Chinese Media Studies

Xu Bing's installations are renowned for their production of "nonsense writing," that is, for extracting operations from Chinese characters in a manner that defies conventions for what is sensible and intelligible in writing. Xu Bing, apparently in all seriousness, glosses such "nonsense" with the Chan Buddhist notion of shengyu 生语 or "living word." If the characters in Xu Bing's installations can be said to be living words, it is because they afford an experience of what is nonsensuous in the everyday experience of characters-while we are used to characters being visible and audible, we do not normally experience what happens between seeing and saying the character. In this paper, I look at various installations in which Xu Bing uses techniques of abstract resemblance, such as pictographs (characters that resemble things) and psuedographs (fake characters that resemble actually used characters) in order to provide an experience of nonsensuous similarity or semblance prior to and beyond resemblance. The challenge of his recent installation, Background Story, is that it explores nonsensuous similarity in a new register: calligraphic paintings in which there is brushwork without brushwork, in which actual things appear self-abstracting. Thus his art delivers a profound challenge to received hierarchies for organizing experience, suggesting that things are no less abstract than images or signs, only differently so.

Questo volume è il frutto di una ricerca sul campo svolta tra il 2008 e il 2015 che è consistita nella raccolta di interviste orali in cinese a giornalisti freelance, redattori e studiosi di media in Cina. Dal corpus costituito dalle trascrizioni e dalle traduzioni in italiano di tali interviste nasce una selezione di testi presentati e commentati in questo volume con l’obiettivo di portare alla luce, da una parte, i riferimenti a problemi, temi e aspirazioni comuni di una comunità di discorso e, dall’altra, il ricorrere di espressioni, parole chiave, formule e metafore condivise. Gli elementi discorsivi e lessicali identificati rafforzano l’ipotesi del rinsaldarsi di un’identità professionale condivisa tra le diverse figure che operano nel settore dei media in Cina oggi. Un risultato che appare rilevante soprattutto perché tale identità professionale ha dovuto ridefinirsi negli ultimi decenni in seguito alle riforme che hanno investito i media cinesi e alla diffusione sempre più ampia di forme di collaborazione esterna dei giornalisti cinesi alle testate su cui scrivono.

The Eighteenth Party Congress' Third Plenary Session's Decision maps out the country's plan for cultural and media development. There is nothing on the surface that suggests a radical departure from the tight control the Chinese party-state exerts. The Decision is full of paternalistic clichés about the development of socialist culture under the guidance of Marxism, media controls, and the unification between social benefits and economic benefits. But new elements embedded in the Decision contain potential seeds for at least a partial reordering of the dynamic tension between impulses demanding control and those calling for expression in the Chinese cultural and media realm, with control perhaps gaining ground. These elements also figure in China's recent effort to develop culture industries and rebalance domestic media control and international cultural expansion and influence. This essay does not aim to provide a comprehensive commentary on China's recent cultural policies as they relate to the Decision. Instead, it focuses on the intersection between cultural and media policies and the push and pull between the party-state and aggressive market-oriented media producers. Specifically, the essay will highlight some potential changes in the following six areas: (1) control mechanisms, (2) the prescribed nature of a media organization, (3) media censorship, (4) media consolidation and economies of scale, (5) the entry of private capital into the Chinese media industries, and (6) China's soft power and public diplomacy.

Crisis communication is essential to the political stability and legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but how crises are managed in China is little understood. This paper aims to pursue this question through a case study of China's smog crisis since 2013a regular recurring crisis that confronts the population and the Chinese government. The paper explores what innovative media strategies and practices have been deployed by the Chinese government to effectively guide public opinion and maintain social and political stability during smog crises. We first examine the smog coverage in People's Daily to critique the propaganda and persuasion techniques in its modern crisis reporting. We then look at WeChat-based citizen journalism as alternative crisis communication to identify its popular themes and the CCP's censorship tactics to manage it. We argue that the CCP's propaganda during times of crisis has been mainly achieved through the revamping of official journalism on its state media and the differential censorship of citizen discourse on social media. The double-pronged approach ensures the public opinion is properly guided in crises and possible disruption to the regime's stability is minimized.

Because online digital writing has become an important means of text production, this paper argues that the core concept of genetic criticism, ‘avant-texte’, should be kept up-to-date with the new medium and environment. It will show how online comments in interactive and collaborative textual production should be recognized within the translation’s genesis. The online comments on a widely read news translation in China’s largest virtual translation community is used to showcase how these digital comments can be identified and examined to facilitate our understanding of the microhistory or genesis of news translation. Situated at the juncture of genetic criticism and translation studies, this paper concludes by addressing theoretical and methodological implications for conducting a genetic analysis based on the proposed analytical model.

