Routledge handbook of Chinese media 9780415520775, 9781315758350

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Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media

The study of Chinese media is a field that is growing and evolving at an exponential rate. Not only are the Chinese media a fascinating subject for analysis in their own right, but they also offer scholars and students a window to observe multi-directional flows of information, culture and communications within the contexts of globalisation and regionalisation. Moreover, the study of Chinese media provides an invaluable opportunity to test and refine the variety of communications theories that researchers have used to describe, analyse, compare and contrast systems of communications. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media is a prestigious reference work providing an overview of the study of Chinese media. Gary and Ming-yeh Rawnsley bring together an interdisciplinary perspective with contributions by an international team of renowned scholars on subjects such as television, journalism and the internet and social media. Locating Chinese media within a regional setting by focusing on ‘Greater China’ (the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities), the chapters highlight the convergence of media and platforms in the region, and emphasise the multi-directional and transnational character of media/information flows in East Asia. Contributing to the growing de-westernisation of media and communications studies, this handbook is an essential and comprehensive reference work for students of all levels and scholars in the fields of Chinese studies and media studies. Gary D. Rawnsley is a Professor of Public Diplomacy, Aberystwyth University, UK. Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley is Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Associate Fellow, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham, UK.

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Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media

Edited by Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley

First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 selection and editorial material, Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley to be identified as author of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Routledge handbook of Chinese media / edited by Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mass media—China—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Mass media— Taiwan—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Mass media—China—Hong Kong—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 4. Mass media—China—Macau— Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Rawnsley, Gary D., editor. II. Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T., editor. P92.C5R825 2015 302.23'0951—dc23 2014038044 ISBN: 978-0-415-52077-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-75835-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK

Contents

List of figures List of tables Notes on contributors Members of the Editorial Board Editorial note Acknowledgements Introduction Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley

viii ix x xvi xvii xviii 1

PART I

The development of the study and the structure of Chinese media 1 (Re)-Focusing on the target: reflections on a trajectory of studying the Chinese media Yuezhi Zhao

7 9

2 China, soft power and imperialism Colin Sparks

27

3 Evaluating Chinese media policy: objectives and contradictions Rogier Creemers

47

PART II

Journalism, press freedom and social mobilisation 4 Western missionaries and origins of the modern Chinese press Yuntao Zhang 5 Setting the press boundaries: the case of the Southern (Nanfang) Media Group Chujie Chen 6 Chinese investigative journalism in the twenty-first century Hugo de Burgh

65 67

79 100

v

Contents

7 From control to competition: a comparative study of the party press and popular press Hsiao-wen Lee

117

8 Press freedom in Hong Kong: interactions between state, media and society Francis L.F. Lee

131

9 Media and social mobilisation in Hong Kong Joseph M. Chan and Francis L.F. Lee 10 Citizen journalists as an empowering community for change: a case study of a Taiwanese online platform ‘PeoPo’ Chen-ling Hung

145

161

PART III

The Internet, public sphere and media culture

179

11 Politics and social media in China Lars Willnat, Lu Wei and Jason A. Martin

181

12 Online Chinese nationalism and its nationalist discourses Yiben Ma

203

13 A cyberconflict analysis of Chinese dissidents focusing on civil society, mass incidents and labour resistance Athina Karatzogianni and Andrew Robinson

217

14 Workers and peasants as historical subjects: the formation of working-class media cultures in China Wanning Sun

239

15 An emerging middle-class public sphere in China? Analysis of news media representation of ‘Self Tax Declaration’ Qian (Sarah) Gong

250

16 Expressing myself, connecting with you: Young Taiwanese females’ photographic self-portraiture on Wretch Album Yin-han Wang

266

17 Against the grain: the battle for public service broadcasting in Taiwan Chun-wei Daniel Lin

281

18 Public service television in China Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley and Chien-san Feng vi

298

Contents

PART IV

Market, production and the media industries

313

19 The changing role of copyright in China’s emergent media economy Lucy Montgomery and Xiang Ren

315

20 Gamers, state and online games Anthony Y.H. Fung

330

21 The geographical clustering of Chinese media production Michael Keane

341

22 The politics and poetics of television documentary in China Qing Cao

355

23 Contemporary Chinese historical television drama as a cultural genre: production, consumption and state power George Dawei Guo

372

24 Live television production of media events in China: the case of the Beijing Olympic Games Limin Liang

389

25 Negotiated discursive struggles in hyper-marketised and oligopolistic media system: the case of Hong Kong Charles Chi-wai Cheung

403

PART V

Chinese media and the world

425

26 Internationalisation of China’s television: history, development and new trends Junhao Hong and Youling Liu

427

27 Decoding the Chinese media in flux: American correspondents as an interpretive community Yunya Song

446

28 Chinese international broadcasting, public diplomacy and soft power Gary D. Rawnsley

460

Appendix: Chinese dynasties at a glance Chinese glossary: selected Chinese names and terms Index

476 477 483

vii

Figures

10.1 10.2 10.3 13.1 13.2 13.3 17.1 24.1 26.1 26.2

viii

The image ‘When the excavators came to the rice fields’ which was posted online and broadcast on media, causing a national debate on land policy The website of PeoPo platform (www.peopo.org/) Citizen reporters participate in a face-to-face gathering sharing opinions on local affairs Screenshot (no. 1) of artist and dissident Ai Weiwei’s parody of Psy’s Gangnam Style incorporating handcuffs in his dance routine Screenshot (no. 2) of artist and dissident Ai Weiwei’s parody of Psy’s Gangnam Style incorporating handcuffs in his dance routine Twitter screenshot: debating Chinese dissidents and western values on Twitter, 30 July 2012 PTS annual average television rating and market share from 1998 to 2010 Structure of CCTV Olympic reporting system Comparison of the value of China’s imported and exported television programmes, 2004–10 Comparison of the value of China’s imported and exported television dramas, 2006–10

162 168 170 222 222 223 288 393 439 439

Tables

5.1 6.1 7.1 7.2 9.1 9.2 17.1 18.1 22.1 25.1 25.2 25.3 25.4 26.1 26.2 26.3 26.4 26.5 26.6 26.7 26.8 27.1

