SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In the last two-and-a-half decades under reform, China’s media have undergone major transformations and changes which have introduced the rhetorics and practices of market competition, commercialism and populism into industries none the less still strictly under government and Party control (Hemelryk Donald, Keane and Yin 2002; Latham 2000; Zhao 1998; Li Zhuren 1998; Barme 1999; Huang 1994; Hussain 1990). Consequently media production in China is marked by contradictions and tensions characterized by its situation always somewhere ‘between markets and mandarins’ (Latham 2001). Furthermore, these contradictions and tensions are vital for understanding the slow but sure transformation of China’s propaganda hegemony, which has been dominated for so long by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although the Party’s domination of this hegemony is certainly not yet in question, it is none the less increasingly susceptible to scepticism and the exposure of its anachronisms (Latham 2000). In this chapter I shall investigate the fundamental role of the consumer in the transformations taking place in one central area of Chinese media production: newspapers.