Survey And Critique: The Society Of The Early ROC In The Morning Bell Daily's View

The Morning Bell Daily, published in August 1916 in Beijing, had successively become the official newspaper of the Progress Party and the Constitutional Research Organ, to discussing gain and loss of politics and investigating people suffering as the purpose. The Morning Bell Daily editors surveyed and showed solicitude for national affairs and people's livelihood with critical eyes, against bigwigs courage and universal caring idea, and tried to consciously play the roles of political stability advisers, economic problems supervisor, national interests defenders and people suffering investigators, which has rarely researched in the academic circle.From the point of stabilizing the political situation, The Morning Bell Daily organized useful discussions about politicians image and the right track of politics, then pointed out that politicians should be moral as the basic principle, intelligence as the means, serving the people as their responsibility, to reach the right track of politics, stability should have deemed to be the foundation, reconciliation as the means, calming the party struggle, consolidating the foundation and taking temporary solution as the current priorities."The case of consolidating the foundation, drawing up a constitution was, the case of taking temporary solution, reorganizing finance was."The debate that parliamentarians could hold a concurrent post the State Ministers or not in the constitutional process had the distinctive time character, which became the focus of editors attention. The Morning Bell Daily strikingly reported the bribery case involved in the Financial Minister Chen Jintao, played the roles of discloser and promoters of the case till filed review, and rebuked bribery scandal involved in government officials and lifted high the sword of justice.Because of financial doldrums dilemma and no good methods to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, the Beijing government had to rely on regularly external borrowing to support reluctantly. The Morning Bell Daily emphasized that external borrowing was harm to China, yet considering the weak situation in China, thought also that it had to do so, and tolerated this deed. The Morning Bell Daily put forward three principles to the borrowing behavior of the government: preventing Japan of monopolizing everything, safeguarding national patent rights as a precondition, strictly restricting local borrowing behavior. To the Monetary Reform involved in fiscal and financial lifeblood, editors specially introduced Zhang Zhong-lang's"China's Monetary Reform"when reported the Japanese view of China's currency, criticized the confusion currency, and agreed to implement the gold standard in China.The Morning Bell Daily was a typical advocator of national interests supremacy principle, proposed to appease internal strife, to resist foreign aggression, to work together to defend the sovereignty, and called for civil diplomacy. In the Zhengjiatun incident, The Morning Bell Daily continuously reported Sino-Japanese negotiation for the maximization of their own interests, also published public opinion that appealed to maintain the right in the newspapers in time, through the power of public opinion, tried to play the roles of supervisor and suggestion people in process of the government dealing with foreign affairs. Advocating participating in the world war I was The Morning Bell Daily's basic position. German-US diplomatic relations broken as a turning point, from the hesitate and prudent to the uniform pace, vehemently advocating participating in the war, The Morning Bell Daily unequivocally expressed the desire that China should make the opportunity to change the status of diplomatic isolation and reach independent diplomacy.Concerning people's livelihood was one of the purposes of running newspaper. One of the important things the newspaper concerned, for example, was the outbreak of a serious flood in Tianjin at the turn of summer in 1917. The newspaper also disclosed many problems in the relief process when accurately reported the time-consuming and laborious relief from official, nongovernmental and disaster area its own. The common people who lived in Beijing urban and rural long time, low income, living in poverty also were concerned by the newspaper.Some featured columns that could show the theme----"Aphorism"and"Published Opinion freely"were also designed."Aphorism", taking refined and diversified expressions, to etiquette, justice, sense of honor and shame of Confucian as the basic guidelines, western theories as a good policy of saving the country, young people as the main force, advocated taking two-track parallel way through the moral reconstruction in the thought level and learning from the west in the institution level to save the country from peril."Published Opinion freely", taking proverbs way, dapper length, neat antithesis format, humorous and pungent statement, rightly published complains to the current situation and personal comments, particularly focused on the political situation, politicians, political events, which reflected distinctive political concern, sense of right and wrong, likes and dislikes, consciousness of saving the world.As the official newspaper of Tang Hua-long Group in the Progress Party and Constitutional Studies, The Morning Bell Daily faithfully implemented political idea of the Progress Party and Constitutional Studies, and maintained cooperative attitude with the Duan government. The Morning Bell Daily was also the main propaganda position of democratic idea of the Progress Party and Constitutional Studies'intellectuals, advocated progressive Republic, that is, in favor of the Republic, against the monarchy and constitutional monarchy, advocated Republic under the leadership of the central figures, and put into practice politics of the elite in China, to reconcile the conflict between the forces of old and new as a breakthrough, through moderate non-violent progressive transition to democracy step by step. They denounced opponents, publicized political views, came to comments and discussions to many political acts of the government. They desired political stability, all strength groups could build the Republic together. But these discussions, requests and supervision were just within the limited and temporary tolerated scope where the government was lack of sufficient authority, once the core benefit of military men despotism was imperiled, it meant that this situation was ended. It can only say that The Morning Bell Daily played the role of a weak supervisor.