Constituents of the Nanfang Media Group, 2012 Main vehicles of investigative journalism in China and their mottoes Ownership of Beijing newspapers selected for coverage comparison Different conditions of news coverage and their influential factors Perceived representativeness of political actors, media and social institutions Media presence of selected movement organisations Chronological overview of public service broadcasting in Taiwan, 1983–2007 The number of PSB-related papers published in Chinese journals available on Zhongguo qikan wang (www.chinaqking.com), 1994–2011 Features of television documentaries in different periods Hong Kong journalists’ views on watchdog and balanced journalism across different years Types of discourse of youth predominately represented in news reports Reports and non-report articles that predominately represented different alternative discourses of youth in Apple Daily (March 2003 to February 2004) Reports and non-report articles that predominately represented different alternative discourses of youth in Ming Pao (March 2003 to February 2004) Percentage of imported programmes among the total on selected television stations in China, 1970s–1990s Television programmes imported in China, 2006–10 Value of imported television dramas in China, 2006–10 Number of imported television drama episodes and distribution of origins, 2003–11 Chinese television programme exports, 2006–10 Chinese television drama exports, 2006–10 CCTV overseas landing, 2003–10 Overseas household audience ratings CCTV-4 and CCTV-News, 2003–10 Occurrence of newspapers and periodicals in journalistic accounts, 1979–2009

80 103 123 128 147 151 287 303 358 415 415 417 417 433 433 433 434 438 439 441 442 448

ix

Contributors

Cao, Qing is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies and currently Head of the Chinese Department in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, UK. Dr Cao’s research centres on the transformations of the Chinese media, and mutual perceptions and representations between China and the west. He has published extensively in these areas. His recent publications include China under Western Gaze (2014) and Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China (2014). Currently he is completing a British Academy supported research project that examines China’s perceptions of its place in the post-financial crisis international world. Chan, Joseph M. is Chair Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he served as a director. He is currently the Director of the Center for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research and the Universities Service Centre for China Studies. His research interest lies in the intersection of international communication, political communication and journalism studies. In addition to the books he has co-authored or co-edited, he has published numerous articles in books and international journals. He served as a Changjiang Chair Professor at Fudan University, the President of the Chinese Communication Association, and the founding chief editor of Communication & Society. Chen, Chujie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. His research lies at the intersection of structure and agency in news production, with special attention paid to the political economy of Chinese media, sociology of (online) news, organisational studies of media innovation, and to cultural meanings of journalism. Cheung, Charles Chi-wai is Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. Recent publications include Pop Hong Kong: Reading Hong Kong Popular Culture 2000–2010 (co-edited in 2012, in Chinese) and Reading Hong Kong Popular Culture: 1970–2000 (co-edited in 2002, in Chinese). Dr Cheung’s research focuses on media power, media industries and popular culture in Hong Kong. Creemers, Rogier holds graduate degrees in Sinology and International Relations and a doctorate in law. Currently, he is a Rubicon Scholar at the University of Oxford, UK, where he researches Chinese internet law and policy. He also edits a Chinese media law database, and has published broadly on topics related to Chinese media law and legal ideology. de Burgh, Hugo is Director of the China Media Centre and Professor of Journalism in the Communications and Media Research Institute of the University of Westminster, UK. He writes x

Contributors

on investigative journalism and specialises in Chinese affairs. His recent publications include China’s Media (2014), The West You Really Don’t Know (2013, in Chinese) and China’s Environment and China’s Environment Journalists (2012). Moreover, he is Professor, PRC 985 Programme, Tsinghua University and SAFEA (National Administration for International Expertise) Endowment Professor for 2014–16. Professor de Burgh holds honorary positions at China University of Politics and Law, South-Western UPL and Shandong University. Feng, Chien-san is Professor in the Department of Journalism, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. As a political economist of communication, he has published seven books in Chinese, including Media Publicness and the Market (2012). Moreover, he has (co-)translated sixteen books from English into Chinese, including John Roemer’s For a Future of Socialism, Edwin Baker’s Media Markets and Democracy, Dan Schiller’s Theorizing Communication: A History and James Curran et al.’s Misunderstanding the Internet. Fung, Anthony Y.H. is Director and Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He obtained his PhD at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, USA. He is also a Pearl River Chair Professor at Jinan University at Guangzhou, China. His research interests and teaching focus on popular culture and cultural studies, popular music, gender and youth identity, cultural industries and policy, and new media studies. He has published widely in international journals. He has also written and edited more than ten Chinese and English books. Gong, Qian (Sarah) is Lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, UK. Dr Gong has research interests in consumer culture and advertising, political communication, journalism studies and discourse analysis. Her recent research papers have appeared in journals including Political Communication, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Geopolitics. Guo, George Dawei is Lecturer in Broadcast Media in the Media Arts Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He obtained a PhD in Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Westminster (London) in 2012. Prior to arriving in England, he lectured at the Communication University of China (Beijing) between 2002 and 2006. His main research interest lies in the history and present of global broadcasting industries. He is currently researching the influence of the BBC on China’s early TV drama productions. Hong, Junhao is Professor in the Department of Communication at State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. He is also an Affiliate in Research of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and a Senior Research Fellow of the Center of Communication for Sustainable Social Change at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA. He received his PhD in communication from University of Texas at Austin, USA. His research interests include media and society, international communication and international politics, and impact of new media. He has published several books and numerous research articles in various international journals. Hung, Chen-ling is Associate Professor and Director at the Graduate Institute of Journalism, National Taiwan University. She worked as political reporter in the late 1990s in Taiwan’s print media and received her PhD in mass communications from Pennsylvania State University in 2004. Her research interests include citizen journalism, media policy, digital divide, indigenous xi

