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Communication and Class Divide in China, Vol. 19 - 2012, No. 2
Your Show’s Been Cut: The Politics of Intellectual Publicity in China’s Brave New Media World
This paper examines the increasingly important communication politics between the media and intellectual fields in China’s brave new media world. It starts by outlining key factors that have shaped the evolving post-1989 politics of intellectual publicity in China. It then describes a deep “liberal versus new left” division within the Chinese intellectual field and the ascending power of the Nanfang Weekend and liberal intellectual alliance within China’s CCP-controlled media system. In a subsequent case study, I analyse how the destructive logics of media sensationalism, academic corruption, ideological polarisation, and “liberal media instrumentalism” have intersected to spectacularise intellectual in-fights and distract both the media and the academy from engaging the public around the urgent political economic and social issues of the day.