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We continue our exploration of Asia’s best-selling newspapers. Although little known in the West, these titles boast sales and circulations that European newspapers can only dream of.
This time we’re heading to China to look at one of its oldest and most prestigious dailies: Cankao Xiaoxi (参考消息).
Having peaked at over 4 million copies in the 90s, today it has an estimated daily circulation of about 1.5 million. These aren’t huge numbers in a Chinese context, given the country’s enormous population, but they still make the title one of the best-selling papers on the planet.
Cankao Xiaoxi translates into English as “Reference News”. Focusing on international affairs, the title is published by the state-run Xinhua News Agency, which means it’s subject to the political and cultural control of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
The paper was founded in 1931 as an internal news-sheet distributed exclusively among Chinese Communist Party cadres. It was only made available to the public in 1980, quickly gaining popularity in a country hungry for news and eager to modernise. As we mentioned earlier, Cankao Xiaoxi prints stories taken from international media, which are then adapted and translated into Chinese. They are of course carefully crafted to ensure they toe the government line. The difference between the original story and the Chinese version serves as a sort of barometer for how far the ruling party adheres to the global consensus on any given issue.
Cankao Xiaoxi uses a tabloid format, like most Chinese newspapers. As we’ve touched on in previous articles, the compact tabloid format makes a title easier to read on public transport.
Cankao Xiaoxi’s layout is neat and well-organised with limited use of white space. This is in keeping with Asian preferences for greater content density, which, to Western eyes, can appear cluttered.
The colours used are traditional red and black. Colour printing is a relatively recent innovation in Chinese newspapers, unlike the rest of the world, where it has been around for at least 30 years.
Only useful images
This conservative aesthetic also applies to visual content, which is not especially inventive or imaginative. Photographs are often limited to political leaders at major international events or something highly relevant to the story. They are carefully chosen to convey precise messages and avoiding anything that may be considered too sensational or controversial.
The paper makes limited use of the more innovative devices in contemporary graphic journalism, like infographics. And when it does employ these visual elements, they’re usually simple bar graphs, diagrams and geopolitical maps.
It’s hard to analyse the graphic design of Chinese newspapers through a Western lens. In Chinese culture, tradition is of the utmost importance: everything must follow clearly established rules and conventions. Traditional Chinese typography is no exception and the paper does not innovate in this regard.
Rigid graphic design conventions
As one of the world’s best-selling daily newspapers, Cancao Xiaoxi has the power to influence millions of readers. But as a mouthpiece for the state, it must strictly adhere to certain rules when it comes to both content and graphic design, although this conformity is not necessarily seen as a bad thing in Chinese culture.
Like many Asian newspapers, Cancao Xiaoxi still has a large print readership, although this has declined markedly since the crisis in traditional newspaper sales began at the turn of the millennium.
Westerners struggle to understand the Chinese approach to graphic design, with its extreme austerity and conformity, especially compared to the style used in neighbouring Japan. However, it’s worth remembering that even in a country with a rich graphic tradition like Japan – where designers are often credited, and their work celebrated for its stylistic elegance, conceptual depth and linguistic innovation – newspapers tend not to be creative or innovative in their graphic design, and aesthetic considerations play second fiddle to content.
So that wraps up our overview of Cankao Xiaoxi. China’s biggest-selling daily newspaper is a conformist publication that does not stray from traditional Chinese design conventions nor from the political line set by the ruling Communist Party.
