The Qing Government And The Fight Of Speech Right On Late Qing Dynasty

The fight concentrated on different political views and constitutionalism at the end of Qing dynasty, the three parties: revolutionary faction, constitutionalism faction, and Qing government declared their ideas respectively through the channels of themselves to restrain each other. In the fight, as the legal political power then, Qing government took the advantage of the national resources to participate in it.First, the right of law making, starting from the year of 1906, i.e., the time of most strongest public opinion, Qing government enacted a series of specialized laws on news and publication, such as"Qing printed special law","T he press should observe the rules","interim regulation newspaper","Qing newspaper law"and"report by Imperial law", on one hand, limitedly opening the press and assembly to dredge the pressure from civilians;on the other hand, Qing government also made strict regulations for newspaperman, press censorship and news content, putting the news and publication management under the laws and making the bounds of news and publications thereby. Qing government accordingly controlled the news and publication strictly and tried to lead the public opinion to the favorable way, which aimed to prevent the unfavorable opinions from spreading. These measures influenced the news and publication industry of that time much and played a role effectively on aspects of preventing revolutionary dissemination and controlling the constitutionalism faction.At the mean time, retaliating and persecuting the"illegal"revolutionary views and dissemination directly. In allusion to the revolutionary faction use leased territory which Qing government cannot control effectively to disseminate their views, the Qing government at the very start took the diplomatic and lawsuit actions to block them. The judgment of"Supao Case"of the year 1903 is a very significant line of demarcation. Under the persistence of Qing government, the revolutionary was judged guilt and"Supao"was sealed up, establishing a red line on the free speech in leased territory, not only made the influential propaganda positions of"Supao"lost, more importantly, the public opinion space and dissemination media of leased territory that the revolutionary valued was lost. From then on, the revolutionary's dissemination was kept secret and the dissemination was transferred overseas, which affected the domestic revolutionary propaganda and mobilization badly.Other than the above said measures, almost at the same time with the constitutionalism faction and the revolutionary faction, the Qing government also used the modern media to serve their own purpose. Qing government hosted more than 100 kinds of communiqué, which was a major newspaper. This large scaled newspaper running was based on awareness of modern media and public opinion. The communiquéalso utilized the national finance and administrative resource to enlarge the distribution, even took the manner of colloquial newspaper and newspaper reader to disseminate the official the remote area and the lower-class civilians, which had a non-ignorable impact.As the regime in power, Qing government mainly conveyed the dynasty's proposal, policy and decision through orders. Revolving the problem of constitutionalism, Qing dynasty firstly tried to control the initiative of voice through preparatory constitutionalism, assigning officials abroad to survey the politics, initiatively announcing preparatory constitutionalism, reforming the bureaucratic establishment, making"Outline Imperial Constitution", and confirming the 9-year period of preparatory constitutionalism, etc. these actions conveyed their voice. Meanwhile, to the constitutional movement raised by constitutionalism faction, especially revolving the problem of congress, Qing government built up dialogue, argument, and propaganda campaign. Under the circumstance of constitutionalism, the right of voice started to transfer between the Qing government and constitutionalism, Qing government was forced to make a concession. After the Wuchang uprising, constitutionalism was interrupted.It's clear f rom above, the speech right of the late Qing dynasty, Qing dynasty played a both significant and active role, it used the administrative resources to strike the rivals and disseminate themselves though various channels, which imposed huge impact on revolutionary faction's dissemination and constitutionalism campaign.