Le récit des crimes du 7 janvier 2015 comme leur motif le plus évident - les caricatures du prophète Mahomet - ont fait le tour du monde, nourrissant des réactions et des interprétations multiples et divergentes malgré l’unanimisme des condamnations. Les lignes qui suivent se penchent sur la réception de cette tragédie en Chine. Ce texte ne s’aventure pas sur les causes multiples et complexes qui ont rendu possible ces drames sauf à préciser qu’une idéologie mortifère et totalitaire s’est épanouie sur une pluralité de facteurs et de temporalités indémêlables. Parmi les enjeux de dimension globale soulevés par ces évènements, il est possible d’identifier pêle-mêle les pratiques terroristes de l’islamisme radical, la place des minorités dans les états-nations contemporains, la question du blasphème visant des figures politiques ou religieuses, la liberté d’expression et ses limites. Dans la longue durée, ces évènements percutent aussi la condition postcoloniale du monde, et le legs d’une hégémonie non seulement géopolitique et économique mais aussi culturelle et épistémologique des sociétés occidentales. Si les sujets évoqués dans les lignes précédentes ont bien été mobilisés parmi les interprétations « chinoises » de ces attentats, la distance culturelle, politique et affective avec les évènements a parfois empêché les commentateurs chinois de saisir certains aspects du drame propres à un imaginaire national, un contexte idéologique et un langage politique spécifiquement français. La résonance globale de ces évènements ne saurait ainsi occulter que leur interprétation se déploya au sein d’un imaginaire institué déterminé par des enjeux politiques, idéologiques et linguistiques propres à la société chinoise. Parler d’une réception « chinoise » comporte le risque d’une simplification abusive et d’une essentialisation discutable d’un espace social, politique et culturel hétérogène. Un imaginaire dominant quelque peu paresseux qui réduit la « Chine » à son régime politique autoritaire empêche trop souvent de saisir les nuances, les variations et les dynamiques internes à la société chinoise. Des points de vue parfois divergents ont pu apparaitre dans les commentaires et les interprétations des évènements de janvier 2015, en fonction du statut des auteurs, des rubriques ou des titres de presse. Cette absence d’opinion unanime fut encore plus flagrante sur les réseaux sociaux pendant les quelques jours qui ont suivi les évènements. Plus tardivement, des articles de facture plus théoriques se sont confrontés au sujet dans des revues académiques et à partir de perspectives disciplinaires variées telles que la sociologie des media, les sciences de la communication, la philosophie, les études françaises. Des publications de think tanks rattachés au Parti ont aussi proposés des analyses visant à rappeler la doxa marxiste-léniniste sur la nature et le rôle de la presse dans les sociétés occidentales. Qu’il s’agisse de la presse, des textes académiques ou des interventions d’acteurs étatiques, la position dominante peut se synthétiser à grand traits de la façon suivante : une condamnation unanime et ferme du terrorisme associée à des marques appuyées de solidarité avec les victimes et, quasi-simultanément, l’apparition de critiques à l’endroit des journalistes de Charlie Hebdo en tant qu’ils incarnaient une position, un discours et des valeurs « occidentales » antagonistes avec le modèle défendu par l’Etat-Parti.
Ce sont les fondements idéologiques et politiques, mais aussi parfois épistémologiques et historiographiques, de cette critique, que cet essai se propose d’interroger, sachant que la fonction métonymique de « Charlie » en tant que symbole global de « valeurs occidentales » putatives ne s’est évidemment pas limitée pas au contexte chinois. Dans quelle mesure, et comment, ces évènements ont-ils trouvé une résonance discursive et des correspondances idéologiques dans l’espace politico-médiatique chinois ? Quelle fut la fonction de cette critique du journal satirique dans le contexte idéologique et politique chinois ? Bref, de quoi les caricatures de Charlie Hebdo ont-elles été le nom en Chine continentale ?

