習近平 집권1·2기 권력집중화 양상 비교 분석-人民日報 1면 보도를 중심으로-

Abstract

The estimation of Chinese experts for the leadership of Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China, has been contested. On the one hand, it is evaluated as the collapse of collective leadership and the establishment of one-man rule that The Communist Party of China adheres strictly. On the other hand, it is regarded that his one-man rule is misinformation of Korean press. The purpose of this study is to identify how the Chinese press has expressed the attitude of the report about Xi that can measure the collapse of the collective leadership or the establishment of the one-man rule. This paper analyzed news articles, photo, and editorial attitudes through the first-coverage of the People’s Daily, a Chinese Communist Party newspaper that can capture the movement of the leadership of Chinese government, in order to comprehend Xi Jinping’s centralized authority at a second term, which has commenced since his first term. As a result, the power concentration to Xi was remarkable in qualitative and quantitative aspects, such as the frequency of appearing in the first-coverage, the fields of political activities, the measurement of news value, and editorial attitude with the identical character named Xi Jinping during second term compare to first term. The summary of the specifics is as follows: First, the number of articles reported on the first-coverage of the People’s Daily at first and second term is each 102 cases(19.1%) and 134 cases(36.1%), which has increased by 32 cases and 17 percentage points in rate. Instead, the news related to government agencies and officials including the six committee members of the Central Politburo except for Xi has decreased. This supports the fact that the People’s Daily edited the political movements of Xi with much more importance in comparison to the first period, and finally shows the conspicuousness of the power concentration to Xi. Second, regarding Xi Jinping’s movements, the People’s Daily gave much higher evaluation of the news value during his second term than in his first term. According to an analysis of top and middle-top news articles posted on the front page, top news containing Xi’s action accounted for 75% of major articles, or 124 overall, with 48 cases and 45 cases, which is up 25 percentage points from 55% in the first term. However, the ratio of key articles about the movements of the members of the Central Politburo and government agencies and officials, which accounted for 39.7% during the first term, turned into 19.3% which decreased by 20.4 percentage points. Third, during the same period, the frequency of Xi’s exposure, which accounted for 37.5%(39 cases) of the total photos in the first term, increased by 19.5 percentage points in the second term(61 cases) in the People’s Daily’s first-coverage photo analysis. The number of photos on the front page of his second term was 107 in total, up only three from 104 in his first term, but the number of photos on Xi Jinping increased by 22 more to indicate that the People's Daily considers Xi's move as important. Finally, significant changes have also been made in news value measurements and layouts of articles or photographs related to Xi. The entire front page of the People's Daily was edited by Xi Jinping from three days of his first term to the eight days of his second term. On the other hand, the number of days that were not covered by the article about Xi was reduced from the fifteen days in the first term to four days in the second term. This change in the People’s Daily’s attitude toward the news of Xi Jinping means that the concentration of power and idolization of power with Xi Jinping is accelerating further. The move exemplifies that Xi Jinping’s role will be expanded and strengthened at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to be held in the second half of 2022, which is expected to change considerably in the future leadership and political system of the Communist Party of China.