The lecture provides an overview of the transformations of Chinese media from the early years of the PRC to the most recent development. Specifically, it pays attention to the changing market conditions and state policies in China. #China #mediaindustry #digitalcontent #GoingOut The lecture was delivered in April 2018 at Monash University

1. CHINA, ASIA, AND THE
DE-WESTINISED APPROACH
Wilfred Wang
Wilfred.wang@monash.edu

2. LECTURE OUTLINES
1. Setting up the theme: Alternative modernity – what is a
western narrative of digital media (reflecting our familiar
approach) (Iwabuchi);
2. A brief overview of the Chinese media, from the Mao to post-
Deng era; keyword: marketisation (Winfield and Peng);
3. The advent of the Internet – from grassroot UGCs to the
‘mainstreamization’ of the net; key ideas: formation of digital
industries, the WTO (IP), the state’s come-back, the rise of the
Internet giants, Baidu, Alibaba & Tencent (Li; Keane);
4. Recalling Chinese diaspora: identity re-connect, not just
cultural exports (Keane).

3. MODERNITY – WHOSE STANDARD?
• A post-colonial critique
• Hard (Technical) measures: GDP, Internet Coverage, Railway, Airport, Education, Real
estate/household items (do you have a radio, TV, or smartphone);
• Soft (knowledge) measures: Knowledge, Values, Norms, Worldview
• Media plays a crucial part in both Hard and Soft measures: having internet is advanced;
and FB spreads certain knowledge about the world.
• Knowledge: not just academic knowledge but the sense of knowing and hence, being
& becoming (identity).
• Modernity is a western (US/Europe) frame of reference to measure the different
processes of development in the world (economic, infrastructure, political and even
cultural).

4. DIGITAL MEDIA & THE
CALIFORNIAN
IDEOLOGY
• During the 1960s, some American hippies were looking for
alternative media to present their views in countering the
mainstream media representations and dominant social values;
• ‘During the '70s and '80s, many of the fundamental advances in
personal computing and networking were made by people
influenced by the technological optimism of the new left and
the counter-culture. By the '90s, some of these ex-hippies had
even become owners and managers of high-tech corporations
in their own right and the pioneering work of the community
media activists has been largely recuperated by hi-tech
commerce.’ (Barbrook and Cameron)
• Entrepreneurship, individual empowerment, personal freedom,
and the irrelevancy of the nation-state (anti-statism). Digital
media will bring the end to (corporate dominated) market.
• Why is it important? These myths are not only American centric
but they have gradually become the norms of the digital era,
the guideline we use to imagine digital media, cultures and
politics across the world.

5. BUT, WHAT IF …
Suspend the western frame of reference to think about:
what is media, what is/are role(s) of media, how media function,
operate and being experience?
A de-westernised media and cultural studies
approach

6. CHINA ?
• The largest communist country in the world;
• One party rule – The Communist Party of China (CPC);
• Non-democratic authoritarian state;
• The largest population – the biggest audience in the world (Curtin, 2007): more than
1.3billion
• Mao-era: 1949-1976, Post-Mao/Reform Era: since 1978, post-reform: 2000 onwards;
• Second largest economy in the world after the U.S.; Australia’s main trading partner;
• The largest internet population in the world – more than 720million* by the end of 2017
(55% penetration rate).
* Australia’s general population is around 24 million

7. CHINESE MEDIA – MAO’S ERA
• Media is part of the state’s
ideological apparatus;
• Media function to support the
Party’s agenda and interest;
• ‘Watchdog on Party’s leash’ (Zhao,
2010);
• Standardized with limited choice:
CCTV (Centre China Television),
People’s Daily, China National
Radio, Xinhua News Agency, and
their provincial and regional
branches;
• First media-related studies: the
Beijing University of Television
established 2 years (1960) after the
launch of CCTV (1958)
• Media were fully state owned and
operated; uniformed content.

8. THE PEOPLE’S DAILY, THE
PARTY’S EVERYDAY
• Mainly supported the revolutionary
discourse;
• Very leader-centric: Mao, 1967; Xi Jinping:
2018
Media
• Mao’s era: an instrument for class struggle
• Post-Mao: a mean of nation building and
modernisation

9. GET RICH AND MAKE
PROFIT!
‘The Party, as the major media
owner, not only encourages
and tolerates conglomerates
for financial reasons but also
to control chaotic free
competition and limit the
proliferation of minor papers.’
(Winfield and Peng, 2005, p.
264)
Western countries: media
conglomerates are horrible!!
(many of you wrote about Murdoch)
BUT: China is not alone, S Korea has
similar situation where the Govt
supports big businesses to invest in
media and entertainment industries
since the Asian Financial Crisis in
1997, hence a highly concentrated
media power there

10. MARKETISATION … TO A CERTAIN
EXTEND
• Early voices to call for reforms and media liberations during
the final decade of Mao’s rule;
• Part of Deng Xiaoping’s reform policies started since 1978,
but media’s reform came much later (early 1990s);
• Regional branches were expected to find their own sources
of financial revenue, hence, operations and editorial;
• A more marketized system and environment;
• Entertainment media and investigative journalism started to
trump;
• Journalists and editors were more willing to push the Party’s
bottom line for market differentiation and competitions;
• For the first time, Chinese media started to challenge or test
the Party line for market competitions;
• The SARS outbreak in 2003 has been a well cited example;
• Between the Party Line and bottom line (Zhao, 2008) -
between serving the Party and consumers

11. CONSUMING THE PARTY
LINE
• The touching story of a female Japanese
entrepreneur
• A-shin’s characters of hardworking, motherhood,
creativity, kindness support the Deng Xiaoping’s
reform agendas (Lull, 1991)
• A-shin represents the negotiation between
reform (global modernity) and traditions
(national characters): a mother/a kind boss, a
good wife/creative businesswoman; a good
daughter-in-law/a brave and creative market
negotiator; loyal to the nation ;
• First launched in the mainland China in 1984,
CCTV, 80% reception rate; Re- broadcasted in
2007 by Hunan TV (one of the major players in
Chinese TV).