This paper explores the history of the representations of LGBT in the Chinese national English-language newspaper the China Daily, from 1991 to 2019. It divides the representations into four phases: the initial phase (1991-2003), the rapid growth phase (2004-2008), the peak phase (2009-2014) and the silent phase (2015-2019). The findings show that official Chinese media do not constitute a homogeneous entity; in contrast, they produce highly heterogeneous content while targeting domestic and international audiences. As one of the most important media in China that is responsible for international communication, China Daily, has to balance its readers' interests and its goal of "telling China's story." Compared with the People's Daily (Chinese edition), the China Daily's representation of the LGBT group is unconventional in its construction of a country that values freedom, openness, and tolerance. This representation has been made possible by changes in domestic and international contexts, LGBT activism in China, and journalist agency, which are justified in de-othering narratives that follow the logic of homonationalism.

https://www.cschinese.com/issueArticle.asp?P_No=88&CA_ID=669

In a mere quarter century, Mainland China has grown into a hotspot of international self-help. Though the self-help industry has a centuries-long tradition in the Anglo-American realm, this particular, commercial type of life advice is relatively new in Mainland China, first emerging in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Nonetheless, self-help books counseling individuals about the art of life have conquered China’s book market, while US-style ‘self-help gurus’ now play an important role in China’s speaker circuit and mass media. At first, the Chinese mainland simply imported foreign self-help books (translated from English to Mandarin), yet it eventually gave birth to a glocalised and creatively assertive cultural industry. Individual-oriented, US-style self-help now flourishes in the heart of the Middle Kingdom, blatantly defying the dichotomy between ‘Western individualism’ and ‘Eastern collectivism.’

This chapter will first outline the young history of US-style self-help in mainland China and discuss the glocalised character of Chinese self-help culture. Second, it will discuss the structural transformation of the Chinese book market and mass-mediated public sphere which enabled and continues to facilitate the prominence of the self-help industry on the Chinese mainland. Third, it will sketch self-help’s role in public life, which involves touching upon its limited autonomy and weak delineation as a cultural field, its relatively privileged position vis-à-vis institutionalised religion, and its significance as a source of guidance to uprooted individuals chasing after the ‘Chinese Dream’ in the rat race of China’s new market economy.

本文关注中国的民族主义，将民族主义根植于中国的历史环境中， 并探讨了官方民族主义、大众民族主义、政治民族主义和消费民族主义的相通和区别之处。本文首先回顾了中国的民族主义自鸦片战争以来的发展，希望从一个更宏观的角度理解民族主义。接着，文章研究了与民族主义所应对的普世主义（cosmopolitanism)，并指出现代中国通常在民族主义和普世主义之间摇摆。接下来，本文以帝吧出征为例分析网络民族主义的表现。 从很大的意义上说，帝吧出征不仅仅是一种网络民族主义的宣泄，更是一种在消费文化和全球地缘政治大环境下有关身份政治的表演。这种表演不仅根植于我们对历史的选择性记忆，而且也是在文化全球化的语境下对中国人、中国应有的国际地位的一种主张；是对中国在全球化过程中遇到挫折（如中国的主权和领土完整以及身份认同等）的一种应对，是国内和国际力量，政治和经济文化以及官方和民间因素的一种结合体。

The study of Chinese media is a field that is growing and evolving at an exponential rate. Not only are the Chinese media a fascinating subject for analysis in their own right, but they also offer scholars and students a window to observe multi-directional flows of information, culture and communications within the contexts of globalization and regionalization. Moreover, the study of Chinese media provides an invaluable opportunity to test and refine the variety of communications theories that researchers have used to describe, analyse, compare and contrast systems of communications.

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media is a prestigious reference work providing an overview of the study of Chinese media. Gary and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley bring together an interdisciplinary perspective with contributions by an international team of renowned scholars on subjects such as television, journalism and the internet and social media. Locating Chinese media within a regional setting by focusing on ‘Greater China’, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities; the chapters highlight the convergence of media and platforms in the region; and emphasise the multi-directional and trans-national character of media/information flows in East Asia.

Contributing to the growing de-westernization of media and communications studies; this handbook is an essential and comprehensive reference work for students of all levels and scholars in the fields of Chinese Studies and Media Studies.

This paper explores the dynamics between journalistic practices and the mechanisms of internet control in the Chinese context. Principally drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with journalists, this paper investigates in detail the key tactics employed by journalists to counter online censorship, which include: journalists working undercover; the use of “transformed words” or alternatives to “sensitive” words to evade blocking filters; and de-verification on microblogs (Weibo in Chinese) where critical alternative accounts on social media oblige officials to recant earlier versions of events reported on traditional media. Informed by Scott’s research, this paper argues that journalists employ these strategies as weapons against the party-state’s censorship. Such strategies avoid direct confrontation with the authorities, and are conducted on a “quiet” but substantial scale. Consequently, it is not easy to apply sanctions against particular individuals. The strategies have a profound impact on the dynamics of the relationships between journalists and the powerful party-state. On the one hand, the strategies can empower journalists with psychological gains. On the other, these strategies weaken the party-state’s authority. But such strategies are not new and can also be found in traditional journalistic practices. However, one phenomenon worthy of note is the association between journalists and scholars facilitated by microblogs, since increased associations among various professional groups may spark resistance to the party-state’s information monopoly.

