Organization of the media industry in China
History and situation of Chinese media industry
The Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party have direct supervision and control over the country’s mass media, which primarily consists of television, newspapers, radio, magazines, and the internet. Most of the content that people can receive and publish is extremely limited, and people rarely discuss politics because the censors remove any ‘inappropriate comments’ immediately. Almost all media in mainland China was state-run from the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until the 1980s.
Private media outlets did not emerge until the early stages of economic reform, with official media outlets such as Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, and People’s Daily dominating the market. China has very little press freedom and consistently ranks low in the world in terms of press freedom. This is very restrictive and hindering China’s overall development as a powerful force for development in the world. The majority of China’s traditional media is owned by the government and widely distributed.
The rise of Alibaba and Tencent
With the development of some private investors, new business models are rapidly emerging. A growing number of private companies, such as Alibaba and Tencent are taking part in, transforming the Chinese media landscape into one that is more innovative. News and information applications are gradually replacing traditional newspapers. The internet has quickly become one of China’s primary sources of information. Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu are currently the most important online platforms.
However, it is well known that there is an internet wall between China and the rest of the world and that people inside the wall are unable to access social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. To gain access to foreign networks, a small number of people use VPN. However, due to the recent outbreak of protests in China and abroad against the covid zero policy, most VPN that were available have been removed.
Where is the future?
According to Robert W. McChesney, almost all defences of the privileges granted to commercial media systems, often by media owners themselves, are based on the idea that the media play an important, if not critical, role in providing an institutional foundation for an informed and engaged citizenry.In 2012 and 2018, the Chinese Communist Party launched two rounds of massive purges against media and self-publishing, respectively, leaving Chinese media without a monitoring function and Chinese society further removed from its citizens. For a long time, society had only one voice, and all media propagated and amplified that voice, keeping society moving in one direction and excluding other possibilities, there is still a long way to go for the development of media democracy in China.
However, social media has the potential to contribute significantly to the democratisation of political communication, the growth of social media can be viewed as an opportunity to advance democracy, with e-democracy in some countries solved some social problems and advancing democracy even further in others where it is already established. Increased online interaction will increase transparency and expand the volume of information sources, providing the public with more channels to receive information, bypassing the filtering function of traditional media, allowing marginalised groups to participate in public decision-making outside of institutionalised channels, and contributing to the formation of public opinion.As a result, despite the very limited content of information published, social software like WeChat and Weibo in China cannot hide people’s voices. When it comes to issues that need to be erased, even if officials delete the content, people will always find unnoticed metaphors to express their feelings. This was unusual in the past, so social media plays an important role in the development of democracy.