Changing media, changing China

Abstract

Changing Media, Changing China is a timely volume about the changing media and information environment in China and its impact on Chinese politics, given that China has become the second largest economy and that Chinese media have become an increasingly contentious space for profit, control, and public opinion. A central theme in the 10 chapters of this volume, written by western China experts, and Chinese journalists and scholars, is to explore the intertwining relationship between the market and politics in China through case studies and examples of Chinese television, newspapers, magazines, and Internet sites. The editor, Susan L. Shirk, provides a great overview of major themes covered in this book, such as media commercialization, public opinion, censorship, control, journalists' and netizens' resistance strategies, media credibility, military media, and nationalism in China. The contributors examined specific cases where journalists made differences in representing the citizens' voices, exposing negative news stories and bringing about social changes. For example, Hu Shuli, the former editor-in-chief of Caijing Magazine, and the current editor-in-chief of Caixin Media, narrated inside stories about how business media, especially Caijing, promoted business transparency, social justice, accountability, and journalistic professionalism in China. Concurring that commercial media promoted professionalism, Qian Gang and his coauthor Bandurski examined how these media contributed to the emergence of public sphere in China and how the agenda-setting power has shifted from the party–state apparatus to the media, especially the Internet. They examined various cases, in which commercial media provided more credible information and led to social changes in cases such as the Xiamen PX project, a large-scale chemical factory planned to be built in Xiamen that was stopped in 2005 by netizens' collective efforts and the coverage of Sun Zhigang case, a college student beaten to death by the police in 2003 for having no residence permit, which led to the ultimate abolition of the detention system that had existed in China for more than 20 years. Similarly, Xiao Qiang also argued that online public opinion together with “liberal elements” in traditional media set public agenda, that netizens and censors are playing mouse and cat games, and that “the Internet and web-based media are changing the rules of the game between society and state” (p. 203).