This article analyzes the gendered performance at the Beijing Olympics by looking at the elite cheerleaders and Olympic misses, including medal and country presenters at the Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies. Drawing upon participant observation, unstructured interviews, media reports, and blogs, this article argues that the paradoxical construction of Chinese women stands for the broader context of Chinese modernity. The seeming paradoxes of tradition and modernity, and Oriental femininity and Occidental sexuality perpetuate old and produce new gender politics in China. The internally contradictory hybrid representation of gender in contemporary China contributes to feminist communication theory by illustrating not only uneven processes of modernity but also the continuing importance of gender in nationalist politics.

Images act as the animator to an object into culture: The modern Han dress or Hanfu Movement promulgated primarily through images and multimedia on the internet in its first decade (2003-2013). Images served both for and against the movement through its interpretation, whereas Han proponents appealed to the pathos for redrawing the definitions and boundaries of the Han and Chinese nation, while detractors captured the bathos of the ethnic as the exotic and anachronistic. Through the crystal-clear focus of high-definition studio portraits on intricately embroidered, well-tailored specimens, however, introduced capitalistic desire into the gaze and broke past the nationalist  quagmire and digressed the topic into the realm of commodification, thereby somewhat intentionally establishing the once historical clothing firmly into the realm of modernity.

Xinhua News Agency was founded in 1931 with the aim of moulding public opinion and of contributing to the consolidation of the Chinese Communist Party’s political influence and rule over China (Xin Xin 2012: 33-48). At present this function has evolved, as Xinhua News Agency is trying to acquire a key role in the international news production market and to establish itself as one of the most influential news agencies worldwide (Hong Junhao 2011). Nonetheless, the Agency as an institution continues to be part of the political Establishment. Xinhua News Agency is an organ of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (the government) and it is identified in official documents as the major accredited source for the flow of information regarding Chinese political activities to be published in the national and international media (Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting 2003).
In light of this premise, Xinhua News Agency can be considered a relevant actor in shaping national and international media discourse on Chinese politics, as testified by the publication of the news agency website (https://xinhuanet.com) in 9 different languages. The hypothesis is that Xinhua News Agency press release production on Chinese politics is influenced by the agency’s multifaceted organizational identity, which can be described as both ideologically driven and consumer oriented. If the hypothesis were borne out, we could expect the reports on Chinese political events in different languages to show similarities possibly determined by ideological constraints in representing China to international public opinion, as well as discrepancies, possibly due to the need of adapting the flow of information to different audiences characterized by their own language and culture.
This paper draws on Xinhua News Agency’s press releases on the 2015 session of the Chinese National People's Congress and on the agency’s position in the context of the Chinese media production, characterized by a centralized political control and market-oriented strategies. The corpus includes texts on the activities of the annual session of the Chinese parliament published by Xinhua’s website in three different languages: Chinese, English and French.
The aim of this paper is to shed light on the basic characteristics of Chinese official media discourse on Chinese politics. In order to better describe these peculiarities, the textual findings will be interpreted through the lens of keywords concerning the relation between the media and the political system in China (i.e. strengthening legitimacy, the foreign propaganda system and discourse power). By highlighting regularities and differences in the Chinese, English and French-language press releases, the paper will discuss if and to what extent the discursive realisations of the representation of Chinese politics are affected when the information is targeted at different (national or international) publics.
Keywords: media discourse, China, international broadcasting, Xinhua News Agency, public opinion
References
Brady, Anne-Marie 2008. Marketing Dictatorship. Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Lanham: Rowman and Littlelfield.
Hong, Junhao 2011. From the World’s Largest Propaganda Machine to a Multipurposed Global News Agency: Factors in and Implications of Xinhua’s Transformation Since 1978. Political Communication, 28(3), pp. 377-393. Liang, Yan 梁岩 / Xie, Fei 谢飞, 编著 2010. Zhongguo yingwen meiti gaiguan 中国英文媒体概观. Beijing 北京:
Zhishi Chanquan Chubanshe 知识产权出版社.
Liu, Xiaoyan 刘小燕 2010. Zhengfu dui wai chuanbo 政府对外传播. Beijing 北京:Zhongguo Dabaike Quanshu
Chubanshe 中国大百科全书出版社.
Mottura, Bettina 2014. Mediazione e stampa cinese in lingua inglese. Lingue culture mediazioni, 1(1-2), pp. 187-206. Xin, Xin 2012. How the Market is Changing China’s News. The Case of Xinhua News Agency. Lanham: Lexington
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Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting 中共中央办公厅 2003. Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting yinfa ‘Guanyu jinyibu gaijin huiyi he lingdao tongzhi huodong xinwen baodao de yijian’ de tongzhi 中共中央办公厅印发《关 于进一步改进会议和领导同志活动新闻报道的意见》的通知.

