Chongqing Communist Party Propaganda Department Convenes Meeting to Discuss Newspapers and Magazines

The Chongqing branch of the Central Propaganda Department convened a forum on September 14, according to an article posted on Xinhua's Web site the following day. Zhang Heshi, the head of both Chongqing's Party Central Committee and its Propaganda Department, told the meeting that, regardless of whether a newspaper or magazine is a "Party paper" or a "metropolitan paper," (which are the commercially oriented branches of the Party papers in China's provinces and larger cities) it must embrace the greater interests of the Party's and the government's work, carry out "constructive" public opinion supervision, and "sing the main theme."

According to Liu Yunshan, head of the Central Propaganda Department, "singing the main theme" means to "carry forward a nationalist spirit whose core is patriotism . . . carry forward collectivist and socialist ideology and allow it to become the main stream of modern times and the prevailing fashion of the entire society . . . require the coordination of the lines of propaganda of ideological warfare . . . and pluck the people's heart strings to bring about their sympathetic response . . . ."