During the past 20 years, China has been undergoing the greatest changes in its history, earmarked by rapid economic growth. In 1997, the annual income of Chinese residents reached an average equivalence of 660 US dollars, an annual increase of about eight times than that in 1990 (Xie, 1998). The increase, though low as compared with the western standard, is remarkable considering the fact that China has a large population base of more than 1.2 billion.
The rapid economic growth has not only boosted the whole nation but promoted the development of its media system as well. In 1978, China had only 32 television stations and 93 radio stations (Chan, 1994); the number has jumped to 2,000 and 1,416 respectively in 1997 while the regular audience size has increased from 36.1 % in 1980 to 84.2% in 1996 for radio and 30% in 1980 to 86.3% in 1996 for television (Xie, 1998) . The number of newspapers in China has also risen from 186 in 1978 to 2,163 in 1996, an increase of almost 12 times, while journals have also flourished in China, with its number expected to be 930 in 1978 up to 8,135 in 1997. Advertising, once considered the capitalist taboo, has also seen fast development during this period. Since its debut in 1979, the total ad income of the above four media has been increasing at a rate of ten times every five years, reaching18.28 billion RMB yuan in 1996. (Xie, 1998).
This chapter aims to discuss the media development in China since 1978 to present, which can be divided into two periods, characterized by a combination of economic liberalization and political conservatism. In the First Period ( 1978-1990), despite the back and forward swings, media development in China has been consistent. In the Second Period (1991-present ) when the market economy concept gained recognition, the competitive consciousness has become dominant among the China’s media system, which has brought about changes unprecedented in the 5,000 years of China. The media development in Shanghai, the dragon head of China, has been taken as a showcase, to discuss the trends in the media development and the impact of economic momentum and political orientation in the whole process.
BACKBROUND
Politically, the media in China still remain in a Communist Concept (Merrill, 1983) as defined in the traditional Four Theories of Press. The Chinese media, owned and operated by the State, are regarded as the organs of the Communist Party of China and the government, not the watchdog of the government as is the case in the U.S. (Streitmatter, 1994). The freedom of press in the Western sense, thought discussed a lot recently, is still "particles in the air," something that is yet to come (Lee, 1990).
However, in terms of its economy, the media do not fit into the Communist Concept only anymore. They may fall more coherently into the Development Concept, a combination of the Authoritarian and Communist theories (Stevenson, 1994). This tendency has become more obvious in the Second Period (1991-present) when the media in China are endowed with a kind of dual functions: continue to be the voice of the government ( the political conservatism) while becoming the voice of the marketplace as well (economic liberalization).
While it is true that the government still exercises control over the media system, a notion to which most westerners would object, the control itself does not necessary mean the stagnation of the media system itself. In fact, reasonable control can encourage the development of the media system( Xie 1998), as has been demonstrated by the practice of China in the past 20 years.
FIRST PERIOD WITH THREE PHASES (1978-1990)
Media development in China in the First Period from 1978 to 1990 can further be discussed in three phases featured by political campaigns which aimed to rein in media development, thus signaling the end of each phase, but laid the foundation for the media development in the following phase.
The first phase began in 1978 and ended in 1984 when the campaign against "Spiritual Pollution" started. The second phase lasted from 1985 to 1986 when the brake was applied during the campaign against "Bourgeois Liberalization." The third phase reached its climax in 1989 when the government cracked down on the students' movement and fought against "peaceful evolution" by Western countries (Chu, 1994).
Though intended to rein in the media, each of these political campaigns has stimulated rather than suppressed the media development in each phase. In fact, media development was accelerated on an escalating scale in each phase and usually was coupled with renewed emphasis in the liberalization process.
First Phase (1978-84)
The year of 1978 is a watershed for Chinese politics and media development (Lee, 1994). A strategic shift was proclaimed as the nation began to adopt an open and reform policy that aimed to modernize the country.
One immediate and dramatic media change was the elimination of the pompous reporting style of the "Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)," summed up in the phrase "falsehood, exaggeration, and empty talk" (Polumbaum, 1990). Chinese media such as the People's Daily, the party's mouthpiece, called for shorter news reports and a more lively style with timeliness to cover growing economic activities.
The increased volume of information in media is another sign of progress in this phase. The People's Daily took the lead to increase its pages from four to six in 1978 and then to eight in 1980, while the number of magazines and newspapers rose greatly from 1978 to 1984, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1
| Year |
Magazines Total Printed Sheets(100 million) |
Newspapers Total Printed Sheets(100 million) |
| 1978 |
22.7 |
113.5 |
| 1979 |
30.1 |
123.0 |
| 1980 |
36.7 |
141.7 |
| 1981 |
45.4 |
133.6 |
| 1982 |
46.0 |
129.1 |
| 1983 |
52.5 |
142.7 |
| 1984 |
64.3 |
162.3 |
Source: China Journalism Yearbooks (various years) (Chu, 1994)
Besides, advertising began to appear in Chinese media for the first time after the long silence in the “Cultural Revolution,” although it did not get into full swing until after 1990. China's first TV ad, more of an announcement than an ad, made its debut in Shanghai on January 28, 1979 (Guo, 1993). The ad for a herbal wine lasted about one minute and 35 seconds, too long by the Western norm, but it represents the start of China's TV ad industry.
