A strong start in the early years
Due to the differences in social and political systems, western media are usually skeptical of investigative journalism in China. The situation is at least“precarious” (Tong and Spark, 2009), requiring voluntary media alignment w ith government stances on major issues.
Even the public in China inclines to believe that investigative journalism is a genre imported from the west. Media scholars in China seem to agree that the practice of investigative journalism in earnest was f irst initiated in the early 1990s,coinciding w ith the country’s drive to build “a market economy w ith socialist characteristics”. But it would be an over-simplification to claim that journalism practice in China had been devoid of investigative reporting prior to its resurgence in the early 1990s.
The practice of investigative journalism in China could be traced to a much earlier origin, even before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.A leading figure is Fan Changjiang, a towering pioneer in the development of journalism in modern China.
Fan Changjiang launched his career in 1933 as a journalist for Ta-Kung-Pao,one of the most w idely read newspaper in those days. In 1935, he was dispatched to China’s northwestern provinces to see in his own eyes the political and econom ic plights in these relatively backward territories, follow ing the long march of the Communist-led Red A rmy. To break away from the besieges and never-ending m ilitary incursions by the Kuom intang forces, [5] the Red A rmy w as forced to abandon its revolutionary bases in central and eastern China and transferred to the sparsely populated rural areas in the northwest where the Kuom intang rule was relatively weak.
Fan Changjiang mentioned two primary purposes for his 10-month-long journey(Fan, 1971). The f irst was to f ind out how China’s political landscape would change follow ing the Red Army’s long march. The second was to get a better sense of the history and status quo of China’s northwestern regions that were about to become the vast home front of the nation’s f ight against Japanese aggression. [6] He argued that northwestern provinces were of pivotal strategic importance to the forthcom ing battles against Japanese aggression despite their relative m iniscule econom ic strengths. He pointed out that if the war drags on, the Japanese m ilitary would try all they could to cut off the m ilitary connections between China and the Soviet Union in the northwestern fronts to completely block the entire Chinese mainland from external assistance. [7] (Fang，1980)
The book turns out to be an instant hit. It was reprinted seven times w ithin six months of its publication, securing its place as an all-time classic in the history of journalism in China. These dispatches presented a f irst eye-w itness account of the appalling corruption, extreme poverty, and ethnic tensions in Kuom intang-ruled northwestern provinces. Without computers and any other advanced technologies to rely on, Fan’s journalism shines in his comprehensive researches into historical archives and insightful observations at close quarters in the f ield.(https://www.daowen.com)
He proved to be a master of the art of factual reporting. In describing the most shocking scenes of poverty and sufferings, he exercised restraints and laid out the specific details in unornamented forms w ithout many adjectives and modifiers to dress up. Here is an excerpt describing what he saw on the streets of Zhangye, a m ining town used to be the most prosperous in Gansu province (Fan, 1980, P119):
There were relatively fewer middled-aged or elderly women vagabonding on the streets than children. But they are still everywhere to be found. There is one distinctive feature in these women’s appearances: no matter how worn-out or ragged their shreds of clothing are hanging above the waist are, if their pants are too tattered to conceal the part of the bodies that they deem absolutely necessary to cover up, they would somehow manage to skirt around their waists with a wrap of thread-bare and unwashed linen or cotton cloth, or at the very least, to put up a tiny square of fabric up in front of the belly. [8]
Fan was at his most analytical when he broke down the taxation policies levied by M a Bufang, the warlord governing Qinghai province, to sustain his m ilitary dom inance. (Fan, 1980, P92):
More than 70 percent of Qinghai’s land area lie in the nomadic tribal regions of Mongolian and Tibetan peoples. With his father’s influence and his own military prowess, Ma Bufang can easily command and manipulate them. Ma collects poll tax from these nomadic people once every year, stipulating in exact penny terms how much each horse or ox should be levied upon. Usually desperately short of cashes,these nomadic peoples would prefer to pay up to 90 percent of the taxes in the forms of sheep wools sold at the market prices. With the intervention of brokers, the poll taxes are driven up so high that they loom as a much too heavy burden for Mongolians and Tibetans. Ma Bufang has also implemented a so-called “Grain sales for Barracks”system, to relegate the mission of securing grain supplies for his troops to local civilians in the name of purchasing. It’s sheer expropriation. In a word, such economic policies can be interpreted as the policies of “dispossessing the people’s benefits”, or the kind of expenditure policy “barely giving back anything to the civilian at all”. [9]
Fan Changjiang got one of the biggest scoops of his time through his depictions of the utter despair of the poverty-stricken people in the hands of corrupt and greedy officials and warlords. These dispatches spearheaded the onset of investigative journalism in China in a tumultuous era of national crisis. Their deep concerns about the people’s hardships and the unobtrusive presentations of opinions and commentaries based on solid facts are in line w ith classical journalistic principles revered by western media. Fan’s legacy lives on to this day and inspires generations of Chinese journalists.