ABSTRACT
John Dewey believed that the disadvantage of propaganda lies in preventing individuals from obtaining spiritual freedom and cultivating deformed personalities, which eventually leads to social instability. In the 1930s, Hu even argued with intellectuals advocating enlightened autocracy that democratic constitutionalism was “just a naive political system that was best suited to training an inexperienced nation”. The attack on propaganda by free intellectuals such as S. Hu can be regarded as the echo in China of America’s debate on the relationship of propaganda and democracy after World War I. Propaganda discourse of newly emerged intellectuals can be divided into four categories: nationalism, professionalism, journalism and liberalism. Although intellectuals who hold the position of liberalism are also averse to propaganda, few scholars have publicly questioned the propaganda concept itself. The American propaganda concept was born from democracy and marketing, mostly from social-science researchers and marketers.