Meanwhile, journalism education also expanded rapidly (Polumbaum, 1990) in the early 1980s to meet the increasing demand of media development and to accelerate information flow, badly needed for the economic reforms. The number of journalism teachers and undergraduate students increased almost four times from 1980 to 1984 while the number of graduate students remained the same (Guo, 1993).
What's more, China started five international journalism programs 1983 which integrate English language training into journalism education. The six-year programs exposed students to a wide variety of Western journalism concepts under their English speaking journalism professors. These open-minded students have now constituted a major reform force to push forward media development in China.
Second Phase (1985-86)
Following the campaign against "spiritual pollution" in 1984, Chinese media were silenced for a while, especially after then-Party General Secretary HU Yaobang’s speech in 1985, which emphasized the media role as the organs of the government (Polumbaum, 1990). However, it seemed that the party leadership only paid lip service as it still tolerated liberal ideas in media practices such as independent editorials. Meanwhile, media practitioners asked for “a free hand” in the media content, which was supported by the Publicity Department (Polumbuam, 1990), the Chinese counterpart of U.S. Information Agency.
One major trend toward liberalization in this phase was a formal recognition of the entertainment function of media in the nation’s Seventh Five-Year Plan. The focus on entertainment coincided with the rapid development of television, a powerful medium of entertainment. In fact, television development and the focus on entertainment reinforced each other in their mutual growth during this phase.
Since 1985, entertainment has become an inseparable part of most Chinese TV stations. TV entertainment programs usually include music, opera, literature, variety shows, ballad singing, acrobatic shows as well as TV dramas. For Shanghai Television Station, entertainment programs comprised over 60% of all air time in 1986 (Guo, 1993).
Of the entertainment fare, TV drama is the most popular. After 1983, TV dramas, produced and aired, saw an exponential speed. Foreign TV dramas also began to appear on Chinese screens. In 1986, the Chinese dubbed Walt Disney cartoon series “Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck” became a national favorite as soon as it was broadcast over the Central China Television Station (CCTV).
In fact, foreign TV dramas were generally preferred as there were few high-quality domestic TV series during this phase. In a national survey by CCTV in 1987, 72 percent of the respondents favored foreign dramas (Yu, 1992).
In 1983, as the nation decided to build a nationwide television system by the end of this century, state expenditures on television began to increase. In 1985, the expenditure jumped to 1,780 million yuan (over $210 million) as compared with 670 million yuan ($83 million) in 1980 (Lee, 1994). The pouring financial resources led to rapid television development in this phase. The number of TV stations in 1986 was almost six times that in 1983 while TV set ownership per 100 households rose from 88 % in1983 to 103% in 1986 and the TV audience size expanded from 400 million in 1983 to 580 million in 1986(Yu, 1990).
Third Phase (1987-90)
This phase, studied meticulously in the Western world, saw the most dramatic social changes in China, which resulted from the media development itself. While maintaining the liberalizing trends in the first two phases, China's media system in this phase gained greater momentum, trying to obtain freedom of press and political independence rather than just petitioning for them in the previous two phases. Action for independence and democracy became a reality rather than just lip service.
World Economic Herald, started in Shanghai and banned in 1989, was considered as a pioneer in the West in this process of "peaceful evolution." There also appeared Western-minded opinion leaders like Fang Lizhi and Qin Benli who were encouraged by then-Premier Zhao Ziyang’s work report in1987 that did not mention the media’s role as an official mouthpiece (Polumbaum, 1990). The results reflected in journalistic operations were a more diversified style of news reporting and a greater openness about information. Bad news and critical reports (negative reports), seldom seen since 1957, began to re-appear in the media (Polumbuam, 1990). In this period, the negative reports has always comprised more than 10 % of the total number of news stories for some major newspapers such as People’s Daily, Jiefang Daily, Wenhui Daily and China Daily, China’s only national English-language newspaper (Guo, 1993). The increase of the negative reports was taken as a sign on the media side to push for more reforms in the government work and to ask for more freedom and independence in their media practice, which, to some degree, led to the massive student’s demonstration in 1989.
Besides, media development in this phase also was motivated by the influx of external influences in the form of "cultural imperialism" (Stevenson, 1994). Foreign broadcasts from the Voice of America (VOA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) enjoyed much popularity among Chinese audiences and exercised great influence on them, which the Chinese government accused of trying to undermine the stability in China through propaganda (Guo, 1993). Major influences also came from the inflow of official imported foreign media culture such as movies, soap operas, foreign news and even talks shows and sit-coms (Chan, 1994). The foreign programs on Shanghai Television Station (STV), the second largest in China, increased almost four times from 1985 ( 11.8%) to 1990 (42.6%) (Chan, 1994).
SECOND PERIOD WITH COMPETITION MODEL ( 1991 ~ PRESENT)
After the Tiananmen Square Event in 1989, many Western media scholars and politicians predicted a deadlock in the media development in China. Ironic as it may be, a new competition model of media development debuted in Shanghai. The new model went into operation on October 28, 1992, when an independent 24-hour radio station known as Oriental Radio Station (ORS) was established and an independent TV station, Oriental Television Station (OTV), was set up three months later, on January 18, 1993.
The establishment of ORS and OTV has ended the monopoly history of one radio station and one television station in one Chinese city since 1949. These new stations started fierce competition, on an equal basis, in the market, with the existing Shanghai People's Radio Station (SPRS) and Shanghai Television Station (STV).
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