Changing Media, Changing China

Political scientist Susan L. Shirk, a University of California-San Diego professor who served as a US State Department East Asia specialist during the Clinton administration, has edited this collection of essays with the stated focus on “how transformations in the information environment . . . are changing China” (p. 1). An equally important theme is the converse: how political and economic changes are opening up new spaces and producing new relationships in the information environment. The 10 chapters might be grouped in three categories, starting with background/ overview pieces, including Shirk’s introductory chapter, primarily a descriptive preview of the remaining contents; a broad-ranging disquisition by University of Hong Kong scholars and frequent co-authors Qian Gang and David Bandurski on trends in Chinese journalism, explored through interactions of commercialization, professionalization and new technologies; and Communication University of China scholar Miao Di’s explanation of developments in China’s TV industry. The second group consists of chapters that shed light on narrower topics and whose merits are more informational than analytical. These include noted magazine editor Hu Shuli’s introduction to China’s business media; a discussion of environmental journalism by scholar Zhan Jiang of Beijing Foreign Studies University, well known for his organization and promotion of conferences on Chinese investigative journalism; Tai Ming Cheng’s chapter on the quite novel topic of China’s military journalism; Daniela Stockmann’s inquiry into citizen informationseeking patterns under circumstances she characterizes as a “public opinion crisis”; and Shirk’s closing chapter about media influences on China’s foreign policy. Finally, the two remaining chapters, Benjamin Liebman’s study of the relationship between China’s courts and media, and Xiao Qiang’s study of the implications of online communications for China’s political evolution, address specific questions with careful, well-substantiated analysis and appropriately qualified arguments. These two essays represent refreshing departures from the standard control-versus-freedom perspective, in which Chinese Communist Party and government on the one hand are pitted against journalistic integrity and public interest, facilitated by market forces, on the other. They articulate the dynamics of institutional change especially well, within a framework that is mindful of the many crosscurrents and contradictions within as well as among key agencies and actors. As Shirk notes in her introduction, this collection underscores the intensity of competition among China’s news outlets and the inability of the propaganda apparatus to keep pace with new sources and new technologies. Most of the writers examine both deliberate and inadvertent loosening of media controls, and comment on government ambivalence about attempting to balance advantages of an open information environment with the increased risks of collective action that freer expression ostensibly makes possible. As Qian Gang and Bandurski put it, authorities