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.

Sujets

• Old media
• Social media
• Alternative media
• New media
• Media of the People's Republic of China
• Social sciences
• Media studies
• China
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Legend Press
• Date de parution: 23 novembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781789551297
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 16 Mo

Extrait

CHINA S MEDIA IN THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER

Hugo de Burgh has a deep knowledge of the Chinese media scene, and in this engagingly written book he examines everything from the official print media to TV reality shows to web blogs. He also analyses the cultural underpinnings of the Chinese media, as well as the government s mentality and the ways it exercises controls. de Burgh succeeds admirably in this insightful portrayal of China s media world.
Jonathan Unger, Editor, The China Journal , Professor of Political Science, Australian National University
This is an important and timely book on a critically important topic in the evolving relationship between China and the West. This thoroughly researched and wide-ranging book will greatly assist Western readers to deepen their understanding of China s rich and complex cultural evolution under the policies of reform and opening up.
Peter Nolan, Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management, University of Cambridge
In China s Media , Hugo de Burgh has provided a timely and thoughtful contribution to the required reading list for any student of global communication. de Burgh s new book provides more than an introduction to the evolving state of media in the world s most populous nation. He has made a compelling case for the central importance of understanding the state, history and future direction of media in China.
John V. Pavlik, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies Department, Rutgers University
The book moves beyond dogma while sidestepping obligations to validate Western democracy as the benchmark. de Burgh s impartial account of China s media will arouse considerable debate but such debate is surely needed to bring us closer to understanding the complexities of China s media. Required reading.
Michael Keane, Professor and Principal Research Fellow/ Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology
I have fond memories of watching Hugo de Burgh handle the Chinese media and I can think of no one better qualified to tell us about a subject of ever growing importance.
Boris Johnson MP, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, United Kingdom
CHINA S MEDIA IN THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER
Hugo de Burgh
University of Buckingham Press
Published in 2017 by
The University of Buckingham Press
Yeomanry House
Hunter Street
Buckingham MK18 1EG
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher nor may be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than the one in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available at the British Library
ISBN 978-1-908684-34-9
Nations do not escape from their past merely by making a revolution
George Orwell, The English Revolution
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) held a Report Back meeting 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 different 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. The med