the number of newspapers dropped from 343 in 1965, to 49 in 1966, and then to a 20th-century low of 43 in 1967. At the same time, the number of publications by mass organizations such as Red Guards grew to an estimated number as high as 10,000. Independent political groups could publish broadsheets and handbills, as well as leaders' speeches and meeting transcripts which would normally have been considered highly classified. Several Red Guard organizations also operated independent printing presses to publish newspapers, articles, speeches, and big-character posters. For example, the largest student organization in Shanghai, the Red Revolutionaries, established a newspaper that had a print run of 800,000 copies by the end of 1966. Government controls on restricted literature also collapsed during the Cultural Revolution. Rusticated youths with an interest in broadcast technology frequently operated the rural radio stations after 1968. 1970s The Cultural Revolution continued to severely stagnate technological development in the first half of the 1970s. Loudspeakers (mostly wired) remained the dominant aspect of the Chinese audio technology until 1976. Despite transistorization of radios in the 1960s, private radios continued to lag behind loudspeakers due to the comparatively high cost of transistor radios a well as concerns about private radio listening to "enemy" shortwave broadcasts. Until the 1976 invention of the Cangjie input method, computing technologies lacked an efficient way of inputting Chinese characters into computers. The Cangjie method uses Chinese character radicals to construct characters. In 1977, the first microcomputer, the DJS-050 was developed. In 1978, China's aggressive plan for technological development was announced at the Chinese National Conference on Science and Technology. Further developing microcomputers, integrated circuits, and national databases were all declared priorities. 1980s In 1980, the Chinese computing technology was estimated to be about 15 years behind United States technology. From the early 1980s on, China's leaders recognized that their nationalistic development strategy was inhibiting their scientific competitiveness with the West. Therefore, imports from the United States and Japanese companies such as IBM, DEC, Unisys, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC greatly increased. However, high tariffs discouraged the direct import of computers, instead encouraging foreign corporations to provide hardware and software to domestic enterprises. In 1980, the GB 2312 Code of Chinese Graphic Character Set for Information Interchange-Primary Set was created allowing for 99% of contemporary characters to be easily expressed. In 1982, the Shanghai Bureau of Education chose 8 elementary students and 8 middle-school