Contributors

communications and media globalisation. She has published over twenty journal papers and book chapters. She has also edited several volumes on indigenous communities and communications. Dr Hung is dedicated to media reform in Taiwan. Karatzogianni, Athina is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Leicester, UK. Dr Karatzogianni is the author of The Politics of Cyberconflict (2006) and Power, Conflict and Resistance (co-author Andrew Robinson, 2010); editor of Violence and War in Culture and the Media: Five Disciplinary Perspectives (2012); Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion (2012) and Cyber Conflict and Global Politics (2009). She has contributed extensively to theorising digital activism and network forms of organisation for social movements, resistance and open knowledge production. Her work can be downloaded in pre-publication open access at: http://works. bepress.com/athina_karatzogianni/. Keane, Michael is Professor, School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University, Perth. He was previously Principal Research fellow at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Professor Keane’s single-authored publications are China’s Television Industries (2015), Creative Industries in China: Art, Design and Media (2013), China’s New Creative Clusters: Governance, Human Capital and Regional Investment (2011) and Created in China: the Great New Leap Forward (2007). Lee, Francis L.F. is Associate Professor and Head of Graduate Division at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author/lead author of Media, Social Mobilization and Mass Protests in Post-colonial Hong Kong (2011), Communication, Public Opinion and Globalization in Urban China (2013) and Talk Radio, the Mainstream Press and Public Opinion in Hong Kong (2014). He is also associate editor of the Chinese Journal of Communication and Mass Communication and Society. Lee, Hsiao-wen has worked as a journalist, editor and broadcaster for major stations and publications in Taiwan. Dr Lee’s research interests are the development of multi-platform media and new technologies as well as its implementations for the second and third screen markets. This is also combined with looking at aspects of social media such as citizen journalist, new methods of distribution, public relations and editorial control related to trending. She is the author of The Popular Press and Its Public in Contemporary China (2010) and the co-author of Public Service Media in the Digital Age: International Perspectives (2013) Liang, Limin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests are with the social organisation and cultural impact of journalism and new media. Her recent research focuses on media events and media rituals in a globalised context, media and social conflicts, as well as China’s expanding international broadcasting and implications for journalism practices and public diplomacy. Her publications have appeared in Media Culture and Society, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism and Sport in Society. Lin, Chun-wei Daniel is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. He has a BA and MA in journalism from the National Chengchi University, Taiwan. He worked as a correspondent and presenter on the news channel of the Broadcasting Corporation of China before going to Loughborough University in the UK and completing his PhD, which examines the ways in which the expansion of public service xii

Contributors

broadcasting in Taiwan was socially defined and the cultural and social consequences of it. His areas of research include journalism, media–democracy relationships, and political economy of communication. Liu, Youling is Assistant Professor in the College of Communication and Art at Tongji University of China. Her major research interests focus on international communication and intercultural studies. She also extends her research interests to the fields of new media and new communication technology. Dr Liu received her PhD in communication from State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. Besides the research background, Dr Liu also has rich professional experience as a reporter and TV host for the mass media of both in the USA and China. Ma, Yiben is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds, UK. His thesis investigates the rise of online Chinese nationalism, its modality, discourses and dynamism, and the way it shapes the politics of contemporary Chinese nationalism. His research interests include Chinese internet, Chinese nationalism, political communications in China and critical discourse analysis. Martin, Jason A. is Assistant Professor of journalism at DePaul University, Chicago, USA. Dr Martin’s research focuses on the intersection of news, civic life, and information and communication technologies with specific attention to the use of technology for political participation and its implications for free speech law and policy. His manuscripts have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals including International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Mass Communication & Society, Journalism Studies, Mobile Media & Communication and Communication Law & Policy. Montgomery, Lucy is Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University, Australia. Dr Montgomery was trained as a China specialist at the University of Adelaide, before going to complete a PhD in media and cultural studies at Queensland University of Technology. She has a decade of experience as both a researcher and as project manager, working on major international research projects. She is particularly interested in understanding the impact of transformative technological change on intellectual property and the growth of the creative economy. She is the author of China’s Creative Industries: Copyright, Social Network Markets and the Business of Culture in a Digital Age (2010). Rawnsley, Gary D. is Professor of Public Diplomacy in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, UK. He is also the University’s Director of International Strategy. The author or editor of over a dozen books, his research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, diplomacy and communications, and he has published extensively on propaganda, public diplomacy, psychological warfare, soft power and political communication. Moreover, he is interested in the relationship between the media and democratisation, especially in East Asia. Before joining Aberystwyth University, Gary Rawnsley taught at the universities of Nottingham and Leeds, and was the founding Dean of the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China. Rawnsley, Ming-yeh T. is Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Associate Fellow, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham. Dr Rawnsley is also Secretary-General, European Association of Taiwan Studies. She publishes widely both in Chinese and in English on media and democratisation in Taiwan, Chinese-language cinema, literature and culture. Her most recent xiii

Contributors

research projects include science communications in Taiwan and the UK and Chinese film festivals. She has written, edited and translated more than ten Chinese and English books. Ren, Xiang is Research Fellow at Australian Digital Future Institute at the University of Southern Queensland. He completed his PhD with an outstanding doctoral thesis award at Queensland University of Technology. His doctoral research looked at open and networked initiatives and the digital transformation of academic publishing in China. This followed from his over twelve years’ experience in the Chinese publishing industry as senior editor and sales director. His current research interests include digital publishing, open access scholarship, eLearning, and new media business models. He has published many research papers and articles on relevant topics. Robinson, Andrew is a freelance researcher based in the UK. A former Leverhulme Trust fellow at the University of Nottingham, he specialises in critical theory and radical politics, and is author of over twenty papers and chapters on authors such as Deleuze, Negri, Žižek, Laclau, Spivak and Virilio, and on social movements worldwide. He is co-author of Power, Conflict and Resistance in the Contemporary World (with Athina Karatzogianni, 2010). His column ‘In Theory’ appears regularly in Ceasefire web-magazine. Song, Yunya is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University. She works in the areas of international journalism, global communication, and media sociology. Her scholarship straddles English, French and Chinese cultures and media. Her research on journalism and media politics has appeared in, among other journals, International Journal of Press/Politics, International Communication Gazette, Public Relations Review and Journalism Studies. Sparks, Colin is Chair Professor of Media Studies in the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. Prior to taking up that post, he was for many years Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster, UK, where he helped found the China Media Centre. He was a founder of the journal Media, Culture and Society. He has published extensively on several areas of media studies, including on international communication issues. He is particularly interested in media in societies which, like China, are experiencing rapid social and economic change. Sun, Wanning is Professor of Chinese Media and Cultural Studies at China Research Centre, University of Technology Sydney. She researches in a number of areas, including soft power, public diplomacy and media; and internal migration and social change in contemporary China. Her research monographs include Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination (2002), Maid in China: Media, Morality and the Cultural Politics of Boundaries (2009) and Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media and Cultural Practices (2014). She is a member of the editorial board for Communication, Culture & Critique, Media International Australia, Asian Journal of Communication and Continuum. Wang, Yin-han holds a PhD in media and communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. Prior to joining LSE, she studied MSc Advertising at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her research interests are identity and media consumption, gender and issues of representation, media literacy and young people’s social and civic uses of the internet. She is currently a visiting Assistant Professor at the Institute of Communications Research at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan. xiv

