Capitalizing on national crises: Zhengyi Tongbao in late Qing China

Along with other printed items (such as journals, novels and textbooks), newspapers were instrumental in connecting different sectors of Chinese society in the early twentieth century, creating what Benedict Anderson calls ‘a homogeneous empty time’ for the Chinese. In this article, I will examine one commonly used strategy to increase readership–national disaster. As the late Qing government was confronting a series of crises (such as the palace coup d’état of 1898, the Boxer uprising of 1900, the death of Empress Dowager in 1908), newspaper publishers presented these crises as a continuing saga that revealed the doomed fate of their country. To show the effectiveness of this strategy, I focus on Zhengyi tongbao (1902–1908). Edited and published by Deng Shi (1877–1951), the newspaper was a hodgepodge of official documents, news columns, and political commentaries. What linked these different parts of the newspaper together was the urgency of national crisis. As I will show, Deng Shi was effective in using national disaster to attract readers’ attention. At one point, he even offered readers substantial discounts if they renewed their subscription ahead of time to avoid missing the new episodes of national disaster.