12. THEN THE INTERNET:• US/West: market-driven development, the Silicon Valley;
• China: through an anti-US/NATO alliance nationalism-driven
event；
• Chinese embassy was bombed by the US/NATO air force, 3
Chinese citizens (journalists) were killed;
• China govt set up the Strong Nation Forum (part of People’s
Daily) to encourage online discussions;
• Online anger quickly became offline protests;
• A realisation of commoners’ voices, values and role through
the Internet;
• Sinologist: China is always defined through ethnic
nationalism rather than citizenry democratisation.

13. BUT QUICKLY OUT OF
CONTROL (2000-2008ISH)
• The combined of online
participation and media
commercialisation (Zhao,
2008; Yu, 2009; Zhang,
2012);
• A ground for mocking the
powerful, political satire,
negotiating with reality,
and simply, entertainment
and leisure; (youth: Liu,
2010; rural migrant
workers: Qiu, 2009; civic
rights: Zhao, 2008; Yang,
2008);
• High level of creativity,
grassroots expressions and
unconventional
representations (look at
Li’s reading).

15. STATE INTERVENTION
• Prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games;
• Face – the global image and standing;
• Peaceful rise through trade, culture and technologies;
• A green, a humanistic, & a technological Olympic Games；
• Media and Internet were deemed to be important;
• Mao: ideology (internal)
• Deng: reform (internal)
• Late- HU and Xi (external, global)

16. NOT JUST STANDING
UP BUT ALSO GOING
OUT
• From a defensive to a more
proactive national strategic
framework;

17. INSTITUTIONALISATION
• Both the Chinese governments and technology firms have been
forced to compiled to the copyright/IP agreements since China’s
assertion to the W.T.O. late 2001;
• Xunlei, a tech giant failed to enter the US market due to accusation
of breaching IP laws;
• Massive online ‘cleaning’ campaigns;
• Professionalisation – eliminating UGC at all cost;
• Political censorship (blocking, shutting down and suspending);
• Commercial collaboration: iQiyi – Netflix, Walt Disney – Tencent
Video, Youku*-Marvel
*Youku is coming to Australia (w/ S&J Media)

18. CLEANING UP WINNIE THE POOH

19. LICENCES-PARTNERSHIP
ARRANGEMENTS
Platforms Partnered TV licence holder
iQiyi Galaxy International TV (joint venture of Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation，
National Radio, and iQiyi)
Youku Wasu Media (Hangzhou broadcasting Corporation)
Tencent Video Southern Media Corporation
Sohu Video Southern Media Corporation
PPTV Wasu Media
Storm Video Galaxy International TV
LeTV CNTV (China Networked Television)
Baidu Video Galaxy International TV
Kuaibo (Qvod Player) CNTV

20. UGC?

21. OVERLAPPING
JURISDICTIONS
• The ambiguous online regulatory environments:
Administration of China (CAC), the ministry of Culture
(MoC), and the Cyberspace Affairs Council of China
(CACC); , the State Administration of Press, Public,
Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT)*
• Spatialised governance
• Non-media/information related governing bodies
* Abolished in March 2018 and now directly subordinated to
the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, or
CCPPD.

23. CONCENTRATION OF
DIGITAL MEDIA OWNERSHIP
– THE BAT
Initially:
• Baidu (search engine)
• Alibaba (online shopping)
• Tencent (instant messenger)
Now (overlapping):
• Video streaming
• Digital finance and payments
• Games
• Shopping
• Communications.

24. DIGITAL GIANT AS CHINA’S NEW
‘DIPLOMATS’HTTPS://QZ.COM/505220/THE-LIST-OF-CEOS-FACING-OFF-DURING-CHINESE-PRESIDENT-XI-JINPINGS-STATE-VISIT-TO-THE-US-SHOWS-THE-IMPORTANCE-OF-
TECH/

25. GOING OUT TO WHERE ?
• Popular discourse: a new form of
(Chinese) cultural imperialism;
• BUT – none of the gone out content
carry universal language; nor are the
content different with those back in
China;
• Lack of non-Chinese
representations;

26. IT’S ME! THE CHINESE
DIASPORA
• Re-connection with the Chinese overseas around the world;
• Backdrop: overseas students, immigrations (parents), investors, tourists, working holidays;
• Re-connecting with the motherland;
• The Dream of the Great Chinese Rejuvenation (zhonghua minzu weida fuxing) – Xi Jinping
• The Dream cannot be achieved without all Chinese around the world;
• This is not new – Reforms during the late imperial court era, China’s Revolution (1911) and Deng’s call for
investments;
• Similar: The Bollywood – Indian diaspora (Therwart, 2010)
• Commercial: contemporary migrants are more urban-middle class; old migrants – the forgotten, marginalised
• Contrasting: K-wave (set up partnership with YouTube, focus on choreography rather than lyrics, the visual
rather than the thematical)

27. DE-WESTERNISE THE SILICON VALLEY
• What’s the true story about the Silicon Valley?
• the West Coast counterculture (the hippies) and
radicalism of the 1960s, formed the building
blocks of the Californian ideology, Barbrook and
Cameron are effectively arguing for both a
historical and a geographic understanding of
what we would now call the platform society
(Barbrook and Cameron, 1997).
• All those imaginations about democracy,
individuality, subversive, decentralisation were
part of the American histories in the western cost
(Eastern cost being the political, elitist capitals);
• Media, the Internet, are always local,
embedded within the history and geography of
a nation, a region and a place.