Commercialized Media & Reconfigured Power Relations

 

What have we looked at so far? 

Week 2: Theoretical Framework of Chinese Media & Culture

  • How to understand the political, economic transformation in China?
  • We do so by looking at theories and debates 
  • 2 ideological orientations
  • 3 themes
  • 4 contending perspectives 

Week 3: Censorship & Media 

  • The Party-State and how it controls media
  • Introduction of the market economy and development of capitalism
  • Structures of media and how they evolved with capitalism 

Week 4: Securing Commanding Heights

Chapter Summary

  • We have examined how the party state exercises decentralized control and power. 
  • Now let's switch gears and focus on how the party state turns media institutions and communication systems as tools for capital accumulation and hegemonic power.
  • These changes have allowed for an economic transformation and has contributed to the redefining class relations in China
  • Ultimately, the media and culture sector plays multiple roles in forming class structure. 
  • The media becomes a site of production and economic exchange, providing subjectivity to social organization
  • We will examine examples of commercialization strategies to explain the relationship between party state and media sector
  • We are to examine the political and economic factors that marginalize the lower class 

Class, Power, Transformation of Party State Media & Culture Sector

Party State

Propaganda

Dept

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Mass Media

Propaganda

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Mass Media

Advertising

Revenue

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  • Commercial revolution began with implementation of business, cost accounting structure.
  • "Cause oriented undertakings managed as business oriented enterprises"
  • Ultimately, this system denoted a cultural reform in the media as it provided public goods therefore was eligible for tax breaks yet was expected to raise revenue thru market oriented activities

Class, Power, Transformation of Party State Media & Culture Sector

Propaganda

Dept

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Mass Media

Advertising

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  • As a result, China experienced waves of market-driven business expansion: more weekend tabloids and lifestyle news oriented stories
  • By end of 2005, advertising industry  included 125,394 businesses and 940,415 people, with total revenue of 141.63 billion yuan.
  • Advertising accounted for 0.78% of total GDP in comparison to the 0.04% in 1983

Why follow a neoliberal model?

  • Market oriented development faced hesitations, especially by old leftists concerned about erosion of socialist values and nature of the media system
  • But the energy for this reform came from calculated neoliberal state policy initiatives from pressures of developing marketing economy and the force to modernize the media system
  • Not to mention how originally, media wasn't making money (state subsidies were a burden)
  • The commercialization of media was eventually embraced by the party, and heavily supported.

Example: The General Administration for Press & Publication (GAPP) forced newspapers to raise percentage of advertisement revenue in total revenue by 10% (p.78)

News Creates Values

 

  • With the decline and withdrawal of subsidies and increase ability of the  state to pay media workers a better wage, the party state media industry became a profit driven operation
  • News creates values - societal but moreover monetary values. 
  • Potential to be exploited for economic gains

Ex. CCTV4 prioritized financial gain over sensitivity as they covered a school hostage in Russia, and flashed a survey poll that viewers could text and participate. The profits were shared by leading communication companies

  • Where can CCTV draw the line for social values? What limits are the neoliberal market rationality in state media? 
  • Another way to ensure financial gains is through compulsory subscriptions employed by the public offices. This is a dominant form of distribution for central and provincial party organs
  • Commercial revolution prompted publication of urban subsidiaries by central party organs, creating rounds of competition in a highly competitive market
  • Chinese media's transformation is unique because rather than privatizing, it was able to introduce market driven initiatives within the confines of the party organ structure.
  • They set up multifaceted organizational structures. Like the licensing system  and sponsor unit system, which ensured that no media business could be set up as an independent venture.
  • All media have to be registered under a recognized publisher or sponsor
  • In this way, party committees and party organs have been structured in dominance with policy ensured advantage in conquering the market. 

Ultimately, we have seen the party incorporate people within the media. It has engendered market driven and urban middle class oriented press without transcending party organ structure. This is demonstrated in the daily newspaper sector. 

China's Daily Newspaper

The types of newspaper that appeal:

  1. Evening papers: general interest social and entertainment oriented
  2. Metro Papers: morning dailies, subsidiary of provincial and national party organs 
  • These papers had mass appeal and became semi autonomous business units for the party organs, serving as perfect vehicle for part to reach a rising urban consumer-audience. 
  • Dailies allowed party to reconstitute power and functioned as cash cows, that cross subsidize and sustain party organs.

