De-Westernizing Media Studies

James Curran, Myung-Jin Park, James Curran, Myung-Jin Park

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134650330
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

De-Westernizing Media Studies brings together leading media critics from around the world to address central questions in the study of the media. How do the media connect to power in society? Who and what influence the media? How is globalization changing both society and the media?

Part 1
Transitional and mixed societies

2
Rethinking media studies

The case of China

Eric Kit-wai Ma¹

China is undertaking economic reform of unprecedented proportions despite continued political control. The return of Hong Kong to China’s sovereignty presents a unique impetus for change (Yahuda 1996). As part of China, Hong Kong is now politically subordinate to China’s guidance. However, Hong Kong’s brand of capitalism has become a dominant ideology underlining the open-door policies of mainland China. Whereas the transition from centralized socialism to a market economy has become an undisputed state policy, the role of the media has been an issue of continued debate. This is mainly due to the dual role of the media as commodities in the liberalized market and as ideological apparatuses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Under the spell of this unresolved duality, the Chinese media in the 1990s are characterized by erratic reform, periodic repression, and a deep-seated contradiction between political control and market-driven changes. In China, the media are growing so rapidly that descriptive accounts usually lag behind the changes. Confronted with contradictory processes, structural complexity, and the rapidity of change of the Chinese media, grand academic discourses seem inadequate for theoretical generalizations. Instead of giving a comprehensive review, I will attempt to trace, in the first part, some of the most significant trends at play. In the second part, I will try to rethink some of the popular theoretical perspectives in Western media studies through the China/Hong Kong experiences. Since detailed accounts of various aspects of the media scene in China can be found elsewhere,² this chapter will focus more on the theoretical implications for media studies.

THE CASE OF CHINA

Media commercialization³

The most distinguishable characteristic of the Chinese media in the 1990s is the tension between rapid commercialization and continued ideological control. Strictly speaking, media operations in China are controlled and owned by the government. The Chinese government divides state-owned units into three types: administrative units, nonprofit units and profitable enterprises. Administrative units receive guaranteed funding, while profitable enterprises are allowed to generate profits. As ideological apparatuses of the state, media organizations are considered to be nonprofit units. These do not receive guaranteed funding, unlike those classified as administrative units. They are not classified as profitable enterprises since, in the past, they were not allowed to pursue commercial interests in the market. However, state-endorsed marketization has initiated significant changes in the financial structures of China’s media system. Once dependent primarily on government subsidies, China’s media operators have increasingly relied on advertising revenues. Since the economic reforms started in the late 1970s, state subsidies have been gradually reduced or terminated to media organizations except for a handful of party organs. Media managers have received a clear signal from the state that they have to generate revenues and be self-supportive in the long run.

The general pattern is that the media at the national level are closely censored, whereas local and provincial media enjoy a higher degree of autonomy. Controls over less official media and the dissemination of nonpolitical information are relaxed, whereas the state still maintains tight control over political news. But media organizations at all levels have been reoriented to include profit-making as one of their organizational goals. Profit-making channels accept advertising and sponsorship, publish “weekend supplements” with juicy infotainment, perform public relation functions for enterprises, and organize symposia, shows, and press conferences that promote their “clients.” For a long time, CCP has been denouncing transnational conglomerates, considering them to be corrupting agents of imperialism. Despite this, however, the Ministry of Propaganda sanctioned the first newspaper conglomerate in 1996. The Guanzhou Daily conglomerate, a mere municipal paper, was handpicked by the central government to experiment with all forms of commercial ventures. These include investing in stock and property markets, setting up dozens of newspaper kiosks, publishing a series of minor papers, and managing a series of profitable media and non-media enterprises. In order to be cost-effective, some less profitable newspapers and periodicals have been advised by the government to merge and operate under the umbrella of major daily newspapers, while party papers have rushed to spin off mass-appeal papers and non-media businesses in order to generate profits. Groups and conglomerates, in the critical eye, are agents of exploitation. But in the Chinese context, their economic independence can weaken political control and enhance editorial autonomy. The irony is that the authority tolerates these conglomerates and groups because they can serve as the means to control chaotic free competition and limit the proliferation of minor papers. In the case of China, state control predominates, although the media is gaining some autonomy in dealing with nonpolitical affairs and business operations.

