Newspaper Debates and Political Rhetoric: Yan Fu and Zhang Shizhao's Controversy over the Social Contract Theory and Its Media Implications

As an ideological resource for social transformation,the social contract theory drew great attention from public opinion elites represented by Yan Fu and Liang Qichao,who introduced Western advanced knowledge.In the early Republic of China,academic discussions on restructuring political power relations based on the social contract theory involved inter-mediality and communication validity.Newspapers in Beijing and Tianjin played a vital role in demonstrating respective political rhetoric.Having studied in Britain,both Yan Fu and Zhang Shizhao were deeply influenced by conservative factions of British liberalism.They justified the legitimacy and rationality of China's social transformation via press publications,and adopted moderate attitudes when choosing between revolutionary and reformist public opinions.Both enjoyed high academic prestige for theoretical contributions amid modern social transition.Nevertheless,differing in conservative and radical standpoints,they held vastly divergent views on the social analytical framework of political theories.Such consensus and factional divergences were manifested politically and rhetorically in political newspapers,reflecting the integration of original theories and translated interpretations in the interplay between academia and politics during national reconstruction.The textual connection and discursive confrontation between the original social contract theory and its translated versions across different contexts serve as a valid theoretical perspective to analyze the Yan-Zhang debate,the role of mass media and interactions between academia and politics.In terms of communication content and influence,the scope and depth of the dissemination and interpretation of the social contract theory reflect the scale and norms of modern social transformation.More importantly,this debate typically reveals the orientations and divergences of political rhetoric of media in modern Chinese public opinion mobilization for the first time.