New Asia College The Chinese University of Hong Kong eNewsletter

Endowed by the Dato' Wong Kwing-keung Fund, the first lecture of "New Asia Lectures on Contemporary China 2017/18" was held in Sir Run Run Shaw Hall, CUHK on 6 October this year. It was our honor to have invited Mr. Qian Gang, renowned journalist and writer, to give a lecture titled "What Is 2 Plus 2? My Footprint in Contemporary Media History of China". Mr. Qian discussed the contemporary media culture of China and shared with us his journey of being a journalist. This lecture was moderated by Dr. Gao Qi, Assistant Director of the Universities Service Centre for China Studies, CUHK.

Having grown up during the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Qian worked long in the fields of literature and art and communication. He had believed that only articles containing propaganda elements were good articles until the Tangshan earthquake, when he realised that reports based simply on facts could also touch readers' hearts. The idea of revealing the truth, meanwhile, started to prevail in Chinese journalism after the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Qian, under the impact of this current of new ideas, started to record things as they were by writing The Great Tangshan Earthquake, founded China Disaster Report and then Life Weekly, served as the deputy chief editor of Southern Weekly, and produced the CCTV program News Probe. He frankly related that he had suffered much censorship and pressure, and learnt that power, money, ignorance and public opinion could be manipulated to veil the truth; however, for the sake of reporting the truth, one must persevere.

Lastly, he explained the meaning of the chosen topic, "freedom is being able to say freely that two plus two equals four."