The Challenging Potential of Local Media: Lessons from China

Abstract

Instead of conventional conceptualisation of local as a unified national in the discussion of globalization in media study, this paper reveals a decentralised administrative and TV system in China, and further identifies a national-local level of analysis. The research has found that in order to fulfil its political imperatives, the Chinese national government has made a deal with the global media at the expanse of the local TV broadcasters economic interests. This national-local tension has pressed the local television organizations to request for more autonomy, protections and preferential policies and has also pushed the national government to improve the transparency and the quality of its broadcasting policies and policymaking process. On the other hand, the interest disjunction between the national and the local has also resulted in two conflicting stands towards foreign media. This local-national relation has been and will continue to be, one of the most profound dynamics that drive future changes in the television system in China. The findings of the dynamic national-local relationship provide another theoretical approach to understanding of the media in China. More generally, it invites the reconsidering of the existing national-global analytical framework in international communication research. In other words, more than asking how local is local in the global-local nexus, what we need to reconsider, as China‟s case indicates, is the more complex interactive relations among the global, national and different locals: a local-national-global analytical approach.