China's Media in the Emerging World Order

Hugo Burgh

Description

China is challenging the mighty behemoths, Google and Facebook, and creating alternative New Media. 750 million people are active on its Social Mediascape and there are a billion mobile phones deploying the innovative apps with which the Chinese conduct their lives.

Though late starters, already four of the world's leading New Media companies are Chinese. China's old media - television, newspapers, radio - challenge the established powers which were long thought unassailable, such as CNN and BBC. Produced in many languages on every continent, they are re-defining the agenda and telling the story in China's way, with not just news and documentary series but also entertainment. The world's biggest manufacturer of TV drama is now making its stories for export.

China's Media tells you why and how. It investigates the Chinese media, their strengths and weaknesses and how they are different. from the West. This detailed and comprehensive guide aims to showcase their immense variety and diversity, and demonstrates how they came to be a powerful new force in the media world.

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789550948
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 9 Mo

Extrait

HUGO DE BURGH
CHINA S MEDIA
IN THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER
University of Buckingham Press,
107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB
[e-mail] | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents Hugo de Burgh 2020
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 9781789550931
Ebook ISBN 9781789550948
Set in Times. Printing managed by Jellyfish Solutions Ltd
Publishers Note
Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publisher and author cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or any of the authors.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Nations do not escape from their past merely by making a revolution
George Orwell, The English Revolution
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
When the publisher told me that interest in China s Media justified a second edition, I jumped at the chance of tidying up the text. In the rush to publish, I had failed to systematize the Chinese font. This is now corrected, as are a number of minor errors.
Why did I bother to interpolate Chinese at all? Most other English language books on China do not.
There are two reasons. One is that there is a plethora of media and institutional names that are rendered in English with titles that are not really translations. So, to avoid confusion, it is necessary to give the original name. Second, new generations of my target readerships - students of international relations, politics, media and area studies - read Chinese. They want the actual name.
I have tried not to use Chinese expressions unless there really is no equivalent, as for example, xitong . Place names and personal names are rendered in Pinyin unless there are historic English versions, e.g. Sun Yatsen, Peking, Chiang Kaishek.
Aside from changes to the orthography, I have made just a very few minor updates. Since changes in the media are so fast and furious, the latest data are best found from the Internet. For immediacy, look elsewhere. The modest purposes of China s Media are to introduce, to suggest different perspectives and to point out topics and themes that deserve attention.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter by chapter
The limitations
1 China Comes Out
1.1 Overview of China s Media Abroad
1.2 African and other markets
1.3 The defence of China s interests abroad
1.4 Esteem
1.5 Countering hostile propaganda
1.6 Current evaluations of the Chinese media abroad
1.7 Responsible media?
1.8 Will China succeed in accumulating soft power ?
2 Media in the making of modern China
2.1 Genesis
2.2 The Golden Period
2.3 1949 - The Great Leap Backwards
2.4 1978: The Death of Mao and the Rebirth of China
2.5 Journalism in the Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution
2.6 Television
2.7 The Democracy Movement and 4 th June 1989
2.8 The Southern Progress
2.9 Media in the 1990s: Commercialisation
2.10 Harmonious Society and media at the turn of the century
2.11 What are the media for?
2.12 Summary
3 The media today
3.1 Agencies
3.2 Newspapers
3.3 Magazines
3.4 Television
3.5 Radio
3.6 Discussion
4 China s Babel: New Media
4.1 Exposure
4.2 The Chinese Internet
4.3 Participation in politics
4.4 Government reaction
4.5 Transformation of offline media
4.6 Afterword
5 The Networksphere
5.1 The idea of civil society
5.2 The idea of the Public sphere
5.3 The environment as a public issue
5.4 The future of the public sphere
6 Defending Identity: Managing Ideas
6.1 The Central Propaganda Department (CPD)
6.2 Responding to a new environment
6.3 Instruments
6.4 Setting parameters
6.5 Mediating the Internet
6.6 Access to information
6.7 Regulation
6.8 Morality and the public
6.9 Culture
6.10 Marxist-Leninist justifications
7 The Future and Its Past
7.1 Marxism in the departure lounge
7.2 Taking the place of Marxism
7.3 How do we account for these cultural dispositions?
7.4 Thinking through the future
7.5 Summary
8 Endword: The Road of Rejuvenation?
Acknowledgments
Index
Hugo de Burgh is Professor of Journalism at the University of Westminster, where he set up the China Media Centre in 2005. He is also Professor in the School of Media Communications at Tsinghua University. Previously he worked for Scottish Television, BBC and (the UK s) Channel4.
His books include Investigative Journalism, The Chinese Journalist, Making Journalists, China, Friend or Foe?, China s Environment and Chinese Environment Journalists, China and Britain: the potential impact of China s development and Can the Prizes Still Glitter? The Future of British Universities in a Changing World .
INTRODUCTION
Early one morning, Shanghai Media Group (SMG) 上海文广 held a Report Back meeting 节目创新创意赴英培训汇报会 , in which 15 of its producers presented to several hundred colleagues what they had learnt during a six-week workshop on Programme Development, held in London some months before. The Group Vice President opened the session with the words, Comrades! Our studying abroad is bearing fruit. Thanks to the efforts of the 15 producers in studying hard and applying the examples and lessons learnt abroad, four new television series will now be made for our satellite channel. Following his introduction, the team members made illustrated presentations of the different skills and knowledge they had absorbed on the course, before going on to show the pilots that had been made of the four programmes . 1 They were all in the light entertainment category, one being a comedy competition, another a dog show .
At the end of the proceedings, the Party Secretary of SMG made a speech in which she praised the creativity of the team and the contribution that they were making to their company, to the development of television and to the rise of our country in the world . Such a mixture of patriotism, commercialism and politics epitomises China s media today .
As China increasingly influences the economies and international relations of every country, it also seeks to have its media seen on a par with those of the rest of the world. China s media, in their various forms, are becoming ubiquitous. This book is for people who need to know about this new force in the world but are unlikely to consume much of it, if any.
The first academics to write about the Chinese media saw themselves as studying propaganda and techniques of mass persuasion. They also assumed that media reflected only the political system, that the Chinese media were controlled from the centre monolithically. 2
This book takes a different tack. The theme is that the way the Chinese media work can be understood as a reflection of culture as much as of political economy. The purpose is to help normalize discussion of the subject. Inevitably I see with an Anglophone perspective, but have tried to liberate myself from ideological prejudices as far as I am able.
When Anglophone observers have looked at China s media, they have often done so through particular assumptions, such as that only commercial media can be free, or that the media and the state are antagonists; media that do not fit into familiar categories are found wanting. 3 Here I try to explain the Chinese equivalents in their own terms and to understand them within the context of their own society and history rather than seeing them as underdeveloped or perverted expressions of universals .
China s media are distinct, different not just because they are under the control of a communist government which, for a long time, sought to force on its people an alien creed, but also because Chinese society is distinct from the Anglophone world in some quite fundamental ways. 4
Moreover, since the state religion is Marxism, Chinese intellectuals and leaders alike need to use its vocabulary as camouflage lest what they advocate be taken as heretical. For example, in promoting what they regard as pro-social moral behaviour, likening the nation to a family, objecting to the commodification of relationships, eulogising inter-generational solidarity, pointing to the dangers of contamination from materialism and hedonism, and calling for respect for nature, they often appear to be expressing traditional Chinese nostrums, yet advance them as socialist values .
The Chinese media are arms of the state but not a Fourth Estate . This is because the different functions of government are not separated in the way they are in the Anglosphere. This does not mean that the media do not have roles in supervising governance, but the ways in which they should do this are differently defined