This article looks at the use of mobile phones to capture images of China’s smog. Seeking to move beyond the familiar stated benefits of circumscribing state censor-ship and supporting offline mobilization, it employs instead an interpretive frame-work that views digital capture as a process of cultural production. In doing so, it enables comparisons with other forms of visual production, situating it in relation to other modes of realism and questioning the very definition of environmental activism, particularly through Chai Jing's 2016 documentary Under the Dome on China's current smog pollution. It also enables a more nuanced analysis of the social and geographical biases that are reflected in the use of mobile phones when used for environmental engagement.

This article analyses the political economy of news media production in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) using Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. This method contains two aspects: (1) an examination of the effects that a capitalist base has on news media in the transitioning system of the PRC, and (2) a study of the utility of the Propaganda Model’s dimensions for use in comparative media research. The article finds that the differing political systems of the USA and the PRC do not lead to completely different media systems. The largest differences are found to be only in the civil society sphere and in the repression of PRC journalists. The capitalist base of the media system, however, causes many commonalities, such as pro-capitalist ideology, the influence of advertisers and constraints on sourcing, while a transition towards a US-style system, in professionalization, corporatization, secularization and conglomeratization, can be found in its embryonic stages.

Social networking sites (SNS) are online platforms that enable individuals new opportunities for the management of personal relationships and the construction of their Self online. Cultural identity can exert an influence on self-presentation and communicative behaviors within SNSs. The current study investigates identity construction processes on the Chinese SNS Renren. Based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the study examines whether the features of the Chinese culture affect the users’ self-presentation. The paper is based on a qualitative and ethnographical investigation of 28 Renren users, between the ages of 18 and 25, living in large cities in China. My findings indicate that the identities produced in this online environment are sensitive to the national culture. The research study reveals the paradigm of a complex, plural and changing Self, deeply influenced by the traditional values of the Chinese culture but also conditioned by Western ideologies and lifestyles, as a result of the recent modernization of the country. These elements lead to a renegotiation of the traditional values, paving the way to a new conception of the Chinese Self.

This is an essay on a suggestive parallel between photographs of the Chinese torture and execution known as the "death by a thousand cuts," and the routine protocols of art history known as formal analysis and iconography. I attempt to demonstrate that art history's most fundamental, apparently neutral, preparatory exercises in seeing and analysis, taught to every beginning student, carry a burden of invasiveness and pain.

This is chapter 6 from the book Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture, co-edited with Maria Pia Di Bella, in the series Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies (New York: Routledge, 2012).

The larger context of studies of the “death of a thousand cuts” appears in other places: see the related material in “The Very Theory of Transgression: Bataille, lingchi, and Surrealism,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 5 no. 2 (2004): 5–19; “The Most Intolerable Photographs Ever Taken,” in The Ethics and Aesthetics of Torture: Its Comparative History in China, Islam, and Europe, edited by Timothy Brook and Jérôme Bourgon (London: Rowman and Littlefield, c. 2012); and in Portuguese as “As fotografias mais intoleráveis já tiradas,” in Leituras do Corpo, edited by Christine Greiner and Claudia Amorim (São Paulo: Annablume, 2003), 27–63. ISBN 85-7419-358-5.

The text was written c. 2005, revised 2010-12, and uploaded July 14, 2013.

China is still very much a one-party state, also an authoritarian government. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains tight control on political expression, speech, religion, and assembly, any social group able to organize on a large scale is deemed a threat. According to this report  on the state of global press freedom from the year 2015, the Chinese government’s press restrictions are complex, intricate, and ruthless because of political reasons. It has attempted to influence public opinion through the use of state-owned traditional media outlets such as the CCTV television network or the People’s Daily newspaper. Moreover, Chinese media policy can be flexible to suit the leadership’s purposes or political ends. It is undeniable that media control is one of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) governances. . Since Xi Jinping has assumed power in 2012-2013 as the Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, president of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, there is lots of evidence indicating that media control has been tightened. It is very difficult to access more sensitive information of public affairs, For Xi Jinping, media and education is tool to control ideology, thus his policy is encapsulated in the hardline phrase “public opinion struggle,” or yulun douzheng (輿論鬥爭).  It is obvious that the tension between China’s government and citizens has been sharpening during the public debates in China  . Some questions that need to be asked, however, are why Xi Jinping wants to increase control and what kind of policies the CCP wants to enact in this period?  China has a huge influence and power in the world, especially in the economic sector, but the Chinese government has long kept tight reins on both traditional and new media. How does the Chinese government exercise its variety of mechanisms to pressure and influence communications, demonstrate intolerance of political opinions and autonomous mobilization?