Contributors

Wei, Lu is Professor in the College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University. Prior to 2008, Professor Wei taught at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and at the University of Rhode Island, USA. His research interests include the adoption and social consequences of new media technologies. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Mass Communication and Society, Information Research, Telematics and Informatics, Newspaper Research Journal and Chinese Journal of Communication and Society. Professor Wei earned his PhD in Communication from Washington State University, USA, in 2007. Willnat, Lars is Professor of Journalism at Indiana University-Bloomington, USA. Before joining Indiana University in 2009, he taught at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His teaching and research interests include media effects on political attitudes, theoretical aspects of public opinion formation, and international communication. He is author of more than fifty journal articles and book chapters and coeditor of Social Media, Culture and Politics (2014), The Global Journalist in the 21st Century (2012), Political Communication in Asia (2009) and Empirical Political Analysis: Research Methods in Political Science (2008). Zhang, Yuntao is Lecturer in International Media and Communications in the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent University, UK. Dr Zhang formerly worked as a journalist in China. She is the author of The Origins of the Modern Chinese Press (2007) and of several other articles on Chinese media and culture. She is currently researching into the cultural dimensions of new media technologies and practices in contemporary China. Zhao, Yuezhi is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy of Global Communication at the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University. She is also a Changjiang Chair Professor and the Founding Director of the Institute for Political Economy of Communication at the Communication University of China, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. She has published extensively both in English and in Chinese. Her work concerns both domestic Chinese communication politics and the role of media and information technologies in the global transformations linking to China’s real and imagined rise as a major political economic power.

xv

Members of the Editorial Board

Blumler, Jay (University of Leeds, UK) Brady, Anne-Marie (University of Canterbury, New Zealand) Chang, Chin-Hwa (National Taiwan University, Taiwan) Flew, Terry (Queensland University of Technology, Australia) Gold, Thomas B. (University of California, Berkeley, USA) Guo, Zhenzhi (Tsinghua University, People’s Republic of China) Hadland, Adrian (University of Stirling, UK) Han, Dong (Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA) Heylen, Ann (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan) Ip, Iam-Chong (Hong Kong Lingnan University, Hong Kong) Klöter, Henning (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany) Lee, Chin-Chuan (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) Negrine, Ralph (University of Sheffield, UK) Thomas, Kristie (University of Nottingham, UK) Tomlinson, John (Nottingham Trent University, UK)

xvi

Editorial note

This book follows the Chinese convention for Chinese names, that is, family names precede personal names (for example, Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong). However there are two exceptions: first, the names of the contemporary Chinese authors of both English-language and Chineselanguage sources follow the English convention of the personal name preceding the family name (for example, Hui Wang, Jinhua Dai). Second, if a Chinese individual has adopted a particular English name that is well known in the field, the book will use the English formation (for example, Jimmy Lai, Jackie Chan). The Chinese pinyin system is adopted for the Romanisation of Chinese names (e.g. Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao) unless the individual has already obtained a particular English spelling of the name that is well known in the field (for example, Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen). Similarly we opt for ‘Kuomintang’ (instead of ‘Guomindang’ in pinyin) because it is widely used in English literature. The Chinese pronunciation of important Chinese phrases and terms that are directly relevant to the discussion of the book are given in pinyin after the English translation. For example, southern tour (nanxun), Democracy Wall (minzhu qiang). The editors also provide a Chinese glossary at the end of the book that gives conventional English spelling, pinyin, Simplified Chinese characters (used in the PRC) and Complex Chinese characters (used in Taiwan) to minimise confusion. Finally, as many chapters refer to different ancient Chinese dynasties, the appendix ‘Chinese dynasties at a glance’ is designed to help readers easily see the timeline of China’s often complicated history.

xvii

Acknowledgements

Any edited volume incurs a series of debts, and this one is no exception. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the contributors to this volume who wrote and revised their papers to a strict deadline. We are delighted that we were able to attract to this project such a stunning assembly of academic talent from across the world, bringing to our attention the latest research on media in China. We are especially pleased that the authors embraced the idea of expanding our understanding of media beyond traditional platforms and have analysed a range of subjects that would not normally be found in a volume of this kind. We also wish to thank the members of the Editorial Board who read and commented on each chapter and provided extremely constructive feedback to the authors, often with a very quick turn-around: Jay Blumler, Anne-Marie Brady, Chin-Hwa Chang, Terry Flew, Thomas B. Gold, Zhenzhi Guo, Adrian Hadland, Dong Han, Ann Heylan, Iam-Chong Ip, Henning Klöter, Chin-Chuan Lee, Ralph Negrine, Kristie Thomas and John Tomlinson. Finally, we acknowledge the continued assistance and encouragement of the editorial team at Routledge, especially Leanne Hinves who first approached us with the invitation to edit this volume, and Helena Hurd, the editorial assistant for Asian Studies who helped us find the book’s magnificent cover photo. This is our third edited book with Routledge and we are always impressed by the enthusiasm, professionalism and, when required, the flexibility of colleagues there. The editors dedicate this volume to all media workers and journalists who risk their lives across the world to bring us the news and tell the stories that otherwise would never be heard. Journalists are increasingly the targets of violence by states and non-state actors, and too many are being kidnapped, injured or even killed in the line of duty. ‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations’ – George Orwell.

