The New China News Agency and Foreign Policy in China

It is generally presumed, and occasionally argued/that the Chinese press is not in the least analogous with the news media in other countries. As with other things Chinese, this uniqueness is typically seen to be a function of communism; or sometimes just 'Chineseness/ It follows that comparisons can, at best, only be sought with other communist states, and even here the 'problem* of 'Chineseness* may be a spoiler.1 This paper is written from an alternative set of assumptions mainly that the Chinese press is not necessarily or entirely beyond understanding in terms of a broad set of functional concepts applicable in a host of otherwise distinctive cultures.