The growing prevalence of foreign media consumption, including from Japan, has received considerable notice in recent work on PRC youth culture. To date, however, few studies have considered how youth of different social backgrounds perceive their consumption of Japanese popular culture in the context of the Party-state’s ‘patriotic education’ campaign waged in schools and in the mass media. Studies have also overlooked how rural and urban youth in China juxtapose the images and themes conveyed in the Japanese media that they consume with school and domestic media messages. Drawing on interviews with middle school students in Shanghai and Henan, the present study addresses these issues. It finds that while a majority of youths from different backgrounds express animosity toward Japan, they separate these feelings from their passion for Japanese popular culture. In some cases, consumption of Japanese media also allows teenagers to feel that they ‘know’—or even appreciate—the other country better. Amid the anti-Japanese messages currently circulating in PRC schools and domestic media, consumption of Japanese popular culture manifests a form of ‘expressive individualism’ among teenagers, who creatively construct their own notions of patriotism, national memory, and Sino–Japanese relations.

This is a translation of the Preface from the book "Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History," with an introduction by Jennifer Purtle (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).

It was published in World Sinology 9 (2012): 118–27. This also has a Chinese translation of Jennifer Purtle’s introduction.

App designers dream of creating a platform that users never want to leave, that keeps them glued forever - a platform that is "sticky".

Over 846 million WeChat users leave text and voice messages, share life moments, play games, use stickers, purchase rail and flight tickets, shop online, pay utilities and bills, transfer money to friends, and even donate to charity without leaving WeChat, the super-sticky platform. The Economist called WeChat "one app to rule them all", and as it starts to gain global appeal, it is rewriting the rules for social media platforms.

This book provides a balanced and nuanced study of how the super-sticky WeChat platform interweaves into the fabric of Chinese social, cultural, and political life. It keeps the wider global and national social media landscape in view and compares and contrasts WeChat with Weibo and QQ, two other popular social media platforms in China, and other Western social media platforms.

In the contemporary era of globalization, media research combines transnational and transdisciplinary subject matters. However the theoretical frameworks, approaches and research methods are moreover concomitant with other fields of social science and humanities. The two examples of media research make clear that scholars of journalism have a wide array of choices when designing and carrying out media research. It is also clear that media research cannot be done without its tools. Survey, content analysis and observation are the classics among them. To sum up, various theories, approaches, methods are derived from number of different disciplines and its use obviously lead to the various findings. Only appropriate selection of methods lead the research to valid, reliable and highly probable findings.

In light of contemporary Chinese political discourse on the function and role of the media in the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and public opinion, this study will describe a few relevant characteristics of the Chinese media system, with a special focus on the daily press published in English. It will show that political ties in which news production is embedded in China influence content and language even when the information is ostensibly targeted at an international public. Finally, it will discuss some examples derived from Xinhua News Agency reports on an important anti-corruption case in order to trace the cultural mediation strategies enacted by the journalists to adapt the texts to an international public.
The attempt to conform to the tastes and needs of the global public opinion without betraying the country’s political specificity could be interpreted as the result of journalists’ effort to strengthen Chinese discourse power, offering a broader range of publications and giving increasing attention to internationalisation, while promoting a positive representation of China worldwide.

The paper intends to examine how the functions attributed to Chinese institutional media by the leadership discourse are performed. It will focus on if and how journalistic texts show traces of an effort to reinforce the knowledge and trust of the public in the Communist Party and to increase the influence and credibility of China at the international level. In order to verify if the news are effective in consolidating a national "discursive power", the analysis will focus on a case study: the representation of a recurring event in national politics in Chinese official newspapers, through the texts published on the subject by Xinhua Press Agency in 2015 and by the People’s Daily in 2017 in Chinese, English and French.

