Filing China’s Image: The Chinese Censorship and the American Journalists, 1930-1950

This thesis explores how China’s modern censorship system emerged from wartime imperative and the transnational network embedded in the news industry and public sphere during the 1930s and 1940s. Delving into the intertwined development of censorship, state-building, and journalism in China between the 1930s and 1950s, it reveals two essential aspects of the formation of the Kuomintang regime’s censorship system. First, the censorship system was largely shaped by a group of veteran Chinese newspaper professionals, who actively made up the first generation of governmental information bureaucrats and crafted the censorship policies for the regime. Meanwhile, a transnational network comprising of Chinese and foreign newspaper owners, editors, and journalists facilitated the institutionalization of the KMT’s international propaganda system, which later transformed into a censorship system. The transnational network of journalists in China continued to develop, eventually coming into conflict with an increasingly restrictive censorship machinery. This network played a pivotal role in the information war between the Nationalists and the Communists during the Civil War, including both the outcome of the war and the information control strategy of the People’s Republic. Drawing on archival sources, historical news reports, and memoirs, this thesis examines how the modern Chinese state’s early censorship system was shaped by not only domestic political imperatives but also complex interactions between Chinese and foreign newspaper professionals. It reveals that the state’s information control system, an essential component of modern China’s state-building project, was deeply intertwined with the nation’s public sphere.