CHINESE MEDIA

Role of Chinese media to serve as intermediaries between state and society



Role of Chinese media to serve as intermediaries between state and society

Introduction

The face and soul of the Chinese media are transforming rapidly-an important factor in the continuous change that gets rarely recognized in the Chinese media research. As part of the larger government experiment and recipe to build socialism with Chinese characteristics prescribed by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping almost three decades ago, China's sweeping reform would not only include improving and upgrading the media hardware, but also more importantly, reforming the "software" or the soul of journalism. The Chinese government seems to be more interested, and at times appear to be only interested in "hardware" upgrade, which includes but not limited to the improvement and technological advances of the nation's broadcast and publishing systems, the Internet and other media. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Chinese government is not interested in changing the soul and the operating philosophy of Chinese journalism. Although the priority of the government is still to have full control over the media, it also wants control that is different from the past to keep up with the changing era and audiences, as well as serve its needs. The government's guiding principle is to achieve a balance between the continuous control and the level of comfort the public and journalists feel with this control. While the Chinese government adopts an overbearing approach in media censorship, it is also responsible for the sweeping changes taking place across China's media and information industry. This change is a cause and result of the liberalization of Chinese society (Semenik, 1993).

Discussion

The Chinese media are still a propaganda machine tightly controlled by the government to serve and further state goals. However, growing and unequivocal evidence of a changing Chinese media should not be ignored. For example, the Chinese media contents have become incredibly diverse in recent years, even in the state-controlled official media such as the Xinhua News Agency, China's Central Television station (CCTV) and the People s daily. To give journalists and the public some leeway while insisting on the political bottom line has become a preferred strategy and compromise between the reformists and the hardliners, and between the public and the state (Walters, 1995). As a result, the Chinese media are substantially different and diverse from that in the past authoritarian era. Conceptualizing the news media either as instruments of propaganda or as generating an objective and value-free reflection of reality and public opinion is a flawed dichotomy (Zhao, 2000). No media systems are totally free from control; what vary considerably are the causes and patterns of control. While coercion and censorship are still common in the Chinese media, they are not evenly carried out now. Time has changed, so have people's information sources and beliefs. Ideological control and mass propaganda are no longer effective, given the widespread government resentment towards such control. Blocking political dissent by shutting down publications, websites, and ...