This dissertation explores the regulation of sex-related popular media text in contemporary China, across the expected lifespan of procreative heterosexual marriage. The three case studies encompass regulation of television programming, television drama, and film. The regulative actions vary from public notices to official prohibition of the media text. Following the Foucauldian tradition of studying media regulation, and borrowing from feminist, queer and class studies, this dissertation records the contradiction-rifle contemporary history of media regulation in post-socialist, neoliberal China. Under what appear to be conservative, theocratic-like regulations, I argue that nationalism, the Party’s localized socialist ideology, and hetero-patriarchy are intertwined to secure a legitimized but under-supervised party-state governance. However, it is through these very prohibitions that a space for text about women’s gender consciousness has opened.
Key Words: Media Regulation, Media Censorship, Discursive Regulation, Private Topics in Public, Regulation of Sexual Content, Representation of Sexuality, If You Are the One, Feichengwurao, Dwelling Narrowness, Woju, Lost in Beijing, Pingguo
E-mail of author: [email protected]

This course explores the cultural landscapes of late 20 th and early 21 st centuries China and beyond through the lens of "popular culture." We will familiarize ourselves with some key approaches in modern cultural studies, while learning to critically interpret literary, cinematic, and visual texts in the Chinese-speaking world in social and historical context. Topics include popular religion and mythology, media and mass culture, food and fashion, the relationship between politics, nationalism, and popular culture, and China's global influence. We will emerge from the course with a new set of tools in thinking about "culture" both familiar and unfamiliar. No knowledge of Chinese language is required. All readings will be in English.

In China, modern university education in journalism started in the 1920s. Since then journalism education underwent a constant process of adaptation to local conditions in its curriculum and teaching methods as well as its targets (Guo Zhongshi 2010). Today journalism education is a well-established discipline, a relevant field for research and teaching (Guo Ke 2004).
In undergraduate programs in journalism education in China, news writing is listed amidst the course basic learning objectives (Ke Guo 2010, Dombernowsky 2014). And this curriculum design feature is consistent with the collective belief that written language is a crucial professional skill for journalists. In the academic field, the widespread agreement on the centrality of language in journalists’ work is testified by the variety of approaches used in language studies to examine media texts (Zelizer 2004).
As the writing skills are considered fundamental professional abilities to become a journalist in China, identify the scope and the targets of the news writing teaching is relevant to pinpoint the professional community profile. In order to address these issues, the paper will focus on the analysis of a corpus of textbooks of Chinese language training for journalists published between 2002 and 2014 in China. In examining the teaching materials, the attention will first be focused on the content and the structure of the books. And then the paper will highlight the relevance accorded by the authors to the identification of textual genres and to the explanation of their functions and use for didactic purposes.

Keywords: written language training, journalism education, Chinese language

References

Bai, G. / Peng, H. 2013. 当代新闻写作 Dangdai Xinwen Xiezuo (Contemporary News Writing). Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe.
Dombernowsky, L. 2014. Chinese Journalism Students: Balancing competing values. In Svensson, Marina / Sæther, E. / Zhang Zhi’an (eds). Chinese Investigative Journalists' Dreams. Autonomy, Agency, and Voice. Lanham: Lexington Books, 53-73.
Gao, X. 2012. 新闻语言学 Xinwen Yuyanxue (News Language and Linguistics). Nanjing: Nanjing Shifan Daxue Chubanshe.
Guo, K. (2007), Journalism Education in China: An Introduction, paper presented at the World Journalism Education Congress, Shanghai, 25-28 June 2007.
Guo, K. 2010. Chinese Journalism Education and Chinese Curricula, paper presented at the World Journalism Education Congress. Rhodes University, 5-7 July 2010, 9-12.
Guo, Z. 2010. Through Barbed Wires: Context, Content, and Constraints for Journalism Education in China. In Josephi Beate (ed) Journalism Education in Countries with Limited Media Freedom. Bern: Peter Lang, 15-32.
He, C. 2012. 当代传媒新闻写作教程 Dangdai Chuanmei Xinwen Xiezuo Jiaocheng (Handbook of News Writing for Contemporary Media). Xiangtan: Xiangtan Daxue Chubanshe.
Hong, J. / Li, Jun 2014. 怎么样写新闻 Zenmeyang Xie Xinwen (How to Write News). Hangzhou: Zhejiang Daxue Chubanshe.
Wu, L. / Li, Zhan 2014. 新闻写作 Xinwen Xiezuo (News Writing). Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe.
Zelizer, B. 2004. Language Studies and Journalism. In Zelizer, Barbie Taking Journalism Seriously. News and the Academy. Thousand Oaks: Sage publications, 111-144.

