The 40 years of reform and opening-up, though brief compared to China’s long history, have had a profound impact on the country’s development. In recent times, generations of Chinese people have forged ahead one after another toward modernization and China has become the world’s second-largest economy largely through its own efforts. For more than a century, Chinese mass communication has been closely linked to the historical destiny of the Chinese nation. On the one hand, journalism and communication have become tools for mobilising the people, enlightening them and bringing about social change as well as constructing modernization; on the other hand, China has developed its own set of effective journalism and communication experience. Since the New Age, Western mass communication has exerted a dominating influence in the process of disciplinarisation and standardization in China, and the Chinese theoretical paradigm has been derived from Western (notably American) mass communication. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, academic research on mass communication, as an important area of philosophy and social science, has contributed to a new era of mass communication with Chinese characteristics under the guidance of the Marxist concept of journalism based on self-reflection, which has had important implications for the research, education, and practice of mass communication.