Communication, Development and Social Participation in China, Vol. 27 - 2020, No. 2
Guest Edited by Yuezhi Zhao and Jing Wu
Mediatised Politics: A Persepctive for Understanding Political Communication in China
Through multiple case studies, this essay attempts to paint a general picture of “mediatised politics” in China. The author first discusses several phenomena typical in Chinese political communication, such as government Public Relations training, Internet public opinion guidance, government communication on social media, and regional branding. He then analyses the historical origins of “the mediatization of publicity” and “the public-relations oriented transformation of government administration” in China, and the complex influences they have had on the country’s society and culture. With these descriptions and analyses, the author provides a new perspective to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese communication, especially vis-à-vis the relationship between the Party state and media.
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Lessons from Weibo: Media Convergence and Contemporary Chinese Politics
This paper focuses on the historical relationship between new media development and Chinese politics that led to the formation of the Chinese state’s strategy on media convergence in 2014. Specifically, it analyses a series of influential public controversies in China’s microblog or Weibo sphere in the formative years of Weibo’s development (2011–2012) to reveal the profound class biases, partisan excesses, as well as symbolic violence of Weibo as a platform for public deliberation on Chinese politics. The degeneration of Weibo politics and its anti-democratic nature foreshadowed the state’s intention to steer the direction of media convergence to ensure that the process will not be hijacked by elite interests so as to sustain some resemblance to the CCP’s traditional mass line mode of political communication. However, how to realize the state’s vision remains a formidable task.
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Chinese Blockbusters and Culture Self-Confidence
Along with the market-oriented development of the Chinese economy in the reform-era, the country’s once highly-political revolutionary arts and cultural realm has been transformed into commercialised mass culture. Specifically, the accelerated market-oriented restructuring of the Chinese film industry since 2000 has turned China into the world’s second largest film market. At the same time, it has also led to the recent emergence of domestic commercial blockbusters that both bolster official values and enjoy successful market returns. Encompassing titles such as Wolf Warrior II (2017), Operation Red Sea (2018), The Wandering Earth (2019) and My People, My Country (2019), these films, not short of spectacular Hollywood-calibre visual effects, express the culture self-confidence of a rising Chinese nation as they reflect the cultural taste of a rapidly expanding new Chinese film audience.
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The Mirage and Politics of Participation in China’s Platform Economy
Despite considerable attention paid to the roles played by digital platforms in mediating and organising the economy and sociality, there is a dearth of knowledge about how the platform economy is operationalised, discursively, politically, and practically in China. The article explicates the semantic deployment of the term platform in the national development policies generally and the specific manifestations in the policies and praxis of ride-hailing and food-delivery services – two of the fastest-growing sectors in China’s platform economy. The study contextualises the framework and rationale behind the governmental promotion of the platform economy in the state’s long-term efforts to be part of the global digital capitalism. It also charts the persistent and shifting struggles facing workers in the new socio-technical and economic landscape in which digital platforms play a crucial role. The article demonstrates how the characterisation of digital platforms as participatory infrastructures for (new) jobs takes precedence in contemporary China. Juxtaposing policies with praxis, it is argued that the mirage of participation conceals an emerging digital infrastructure of distribution to the disadvantage of the workers, which may eventually undermine the development agenda.
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When Anxious Mothers Meet Social Media: Wechat, Motherhood and the Imaginary of the Good Life
In this article I have tried to unpack the anxiety of Chinese middle-class mothers through examining the dialectics of structural changes and discursive shifts. The theoretical premises are that, on the one hand, China’s highly compressed modernisation process has had a major impact on parenting arrangements and parenting ethos; on the other hand, the practice of mothering and the imaginary of motherhood have significant implications for social reproduction. Combining empirical materials collected through a social media platform, in-depth interviews and focus groups, I have teased out the classed imaginaries of good mothering and how these are subsequently linked to imaginaries of the good life.
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The Shared Time of the Mass Line: Economics, Politics and Participation in a Chinese Village
The development and spread of capitalism speeds up society and reconfigures social relations. This process is under way in the West, urban China and even in China’s countryside. Heyang village presents a case study of the historical processes of, and controversy over, these developments. A review of three main epochs of the temporal implications in China’s engagement with the West highlights the relevance of the Chinese Communist Party’s mass line as a response to the capitalistic development of social relations. Ethnographic research and focus group interviews with residents and leaders of Heyang indicate the need and the opportunity to rejuvenate the mass line as a means for leaders and the people to once again share time in order to address problems of unity within the village.
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A Sound and Fury Signifying Mediatisation: On The Hong Kong Protests, 2019
This article examines the massive protests and global media event known as the “anti-extradition protests” in Hong Kong during 2019. The protests became the most live-streamed movement ever, and were narrated globally, though not in China, as an exemplary, brave demand for democracy and freedom against the P.R.C.'s intrusions. I argue that the event and movement can also be read as an apt example of mediatisation, or the media direction if not command of the geo-political sphere. From one perspective the movement was a spectacular success in garnering media sympathy and attention, even generating American legislation in support of Hong Kong's “freedom.” And yet the mainland's refusal to intervene into or pacify the conflict, despite deliberate, extreme provocations to make it do so, also suggest strong limits to global mediatisation. The movement may have triggered a new approach for Chinese resistance to mediatisation.
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Understanding China’s Developmental Path: Towards Socialist Rejuvenation?
As we arrive at a critical juncture in the contestations for a new global order in which China and communication intersect to assume pivotal roles, it has become more urgent than ever to understand China’s developmental path on its own terms. Such a task, however, is becoming increasingly challenging and politically-charged. Against the tide of describing reform-era China in terms of all forms of capitalism and thereby feeding into the long-discredited “end of history” discourse, this paper overviews political economic, ideological, and cultural changes under Xi Jinping’s New Era from a historical and endogenous perspective. Neither taking “socialism with Chinese characteristics” at face value nor ignoring it, the analysis demonstrates the enduring legacy of the Chinese communist revolution on China’s nation-building and developmental efforts, and the CCP’s abilities in creatively reclaiming this legacy and mobilising cultural resources to sustain its hegemony.
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