xviii

Introduction Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley

Shooting ‘at a target that appears easy to focus on at first sight, but is in actuality rather elusive.’ —Yuezhi Zhao (Chapter 1 this volume, describing her experience of studying the Chinese media)

In the final stages of preparing this manuscript, the publishing team at Routledge asked us to choose the image we would like to use as a cover for the book. We considered a dozen possibilities, most of which depicted satellite dishes, flickering television screens, the new CCTV building in Beijing or the giant screens in Hong Kong’s Time Square – all rather pedestrian and uninspiring choices, we thought. However, we did find one photograph that spoke to both the vision and shape of the book you are now holding in your hand, and both editors immediately concurred that this should be the front cover. Take a look at it. We see two young people – they could be Chinese – sitting in what appears to be an underground train . . . where? Hong Kong? Singapore? Shanghai? Taipei? London, perhaps? The girl is absorbed in her mobile telephone, the boy sitting beside her is focused on his tablet. They may be reading the news, updating their Facebook status, downloading music, finding a restaurant for dinner, chatting on weibo or playing games. For the editors, this image captured instantly the transforming landscape of Chinese media and communications: a 24/7 information environment defined by the convergence of platforms, multiple methods of vertical and horizontal communication, and the overwhelming sense that one can never be out of contact with friends or out of touch with the world. Technology has shattered the boundaries between personal and mass communications, private and public space, news and entertainment, culture and information, producer and consumer. It has destroyed the temporal and spatial constraints that in the past defined the structure and meaning of our day. Our lives – our friends, our diaries, our memories in photographs, our means of amusement and distraction – are now available in one handy package and accompany us everywhere. Where once we could only ‘download’, we are all now encouraged to ‘upload’; just as soon as we got used to talking about ‘blogs’, along come ‘tweets’; Youtube users are now able to integrate their films with their Facebook accounts; we are coming to terms with the fact that clouds are no longer just those white fluffy things that float above us in the sky; and we are learning a brand new jargon of 4G, ‘apps’ and ‘android technology’.

Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley

Having surrendered to this new landscape, the editors – one obsessive Tweeter and one hardened player of Candy Crush – realised that the traditional approach to collecting and organising essays on the media had been rendered redundant. We could not include separate sections for print, television and film, for the convergence of platforms has made such distinctions obsolete. We refused to concede to fashion and label one section ‘New Media’: when do new media stop being new? For the generation who grew to adolescence after the 1990s, there is nothing new about the internet and social media. ‘New media’ is a tired classification used among the generations, including the editors, who can recall the dark times before the internet and email. Moreover, studies of journalism, culture, information and entertainment can no longer treat the ‘new media’ as separate categories, a sideshow, when journalists now blog, tweet and broadcast through the internet (how can media studies departments still justify delivering separate journalism and new media degrees?); and when new networks are choosing to upload major drama series made exclusively for the internet, turning their backs on more conventional methods of broadcasting (of course we’re thinking here of Netflix and the massive global hit drama series, House of Cards). Neither could we group the chapters according to geographical focus, for space and time have far less meaning now than they did a generation ago. The rapid development of new communications technologies and their almost immediate adoption by users (as recently as 2013 a Chinese student said to one of the editors, ‘You still use Whatsapp? That is so old!’) shapes and is shaped by equally transformative processes in politics, economics and culture. Globalisation and communication can no longer be analysed as distinct creatures; and this dense interconnected and relational environment generates its own logic and new challenges – for users, producers and governments – that were unthinkable only a decade before this book appeared. Globalisation and the new communications landscape also help us to understand the necessity of analysing multiple definitions of ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’. In this book we recognise China as a distinct nation-state that is officially called the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Our use of the term ‘Chinese’ in the title of the book refers to a culture and civilisation that is not tied to any particular territorial or political unit. It broadens the focus, allows for a more inclusive approach and permits our fellow contributors to discuss not only the PRC, but also Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the regional and global flows of communications and cultures. Thus we are concerned with three societies which adopt very different perspectives on what the media can and should do, and how they can and should operate. Rogier Creemers in Chapter 3 notes that this debate is particularly pronounced in the PRC where the policy environment and the governance of the media are designed to help the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintain its own position, namely ‘monopolising the public debate within the Chinese territory’. This extends to the production of documentaries and historical dramas (Cao and Guo in chapters 22 and 23, respectively) in which continued government supervision has provoked the cultural industries into adopting a cautious approach to creating programmes. Hong Kong’s media are facing a set of unique challenges that reflect the politically guarded nature of news journalism (encouraging a growing culture of self-censorship among reporters) framed by the territory’s peculiar position within the PRC’s orbit. Yet Taiwan too, often labelled the ‘first Chinese democracy’ (Chao and Myers 1998), is confronting its own difficulties as the media there continue to negotiate and renegotiate their roles and responsibilities in a highly polarised democratic society. All three Chinese societies are coming to terms with the demands of market forces and an under-researched claim that audiences thirst for ever more sensationalist news, gossip and scandal. The similarities and differences experienced by the media and their consumers in the PRC, Hong Kong and Taiwan – and their interactions with each other and the rest of the region and the world – validate Daya Thussu’s observation: the ‘global media landscape’, he noted, is 2

