RENMIN RIBAO

Wade-Giles Jen-Min Jih-Pao (Chinese: People's Daily) daily newspaper published at Peking as the official organ of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The paper was established in 1948, toward the end of China's civil war, and has been based in Peking since 1949. Renmin ribao carries serious, politically oriented articles and numerous speeches and reports by government or party leaders. An occasional piece of fiction or a poem may also appear in the paper's eight pages but never without making an appropriate political point. The newspaper's contents reflect official policy, and it is read respectfully throughout China by many times its circulation. Copies of the paper are posted for public view in display cases at street intersections, and articles are frequently read at local party meetings, reprinted in local newspapers, or quoted in Radio Peking programs. Village schools place quotations from the paper on bulletin boards. Renmin ribao editorials deal with such subjects as politics and culture, communist theory and philosophy, and Marxist economics. In the days of the Cultural Revolution, they reflected the anti-intellectual climate of that period; after Mao Zedong's death, the editorials exposed the activities of the Gang of Four and pointed the way to the pragmatic policies of Mao's successors. An overseas edition has been published since 1985.