Improvising media practices⁴

The profound changes initiated by marketization can be felt at the organizational level. Operating within the administrative structure of the state, media workers are paid uniformly according to four professional ranks,⁵ irrespective of whether they work for national or local media organizations. Promotions depend on political commitment and seniority. However, as the media become commercialized, the flow of cash into media organizations has encouraged new practices and reshaped journalistic culture. Despite the fact that all media organizations have institutional ties with the government, increased economic strength has given many media organizations operational freedom to hire freelancers, adjust pay scales, adopt new technologies, and restructure organizational practices. Previously, media workers received salaries and fringe benefits solely from the government. In the 1990s, bonuses have been regular ized as “flexible wages” and distributed on the basis of individual merit. They have become the third component of the media workers’ income and are distributed without reference to professional grades. Now media organizations can give aggressive journalists a wide range of incentives as part of their flexible wages. These incentives include story fees, editing fees, and good story cash awards, the amount of which varies greatly in different media organizations. In the past, when incomes were much more uniform, national media organizations were more prestigious. But now media organizations in coastal provinces are more attractive because they follow the laws of the market and have become financially thriving groups and conglomerates. They can offer much higher flexible wages and better housing for their employees and thus draw talent from all over the country (Chen and Lee 1998).

Market-related changes in journalistic practices are closely related to the development of advertising (He and Chen 1998, Yu 1991). Since advertising has not yet been institutionalized, advertising dollars enter the media through various informal and “innovative” channels. Journalists have suddenly found themselves in the prime nexus of exchanges. Public and commercial bodies pay journalists for political and economic favors. Paid journalism is now a systemic phenomenon with set prices for all sorts of favoritism. Under the current context of “no money, no reporting,” even government officials have allegedly paid reporters for feature stories boosting their images and promoting official policies. Over the years, paid journalism has developed from the individual to the collective, from passive to active, and from commercial sectors to government bodies (Chen and Chan 1998).

The restructuring of reward systems within media organizations has created new career paths. In the past, media workers moved up the career ladder by political commitment. Political control could be exerted easily by direct bureaucratic measures. Now the market has contributed to the development of alternative career ladders. Media workers are rewarded directly by pay journalism. Within media organizations, the management also rewards staff who can produce good stories that boost circulation and ratings, which in turn increase profitability. Thus power exerted by both the state and the market can destabilize media practices. Because of the duality of political and commercial imperatives, organizational norms are fuzzy, but are nevertheless understood by practicing media workers. Paths of change are murky and contingent. Journalists constantly test the shifting boundaries of their organizations. Sometimes directives from above are ignored and non-routines become routines, thus providing gaps and spaces for political and commercial exploitation and sometimes spaces for unconventional media contents. However, improvising activities are characterized by their transient nature and could be subjected to abrupt repression and modifications (Pan in press). Here the dialectic of autonomy and control is evident at the heart of media production, and media workers deal with intense contradiction by improvising.

Uneven liberalization⁶

In principle, the state firmly adheres to the doctrine that the media are ideological apparatuses, but, due to marketization, the mediascape exhibits extreme forms of variations and discrepancies. For example, print media are more restrictive than electronic media. News media have a much lower degree of freedom than cultural media. Many periodicals, magazines, and books are loosely censored and can be filled with violence, pornography, and even politically incorrect ideologies. Television shows and phone-in programs can touch on many personal and social issues that were unthinkable in the past (Zha 1995).

Besides variations according to the types of media, there are obvious discrepancies between media in different regions. Party newspapers at the national, provincial, and municipal levels are closely watched. However, local papers, special interest journals, and evening papers in cities are more market-oriented and filled with more soft and sensational news. In fact, ideological differences can be found within the same medium. For instance, party presses can have their front pages filled with official news stories and policy speeches, but their other pages may be packed with advertisements and soft social news. On China Central Television (CCTV), the main evening news is said to carry very few negative or critical items, in contrast to the afternoon and late night news, which carry many more critical stories.⁷

This is not to say that there are some very special media spaces in which journalists can enjoy the kind of press freedom enjoyed in the West. Political control has remained tight after 1989. There have been only sporadic occasions on which media workers can cross the official ideological boundary. The expanded media spaces mentioned above are restricted to apolitical and consumerist contents. This uneven liberalization of the Chinese media can be related to Deng Xiao Ping’s philosophy of pragmatism, which privileges improvization over dogmatism. It is also related to the policy of allowing special administrative zones to experiment with marketization. Market forces open up spaces and accumulate financial power, which can be translated into bargaining power. All these result in a very hybridized mediascape, in which very different types of media discourse coexist in the most conspicuous way.