Introduction

now ‘multicultural, multilingual, and multinational. Digital communication technologies in broadcasting and broadband have given viewers in many countries the ability to access simultaneously a vast array of local, national, regional and international’ media products (Thussu 2014: 8). Emerging from this terrain of cross-national flows of communication, entertainment and news that breaches the personal and the public and is oblivious to considerations of time and space, is a complex, non-linear evolution of media processes, industries and agencies that erode further the increasingly fragile partitions between society, culture, economics and politics. These are issues discussed in Part I of this volume in which Yuezhi Zhao, Colin Sparks and Rogier Creemers reflect on the ‘state of the field’ from national and international perspectives. They identify the principal themes, questions and concerns that drive the subsequent chapters and engage with Chinese media on multiple disciplinary and geographical levels. The discussions in Part I embed the volume in a discourse of transformation – of the location and exercise of global power, in the nature of capitalism, and in Chinese and global media spaces. At the forefront in Part I, and in Part II which is concerned with varying understandings of, and practices in, journalism, are questions about media economy and shifting ideological priorities; the relationship between state, media and society; accountability, social mobilisation and empowerment; and the laws and regulatory frameworks and processes that govern media architectures and practices. In a novel approach to communications, Chapter 20 by Anthony Y.H. Fung on online gaming reveals the challenges facing the Chinese government in constructing appropriate frameworks to regulate a completely new landscape. The levels of popular participation and interactivity involved in gaming have provoked government authorities, finding themselves with little jurisdiction in the game environment, to reconsider their relationship with the cultural industries; while at the same time opening new opportunities for online participants to take control and shape their own virtual worlds. This represents a unique and unprecedented form of negotiation between government and civil society in China. Meanwhile, Joseph M. Chan and Francis L.F. Lee in Chapter 9 remind us of the way the media – and especially new media technologies – have played an essential role in the rise of social movements in Hong Kong. This is of course not limited to Hong Kong: in Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere (2013), Paul Mason reflected on the global wave of protest and revolution. The book includes the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, the ‘Occupy movement’, and riots in Athens and London, and documents how social media have both encouraged and facilitated popular mobilisation throughout the world. Mason quotes one activist who explained her use of the social media during meetings and captured succinctly their democratic benefits: ‘We use Twitter to expand the room’ (Mason 2013: 45). Since the landmark protests of 1 July 2003 when the conversation about Hong Kong’s future expanded to the 500,000 participants who marched to force the government to postpone a controversial national security bill, we have observed frequent protest activity there, including the annual vigil in memory of the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. We have witnessed a similar trend in Taiwan where, following the occupation (assisted by the mobilisation power of social media) of the legislature by the so-called Sunflower Movement in the spring of 2014, the number of demonstrations involving people from all walks of life and political persuasions, concerned about an expanding range of issues, have proliferated (e.g. Cole 2014). The themes of mobilisation and empowerment are explored further by the contributors in Part III who explore the formation and expression of particular political, social and economic identities. The internet, social media and the adoption of public service broadcasting (PSB) models have modified both the structure of, and popular participation in, the public sphere. But there 3

Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley

are limits: in Taiwan, as Chun-wei Daniel Lin notes in Chapter 17, the (re)constitution of the public sphere has revolved around PSB. Although taking reference from the experience of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), debates about PSB in Taiwan have revealed less a commitment to its ideals than a contest between competing elites, with the public largely excluded from debates. This connects to Chapter 18 by Rawnsley and Feng on the development of PSB in China and Cheung’s discussion on the lack of PSB in Hong Kong in Chapter 25. While Cheung points out that ‘without a strong public media tradition, the Hong Kong media are hyper-marketised’, Rawnsley and Feng concur with Raymond Williams (1976: 130): ‘In one way the basic choice is between control and freedom, but in actual terms it is more often a choice between a measure of control and a measure of freedom, and the substantial argument is about how these can be combined.’ In Part III our contributors evaluate how the boundaries between the personal and private have adjusted to new communications technologies, and one example is the curious development of the ‘selfie’ among young Taiwanese females (Chapter 16 by Wang). It is good to remind ourselves that prior to the word ‘selfie’ entering the Oxford English Dictionary, and long before no celebrity, prime minister or president could consider themselves either authentic or popular (populist?) until they had tweeted a photograph of themselves taken on their own mobile phone, young people throughout Greater China were documenting their everyday lives through digital self-portraiture. Is this another example of the global flow of culture from east to west, confounding the advocates of the old-fashioned ‘cultural imperialism’ thesis? And how does this global flow connect with frameworks that approach the impact of online nationalism and the way Chinese view themselves and are viewed by global audiences (Ma in Chapter 12), and China’s growing commitment to exercising ‘soft power’ among its neighbours and the world (Sparks in Chapter 2 and Gary D. Rawnsley in Chapter 28)? Selfies, as in the other examples identified by the chapters in Part III, confirm that it is no longer possible to mark a clear distinction between producer and consumer, an issue that is again addressed in Parts II and III when the phenomenon of citizen journalism is considered as a supplement to (rather than replacement of) mainstream professional news reporting. This expansion of citizen journalism, as well as the growth in popular participation and intervention in news processes, is of course a product of evolving communications technologies, but is also partly explained by an apparent decline across the Chinese world in the quality of mainstream journalism via the pressures of marketisation and commercialism. This is certainly the case in Taiwan where, as Chen-ling Hung notes in Chapter 10, ‘citizen journalism has emerged at a time of widespread distrust of the sensational and commercial media’. The development of the ‘PeoPo’ platform in Taiwan has occurred alongside the evolution of PSB, and it is not a coincidence that PeoPo was created by Taiwan’s Public Television Service (PTS). This symbiosis has encouraged a new form of democratic participation in Taiwan’s media, but given the small audience enjoyed by PTS, is it making any real difference? Or are the converted merely preaching to the choir? The theme of marketisation runs through Part IV in which our contributors use a range of examples – including China’s evolving copyright culture, online gaming (a very recent and welcome addition to media studies), the ‘clustering’ of Chinese media production, and specific case studies of genres and events – to consider the interactions of Chinese cultural and media industries, free markets and issues of global governance. In Chapter 25 by Charles Chi-wai Cheung we learn how market forces help define the powerful and the powerless in Hong Kong. Using representations of youth as the focal point for his discussion, Cheung not only helps us to understand media representations of young people and their issues in Hong Kong, but also how youth groups and groups acting on their behalf engage in a form of resistance to disrupt 4

