The overview of a hundred years’ development of Xinjiang national minorities press

The paper discusses the historical development of the national minorities’ press in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China from the establishing of the first newspaper in Xinjiang, “Yili Vernacular Newspaper” (“Yili Baihua Bao”), which was published in four languages (Chinese, Uyghur, Mongolian and Manchu), in 1910 up until present moment. The process of forming and development of the press in national languages of Xinjiang minorities can be divided into two big stages. The first stage is the period of establishing of newspapers in local languages; it lasted from 1910 till the establishing of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Materials published during this period were devoted mainly to educational and political problems. Newspapers began to be a factor of political propaganda. The second stage covers the period from the establishing of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 till nowadays. Since new China was founded, and especially after the “Reform and Opening-up”, the press in national minorities’ languages of Xinjiang has developed into a diversified multilanguage multilevel professional system with the Communist Party newspapers as the core. The new phenomenon that occurred during 1950-1960s was the establishing of specialized periodicals for different age groups and professional groups. All the print media were mostly dedicated to the propaganda of the Communist Party’s policy, significant political events, economic reforms, etc. At the same time, the quality of literary works published in newspapers’ supplements was increasing steadily. The Cultural Revolution significantly affected press’ activity; its information function was weakened and gave place to political propaganda. During the 1980-1990s substantial changes in the content and technical proficiency took place. At the present time, the number of newspapers published in five languages of Xinjiang national minorities has reached 52, including 34 in Uyghur language, 12 in Kazakh language, 3 in Mongolian language, 2 in Kyrgyz language and 1 in Xibe language.