Since 2018 criticism of China’s human rights record has intensified and China’s government has been challenged in the international court of public opinion with respect to its mass detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. After initial denial of the very existence of ‘re-education camps’, China’s leadership changed tack and admitted it had built ‘vocational education and training centers’ (‘VET centers’) for them. The purpose of these was said to be ‘de-radicalization’ of those suspected of being influenced by ‘extremists thinking’ and training them in Chinese language, legal knowledge (including patriotism) and occupational skills. This was said to foster the economic development of the region while eradicating the socio-cultural basis for ‘[ethnonational] separatism, [religious] extremism and terrorism’. Yet among Western observers these official claims were widely dismissed as a thin veneer of forced political indoctrination and even ‘cultural genocide’ (Roberts 2020). Compounded by other pertinent topics, such as Sino-U.S. frictions, protests in Hong Kong, COVID-19 etc., it is fair to say that the Chinese government faces a veritable crisis of its international image (Jacob 2020; Silver, Devlin & Huang 2020; UHRP 2020: 12).
In response to this crisis, the government has taken a range of countermeasures to mitigate the fallout, manage its image and, if possible, create a counternarrative that casts China in a more positive light. One of the forums in which this contestation over meaning-making has played out most directly and prominently is the video-sharing platform YouTube. Though blocking it for domestic users, China’s government is, ironically, making highly active use of this platform to advance its messages globally. This paper focusses on the role played by Chinese state media – exemplified by China Global Television Network (CGTN) and New China TV (Xinhua) – in this contest. Our hypothesis is that China has stepped up its game in three main ways: First, it has intensified the propagation of its messages in quantitative terms to counter the international image crisis created by Xinjiang-related criticism. Second, the content of its messaging has become more varied as it has intentionally tried to link Xinjiang policies with international terrorism, but at the same time, also use it for a more general critique of ‘Western double standards’ and promotion of its own perspectives on human rights. Third, and most intriguingly, it has used innovative and creative ways of reporting to generate higher impact and more trustworthiness. CGTN/CCTV has long copied the style of CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera and other international news networks to stake out its own ground in terms of content. But more recently, China’s media products have become even more variegated, trying to make full use of social media to disseminate its messages.
Our primary data consists of all CGTN and Xinhua videos relating to Xinjiang posted on YouTube from the start of 2018 through September 2020.  In total, the sample contains more than six hundred files of varying length. Inspired by Vergani and Zuev (2011), we use a mixed-methods approach for analysis. First, we present a quantitative overview based on content analysis to outline the general trends of Chinese state media strategies on Xinjiang as found on YouTube. Second, we employ discourse analysis (Keller 2011) for a more in-depth examination outlining the main features of the discursive strategy adopted by Chinese state media in this case. Thus, our study contributes to an understanding of China’s crisis management – which can be compared to other crises such as the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. It also sheds light on China’s participation in media globalization more generally as well as on the specific representations and constructions of China’s Xinjiang policies and issues. It shows how the channels adopt Western (primarily American) media formats and discourses to frame their policy agenda in terms familiar to the target audience, while bandwagoning on the current fragmentation and politicization of news media in an era in which the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ have  become everyday accusations. But first, we discuss the internationalization of China’s state media influence more broadly.

El deseo de convertir a la agencia de noticias china Xinhua en una de “clase mundial” llevó a sus líderes a abrir oficinas alrededor del mundo desde 1948. En Latinoamérica, abrió su primera corresponsalía en La Habana, Cuba, en 1959. Desde entonces, ha establecido oficinas en 12 países de la región, incluyendo Costa Rica, en 1978. En el periodo 2011-2012, cuando se realizó este estudio, cinco personas trabajaban para la oficina de Xinhua en Costa Rica, incluyendo a dos periodistas locales; sin embargo, únicamente un periódico mantenía contrato de servicios con la agencia china y, de acuerdo con una de sus periodistas, utilizaba su información como tercera fuente de noticias. Esta condición de “desventaja” de Xinhua frente a las agencias de noticias occidentales “hegemónicas” (como EFE, AFP y CNN) entre los medios costarricenses motivó la presente investigación.

Wilbur Schramm’s “Soviet” communist model and J. Herbert Altschull’s “Marxist” approach have been widely used as general theoretical frameworks to examine press systems in the Marxist world in general and China in particular. Though a growing literature suggested significant changes in Chinese journalism in the past 2 decades, very few studies have sent a direct challenge to the 2 models’ theoretical wisdom through the Chinese case. This article finds neither of the 2 models is sufficient in conceptualizing the Chinese case because of Chinese news media’s transitional nature and the 2 models’ inner theoretical flaws as normative press theories. Furthermore, realizing the growing conflict between normative media theories and accelerated post-Cold War global media transformation, the author suggests using
a transitional media approach to revisit the traditional normative media approach and calls for a more systematic study of the transitional phenomenon of global media systems.