Introduction

mainstream representations. So the chapter also brings to our attention questions of visibility and the way media representation can decide who is deemed important, legitimate and authoritative. This connects with the discussions by Athina Karatzogianni and Andrew Robinson (on dissidents in China in Chapter 13), Wanning Sun (on the working classes in Chapter 14) and Qian (Sarah) Gong (on the salaried and lower middle classes in Chapter 15). We move beyond the region in Part V to analyse the global dimension of Chinese media. Our contributors discuss the way that China, broadly defined, is seen through foreign eyes and how the media help to project the particularly favourable image identified by the government in Beijing as a way of changing the global conversation about China. So Yunya Song in Chapter 27 evaluates how American journalists have ‘decoded’ China and Chinese media reports to narrate the incredible changes that have taken place in the country since the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. This then feeds into Chapter 28 by Gary D. Rawnsley on China’s public diplomacy and ‘soft power’ in which he argues that China’s strategy of global engagement through its growing international presence has been determined less by clear foreign policy or diplomatic objectives, and more to correct what Beijing considers a distorted and inaccurate picture of China in foreign media. The interconnected nature of the global media space, highlighted in Chapter 26 by Junhao Hong and Youling Liu who discuss the interactions of the Chinese media industries with their foreign counterparts, has given rise to a most curious situation: the world is watching China watching the world watching China. Such is the complexity of the modern technologically driven international space, but it also demonstrates the capacity of the media to hold a mirror to themselves and reflect back to their own domestic audiences a view that may be a little more unpalatable than desired. In 2008, of course, the world was watching China live when Beijing hosted the Olympic Games. This exercise in soft power, discussed by Limin Liang in Chapter 24 as a ‘media event’, has been described as both China’s ‘coming out party’ (Leibold 2010) and a ‘campaign of mass distraction’ (Brady 2009), demonstrating that in discussing ‘soft power’ we have to remember that power lies not with the source of the message, but with the audience; for, as Song reminds us in Chapter 27, the audience can decide whether and how to receive, interpret and act upon particular messages. This is also addressed on a local level in Chapter 23 by George Dawei Guo who calls for the return of ‘audiences’ to studies of Chinese television drama. How viewers receive the official representation of Chinese history – in fiction or in documentaries (Cao in Chapter 22) will determine whether or not the government’s objective to create a new nationalist discourse (discussed by Yiben Ma in Chapter 12) will be successful. History has long proved a successful theme in the national propaganda of any country. China has a particularly long and complex historical narrative from which to draw its communications capacity (Rawnsley and Rawnsley 2010); and both Hong Kong and Taiwan are now constructing their own historical narratives that may define the way they see themselves and how they are seen by the world. We hope this book confirms what the authors have long known: that studying the Chinese media – in the PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong – is a complex, exciting and challenging endeavour, but one which pays dividends in understanding how the media landscape is both an agent and an object of transformations taking place there. All three societies are engaged in intricate and sometimes difficult processes of change that affect their politics, culture, society and relationships with the world beyond their borders. Our contributors have adopted unique approaches and case studies that we hope will challenge the conventional methods of analysing not only the Chinese media, but the media in a more global and comparative perspective. We expect that the discussions here will raise more questions and issues; and we know full well that, because of the speed at which these societies are changing and communications technologies are 5

Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley

developing, the specific data presented will soon be out of date, though the frameworks, perspectives and insights offered here will remain relevant. At that point, we hope that a second volume may address the new Chinese media landscape now evolving before our eyes.

References Brady, A.M. (2009) ‘The Beijing Olympics as a campaign of mass distraction’, China Quarterly 197(March): 1–224. Chao, L. and Myers, R.H. (1998) The First Chinese Democracy: Political Life in the Republic of China on Taiwan, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cole, M. (2014) ‘Was Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement successful?’, The Diplomat, 1 July. Available online http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/was-taiwans-sunflower-movement-successful/ (accessed 4 August 2014). Leibold, J. (2010) ‘The Beijing Olympics and China’s conflicted national form’, China Journal 63(January): 1–24. Mason, P. (2013) Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, London: Verso. Rawnsley, G.D. and Rawnsley, M.Y.T. (eds) (2010) Global Chinese Cinema: The Culture and Politics of Hero, London: Routledge. Thussu, D. (2014) De-Americanizing Soft Power Discourse? Los Angeles, CA: USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School and Figueroa Press. Williams, R. (1976) Communications, 3rd edn, London: Penguin.

6

Part I

The development of the study and the structure of Chinese media

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1 (Re)-Focusing on the target Reflections on a trajectory of studying the Chinese media1 Yuezhi Zhao

In the context of China’s rapid transformation in a turbulent global system since the late 1970s, to study the Chinese media is to shoot at a target that appears easy to focus on at first sight, but is in actuality rather elusive. On the surface, the target appears static as there has not been any radical transformation in the basic structure of the Chinese media system after more than thirty years of reform. Upon closer examination, however, the target has both undergone dramatic mutations in its shape and shed much of its original colour. Moreover, in the context of a highly unstable and rapidly evolving global order, the target has not only repeatedly defied conventional expectations in terms of the direction of its movement, but also is realigning its geopolitical relations with other objects and streams of flow in the global media universe. Which direction to look at? What does the target look like at a particular moment? What lenses to use and how to aim? What kind of shooting guns do we have in hand and are they adequate for the purpose? No less important, isn’t it the case that the shape and colour of the target, our ways of approaching it, even the very language we use to define and describe it, very much depends on who we are and where we stand as scholars? Finally, beyond the imperative of surviving the academic curse of publishing or perishing, what is this analysis for? Rather than writing a conventional chapter on a specific topic, I would like to take this opportunity to re-examine my own endeavour in this adventure of shooting at a changing target. In doing so, I hope to exercise intellectual self-reflectivity and discuss both the substantive and methodological issues involved in studying the Chinese media. Although I will inevitably discuss many of my own publications, I must stress at the outset that this is not intended to be a comprehensive overview of my own work, let alone a review of the state of the field – which, after all, is an objective of this handbook.

