wanted the system to change; that he wanted a reform to happen. Unfortunately, people from the imperial dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, were the ones who were most resistive to change; they were politically conservative. Without being discouraged, Liang Qichao began recruiting other people who could write and express their thoughts using journalism and literature to write to the emperor their feelings and ideas on how the country or at least the way how the country is being managed and ran must change (e.g. to curb corruption and minimize the level of government abuse of power among other relevant issues).
The good thing was that Liang Qichao managed to write a letter, perhaps this may be considered as one of his politically-related or inclined literary pieces, only that it was made not as a work of literature but as a letter addressed to someone who holds political power. The bad thing, however, was that the emperor during that time did not exactly like what read. Liang Qichao did not stop his sending letters and requests to the emperor and various people who held political positions in the Qing Dynasty during that time. Eventually, the conservative members of the dynasty got fed up and turned him into a wanted man saying that his political ideas were too broad, based on idealism, and were too radical to be even considered. His being a wanted man forced Liang Qichao to go into hiding together with some of his colleagues who were also journalists, scholars, and reformists.
Liang Qichao and his on the Relationship between Fiction and the Government of the People
One of Liang Qichao’s most popular works was his on the relationship between fiction and the government of the people. As mentioned earlier, the first part of the discussion of one of his works would focus on determining whether there is a correlation between writing a literary work or in this case, a piece that was written with a journalistic purpose, and politics. Judging from the keywords that Liang Qichao used in formulating the title of this popular work of his alone, one can already have a conclusive answer to the first question. So yes, in this particular work of his, as with all of his other major literary and journalistic works, one can easily sense that it would have politics as its major theme.
This was one of his scholarly essays about fiction. Some of his other works about fiction that one can only believe to have a combination of direct and indirect correlation with the way how the then Chinese government was running and managing things during the time that he was writing those essays and politics in general as well, include the Fleeing to Japan after failure of Hundred Days’ Reform. The Hundred Days’ Reform in the title of his another scholarly essay about fiction and politics pertains to his and his colleague’s continuous sending of ideas on how the then ruling Qing government could introduce the much needed reforms in the country so that the people would not have to suffer from extremely high levels of corruption and poor living conditions especially in the outskirts of major cities and large towns.
Liang Qichao and his colleagues worked hard to draft their reform ideas in a scholarly manner and on paper before sending them to the emperor of the Qing dynasty. This movement was the one known as the Hundred Days’ Reform. As mentioned earlier, it failed because the leaders in China back then were too afraid of even the slightest bit that democracy would be accidentally introduced in China and that the people there would actually like it to be implemented in the country. Ultimately, the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform was one of the first recorded instances where democracy failed as a political ideology in China.
There are a lot of unique ways how an author can communicate a message to his audience. In Liang Qichao’s case, it was clear to him what kind of message he wanted to communicate. One can easily reckon, having known Liang Qichao’s past, early life as a child, and passion and devotion (thanks to the literary author analysis conducted earlier), that the message that Liang Qichao has chosen to convey would be something related to the political issues and overall political situation in China during that time. Specifically, what he was trying to communicate to his target audiences was the message that suggests that governments must know the importance of change just like how important a change in the courses and flow of the scenes are in a highly entertaining work of fiction.
The primary message that he was trying to send was the one that suggests that political change and reforms are indeed necessary if the Chinese people want to live in a free, prosperous, and enjoyable country. In the case of on the relationship between fiction and the government of the people, he just used fiction as a tool to emphasis, if not exaggerate the importance of change and supporting its introduction in the political system. As mentioned earlier, Liang Qichao started to become a wanted personality ever since the then emperor ordered for their arrest because of their too radical ideas about how the government should be ran and managed, which of course the politically conservative queen did not like. And so in order to prevent further detection and further legal liabilities from the government, he could have opted to use pen as a form of revolutionary tool to fight the government and induce the change that they wanted to see.
Fiction is a class of literary works that is comprised of a lot of imaginative narrations. The next most important question that one must be able to answer here would be why did Liang Qichao think of and use fiction as the symbolism of the changes that they wanted to introduce in the government and the political system. One possibly valid assumption would be the fact that literary works that are based on fiction possess a high level of flexibility. That is, the author of the work of fiction can always make changes on how the story would start, flow, or end. This is, in fact, one of the qualities of story-telling and fiction writing that makes the entire process of writing them enjoyable and challenging.
It could be that Liang Qichao was trying to imply that just like most if not all literary works that are based on fiction, the government of the people must have the same degree of freedom, flexibility, and adaptability to change so that in the end, the story of the government can become brighter, and more satisfying to everyone, as in the case of fiction stories where the ending, thanks to the continuous changes and adjustments introduced while it is still in the writing process, can only become more awesome than the start or any other part of the story. Liang Qichao may have also wanted to let his readers know how large the impact of being flexible and change on the members of society.
What is good about Liang Qichao’s strategy when it comes to using literary works to move people and to introduce reforms is that they know that his followers would not be too naïve to literally follow what he wrote there because as it appears, there were a certain level of decoding required in order for below average readers can be fully acquainted to what his work really meant. For example, without conducting an in-depth character and author analysis earlier, one could have easily thought that Liang Qichao was merely writing about fiction stories and not about the different government and politically-oriented problems that the government is facing today. Nonetheless, it is never too late to educate the children of society today so that they would know how to behave, react, and think whenever one of their rights as a human being gets abused or trampled on by the Chinese government.
One of Liang Qichao’s most popular quotations was when he said that “if one intends to renovate the people of a nation, one must renovate fiction”. Most naïve readers would most likely ask upon reading this passage whether Liang Qichao really loved fiction that much. The thing is that the paper that he wrote was not really about fiction. It was more about politics, specifically the way how the political events turned out and how the situation has actually worsened for the citizens ever since their movement which was the hundred days’ reform got obliterated and scrapped by the government. One must be able to give credit to Liang Qichao for being so consistent.
He faced tons of rejections as a reformist and politicians from different people in the field while he was on his way publishing his ideas by means of scholarly article (that are essentially decoded) because anyone who does not have a good background of Liang Qichao would think that he is just plotting another spamming stage act to deceive people. The thing is that people, regardless of the level of rationality of a belief, would almost always fail to see the value of being actively involved in the government especially when it comes to the process of introducing and implementing new government policies.
Conclusions
In summary, all indicators in Liang Qichao’s work entitled on the relationship between fiction and the government of the people point to the undeniable and rather obvious fact that he intended this work to have politics, specifically the then political situation in China under the Qing Dynasty, as the central theme. The appearance of fiction in his work was only meant to hide the real and literal meaning of his work so that the politicians who were hunting him at that time would not be able to find him. Furthermore, he successfully mastered the use of the pen in journalism, specifically in pushing through ideas that the government did not want its citizens to have for political reasons, using fiction as a disguise to his real intention which was to show to his audience that the government must show flexibility, adaptability, and have a good ending just like how normal fiction novels and stories do.
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