ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the possible paradigm shifts for indigenous journalism and communication studies in China, and proposes three steps of methodological reorientations, namely de-contextualizing Western theories, combining pre-reform and post-reform eras as a historic continuity and positioning China in world structure. The Cold War world order-together with the changing complex attitudes of Maoist China toward the Soviet Union-set the limits for China's socialist construction, nation-state building, strategic diplomatic alliance and the establishment of an anti-capitalist knowledge or discipline system of social sciences and humanities. The Institute of Journalism and Communication (IJC) formerly Institute of Journalism of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and a couple of other journalism institutes in their respectively provincial academy of social sciences are also important players in this history. The IJC of CASS was widely recognized to have led the introduction of Western communication theories into China in the early 1980s, exemplified by hosting the visit of Wilbur Schramm.
