Chinese Media Studies

Chinese president Xi Jinping has advanced the “China Dream as a strategic narrative framing of China’s
current and future geopolitical role. As a policy slogan, it provides unique insight in understanding the function of
Chinese media in developing a discursive geopolitical framework for China. This study analyzed 885 articles from 19
Chinese news sites to determine how the China Dream was framed and its implications for the formation of foreign
policy in China. Analysis revealed four primary dimensions to the China Dream: economic development, a return to
strength, cultural prestige, and support of CCP ideology. Those components were used differentially in the
construction of two predominant narrative trajectories for the China Dream: one domestic and one international. These
narratives had three outcomes: 1) an alternative to a U.S. led world order, 2) the argument for a peaceful Chinese rise,
and 3) the longevity of the Chinese Communist Party.

Since emerging in Britain during the 1920s, public service broadcasting [PSB] has taken root in Western societies characterised by democratic institutions and pluralistic values. This pattern is beginning to change. Despite significant
differences in its political conditions and policies, since 2006 the central government of the People’s Republic of China has undertaken construction of a PSB system of its own. The result, as described in this article, is a new form of top-down public communications network with similarities to both Chinese
and European precedents. Coinciding with the new emphasis placed by the Chinese state on public cultural service [PCS], a vigorous academic debate has also emerged concerning
how basic cultural rights, such as equal access to state-owned media in both urban and rural locations, should be guaranteed and protected. Academic researchers and state officials seem to agree that China’s PSB system plays an important role in achieving such aims, and advocate the establishment and
expansion of a system attuned to China’s social conditions. These developments come at a time when public service media [PSM] around the world face serious economic challenges that have been exacerbated by global recession. We
note in contrast that the Chinese state is beginning to take initiatives in major urban areas to extend PSB and other public information services (e.g. digital information resources, museums, and libraries) to citizens, and that PSB will
likely continue to expand there as a result. These developments raise interesting questions concerning the origins and
role of PSB within an ostensibly authoritarian society, and the extent to which media’s public service functions can co-exist with a state-owned broadcasting sector. Here we address these questions by first examining normative conceptions of PSB in Western Europe – the cradle of its emergence – and China. In our view, debate over the meanings and goals of PSB can explain, if not predict, the shape of public media within a variety of historical and national contexts.
We begin by addressing questions of fundamental importance: which functions of PSB are given precedence at the expense of others? To what ends are these functions intended? Next we summarise the policy environment and other key conditions that are giving rise to PSB as a sector in China. We
conclude with examination of PSB expansion in the local context to add an empirical perspective on the state’s normative rhetoric. Throughout the chapter
we consider the degree to which PSB is sustainable in China, and argue that the answer is wholly dependent on how one defines ‘public’ within an authoritarian context, and whether institutional and fiscal support for this new concept will continue in the period of China’s next Five-Year Plan and beyond. As we demonstrate, although initiative for the development of PSB has been predominantly generated by the state, opening this door has allowed a range of actors to enter into debates concerning the legitimacy of individual cultural,
political, and civil rights – all under the rubric of public service. This, in turn, gives rise to the possibility that although PSM in China remains state-controlled, its function and content are not solely determined by the central government. There is possibility that PCS policies in China may not only create new publics but also new public media advocates, whose borrowing from a range of international models may yet revive interest in Europe’s embattled sector. Indeed, many familiar debates concerning how to balance PSM independence with
political and financial viability are now taking place in China today. Gaining the initiative there may have something useful to contribute to discussion about regaining the initiative elsewhere.