Media, market and democracy in China: the power of existing frameworks Born in China a year before the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, I received my secondary education during the transition years between the Mao era and the reform era (1975–80), and completed my undergraduate education in journalism at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (now the Communication University of China) in 1984. After finishing graduate studies in communication at Simon Fraser University in Canada from 1986 to 1996, I had the privilege 9

Yuezhi Zhao

to pursue research in the field first at the University of California, San Diego, from 1997 to 2000, and since then at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Starting from the mid-1990s, I have had the opportunity to visit China frequently to conduct field research and to participate in a wide range of scholarly activities, from teaching intensive graduate seminars to giving guest lectures and participating at conferences. By the time this particular volume appears, it will be more than twenty years since I decided to study China’s post-Mao media transformation for my doctoral dissertation, which was published as Media, Market, and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and Bottom Line (Zhao 1998). I did not intend to write my dissertation on the Chinese media to begin with. With a plan to return to China to teach after my graduate studies in Canada, I was eager to find out what the western media system is really about, in particular how it claims and practises ‘objectivity’, in contrast to the Chinese media system’s self-proclaimed and (by then) much-challenged partisan stand, instrumentalist mentality and propagandist mission. By the time I finished my MA work on journalistic objectivity and started my doctoral programme in autumn 1989, the dominant narrative about China’s media reform process, that is, the struggle for greater freedom and autonomy by established journalists and liberal intellectuals, had come to an abrupt end with the 4 June crackdown that year. Realising that even the possibility of going back to China to pursue fieldwork could no longer be taken for granted, I spent the first few years of my doctoral programme doing further research on the ethos and practices of journalistic objectivity and issues of media and democracy in the Anglo-American context. This led to the co-authored book, Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998). This volume not only deconstructs and demystifies journalistic objectivity as a Foucauldian knowledge–power regime that is deeply embedded both in the political economy and everyday practices of AngloAmerican media, but also depicts what we call the ‘regime of objectivity’, along with its underpinning political economic structure and ideological framework, that is, capitalism and liberal democracy, as in deep crisis. This work had an enduring impact on my own subsequent approach to studying the Chinese media. Just as we all use an ‘other’ to construct the self, we presume certain knowledge of the western, and to be more precise, Anglo-American media in studying the Chinese media. My critique of the Anglo-American media did not result in a blind endorsement of the Chinese media system; however, it does mean that I treated liberal justifications of the Anglo-American media model as an ‘ideology exhausted’ (Hackett and Zhao 1998: 180), and I refused to simply accept the then prevailing ‘end of history’ thesis by using liberal press concepts as taken-forgranted normative standards in analysing the Chinese media. These justifications include the liberal notion of press freedom, the watchdog role of the press, the notion of the press as an information smorgasbord providing people with diverse viewpoints and neutral, non-ideological and apolitical information for rational individual decision making in a democratic polity, the notion of the press as an eyewitness on behalf of the public and, above all, the notion of consumer sovereignty, that is, ‘the media best serve society when market mechanisms are unleashed from regulatory constraints, so that the media’s programming reflects the tastes and preferences of their audiences’ (Hackett and Zhao 1998: 186). I had armed myself with the arguments in Sustaining Democracy? when I recast my gaze on the Chinese media in early 1994. The year 1992 marked a turning point in China’s reform history when Deng Xiaoping’s ‘southern tour’ (nanxun) spearheaded the acceleration of marketoriented development of the Chinese political economy in the post-1989 era. As part and parcel of this process, China’s media reform process took a dramatic turn towards commercialisation and market-driven transformation. So, by mid-1994, when it was time for me to finalise my doctoral dissertation topic and when it was clear that returning to China to do research was 10

(Re)-Focusing: studying the Chinese media

not a problem, I felt I had a compelling new story to tell: commercialisation under party control, or the intertwined state and market dynamic in shaping the structure and content of the Chinese media. I had a unique perspective from which to tell the story as well: while I was aware of the modernisation theory-inspired perspective about the liberalising impact of market forces, I could not help but be influenced by the critical perspective I have developed through my study of the regime of journalistic objectivity in the Anglo-American media and my critique of the class bias of an advertising-supported and market-driven media system. Critical media scholarship on post-communist media transitions elsewhere, especially Slavko Splichal’s timely book, Media Beyond Socialism: Theory and Practice in East-Central Europe (Splichal 1994), also emboldened me to go beyond the dominant paradigm of ‘transitology’. Thus, while I described the positive changes brought by state-directed media commercialisation and documented in great detail how the introduction of market forces in the Chinese media had ‘made some parts of the system more responsive to readers and audiences’ and ‘modified the elitism of media professionals and given rise to populist sensibilities’ (Zhao 1998: 182), I had no hesitation in analysing the problematic dimensions of media commercialisation. These include the disturbing fusion of state and market power in various forms of journalistic corruption, the social biases of the market as a new mechanism of media control, as well as ‘evidence of reification of the market in much of the literature advocating commercialisation of the Chinese news media’ (Zhao 1998: 181). Thus, it is not fair to say that I only critique the market, not the state, which had become the most common way that domestic Chinese students, who barely had any chance to read my work in English and may have learned my work at second-hand, challenged me when I lectured in China in the first decade of the new century. Among other reasons, such an understanding was clearly caught in a conceptual framework that espouses a simplistic state versus market dichotomy. To be sure, at the time of my dissertation work my own reading of the western critical political economy literature was rather media-centric. For example, I had not read Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation (Polanyi 1944/1957) which offered a powerful analysis of the indispensability of state intervention, even state violence, in establishing a capitalist market economy. Indeed, as Radhika Desai put it well in a recent book, even though ‘the bourgeoisie could not do without the state’, ‘opposition between politics and economics and between markets and states have critical ideological functions in capitalist society’ (2013: 29). In a post-Mao China where the most famous neoliberal doctrine complains how the state’s ‘visible foot’ has stampeded the proper function