The Hong Kong connection⁸

Added to the particularity of the Chinese case is the dialectic between mainland China and Hong Kong. Now part of China, Hong Kong’s liberal media, operating in a fullblown capitalistic mode, should be seen as a sub-system of the Chinese media. Whereas in mainland China, the connection between the media and the political economy is more overt, powers are articulated across the Hong Kong/China border more by indirect and discursive means. Here a culturalist explanation of discursive control can make a strong case. The government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) is not legitimized by a full democratic election; it is a weak government which operates under the blessing of the Chinese government. However, the Chinese government grants Hong Kong a high level of media autonomy. Honoring the promise of “one country, two systems,” China has refrained from explicitly intervening in the Hong Kong media. Despite this licensed autonomy, the Hong Kong media have skillfully navigated a return to the Chinese orbit by depoliticization and self-censorship.⁹ The process of self-censorship does not involve direct administrative interference from the Chinese government, yet informal networking and subtle discursive formation have shaped a complying, secularized, apoliticized, and yet free media culture in Hong Kong.

Of more theoretical significance is the influence of the Hong Kong media in China. Although Hong Kong is at the political periphery, Hong Kong exerts a strong influence on the media environment of mainland China. For many years, Hong Kong has served as a template and window for China to relay to the media in Western liberal societies. Since the open-door policy starting in the late 1970s, Western culture has been an increasingly strong presence in the lives of the Chinese people. The most frequent exposure to outside programming is from the spillover of broadcasting signals from Hong Kong television, which can reach a large part of the Pearl River Delta, covering a mainland population of about 18 million. Audience reports show that Hong Kong programming, including local Hong Kong productions and foreign programs carried by Hong Kong channels, are very popular and usually attract a large audience share. Some local television stations in the area even insert their own advertisements while relaying Hong Kong programs. After several failed attempts to stop it, the provincial government tolerates this illegal but widespread practice. Another form of spillover is media piracy in the form of videos, laser discs and compact discs carrying such contents as popular songs and mainstream movies from Hong Kong and the United States. They are sold in shops and shown in small movie houses. This “illegal openness” is a result of the discrepancies between the central and local government and between stated policies and widespread routine practices (Chan 1996, 1994).

Another significant change started in 1991, when the Hong Kong-based regional satellite broadcaster STAR TV was launched to provide mostly Western and increasingly region-friendly programs. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of STAR TV, was allowed to work with Chinese investors to form the Phoenix Satellite Television Company in Hong Kong, offering entertainment and sports programming to China via STAR’s channels. Exposure to foreign programming has created a demanding media audience and increased the pressure for media commercialization and liberalization. Coproductions, joint ventures, visits, international forums, television and film festivals and the sharing of expertise have become more frequent, especially with the media industries in Hong Kong. Here the influences are economic as well as “discursive.” A materialist interpretation needs to be accompanied by a culturalist one. The culturalist argument stresses that dominant ideologies can provide the language, the “common sense,” and the discursive context for media production. In the 1990s, Hong Kong and its international affiliations were the major “demonstrators,” providing Chinese media with a new discursive context in which market capitalism is the name of the game.

RETHINKING MEDIA STUDIES

Benign market capitalism?

Against these general descriptions, I want to rethink some of the concepts in media studies and test their applicability to the changing media scene in China. In critical media theories, the media are seen as ideological agents reproducing dominant social relations. Critical culturalists stress the hegemonic articulation, despite active negotiation, between the media and dominant economic and especially ideological processes, whereas critical materialists stress the moments of determination of the media by the political economy. In contrast, liberalists argue that market competition promotes diversity and checks state power in a media forum where different social parties and agents are free to express themselves. I must admit my reservation concerning this liberal view of the market; I tend to concur with the critical view that the market limits social discourses and reinforces dominant ideologies. However, the multifaceted effects of the market on the media scene in China need careful theoretic...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Part 1 Transitional and mixed societies
• Part 2 Authoritarian neo-liberal societies
• Part 3 Authoritarian regulated societies
• Part 4 Democratic neo-liberal societies
• Part 5 Democratic regulated societies
• Index