Reconstituting Class Power Through Media Commercialization

Because of commercialization, patterns of inclusion and exclusion in accessing media as source of political, socio-economic discourse led to a redefinition of social relations

This involved 2 processes

  1. Re-enfranchisement of the media elite as cultural component of the ruling block through their work

2. Re-articulation of ruling ideas, the reformation of social consciousness and the reconstitutions of the population's subjectivities as part of the restructuring of structural power relations within society

  • Party state media became an vested interest group
  • Thanks to financial decentralization, and incentive based profit retaining bonus schemes, the party state media was able to offer employment opportunity, the best incomes and a job affiliated with glamour and social status
  • Zhao argues that the commercialization of media works as a double edged sword.

On one hand:

On the other

  • Has made necessary  institutional imperatives for media to pursue innovation, and offer challenging content as opposed to boring, generic stories.
  • Media organizations and media managers developed vested interested while sustaining the current political economic order by following the party line and pursing financial gains.

The media trade political obedience for state's sustenance of their monopolistic operations.

  • Corruption not only becomes an ethical issue, but becomes a systematic means of redistribution and contributes to the uneven distribution of wealth in China in the mid 1990's
  • It becomes a predatory form of market relations in which the public and private agents define the terms of the market transactions at the expense of both the agenda of the state and more generalized norms of the market.
  • Although corruption undermines effectiveness of state policies and erodes state legitimacy, corruption plays a key role in forming the ruling political class and contributes to the consolidation of class rule under the one party structure

Examples:

  • CCTV'S Zhao An, former programming director: sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking bribes
  • He was a powerful art programming director and produced important important cultural occasions.
  • Guilty of "indoctrainment" fusing propaganda with spectacularity in TV 

Working for the media

  • Media sector employed 1.7% of the total workforce of 744 million (2003)
  • These jobs were highly stratified
  • CCTV had 5 classes of permanent employees, flexible casual workers, with different job security and welfare entitlements
  • These epitomized the hierarchical, highly exploitive and feudal labor structure in the media industry
  • Mirroring the patriarchal nature of Chinese power relations, the media demonstrated top down, male dominance
  • Conflicts between hierarchical structures exist, and small intra-elite conflict. "Dominated among the dominant"

Advertising

  • Advertising became the core of the revenue
  • In 2003, the Shanghai Morning Post received 74% of revenue from ads & only 13% of profit from circulation
  • As a result, cost of advertising is higher in China
  • Chinese press are heavily depended on a form of ads, national advertisers and large corporations have wielded substantive power over media content
  • Ad based financing resulting in a reorientation of ideologies
  • They want mass audiences with brand loyalty, which mutually reinforces the relationship with promotion of nationalism
  • This changes the understanding of entertainment and culture as a site of capital accumulation and symbolic consumption by citizen consumer.
  • Advertisement becomes a form of propaganda in the market system
  • It replaces political propaganda with similar ideological consequences to Maoist messages. 

Maoist

  • promotes cult of political personality
  • instructs politicized subjects of socialist state to dedicate transient life to transcendental cause of serving the people

Commercial

  • speech cultivates commodity fetishism
  • directs the all consuming subjects to devote their limited life to an unlimited world of wealth and accumulation and personal consumption in a consumer society 

to consume = politically correct

  • Political slogans became brand names and the idea of the Cultural Revolution became a decorative motif in dining and entertainment establishments 
  • As mentioned, this leads to a reorientation of Chinese media with profound political and ideological implications
  • This also faciliated the promotion of official nationalism and mass entertainment  

Ultimately, consumerism and mass entertainment rose in China through 

  • The mutually reinforcing relationship between mass audiences and official nationalism found through the pursuit of wealth, power, and national dignity. 
  • This changes the understanding of entertainment and culture as a site of capital accumulation and symbolic consumption by citizen consumer.

Chinese Dramas & Entertainment

  • Culture industry arrived in 1990 with CCTV's broadcast of Aspirations as China's first successful soap opera.
  • The popularity of the show marked an ideological breakthrough in the party's approach to media.
  • It embraced human interests and morality play. 
  • Finally, it seemed Chinese TV had caught up with mainstream American style TV
  • Intensive competition broke out between proliferating TV channels
  • Hunan Satellite TV eliminated programs that didn't fit the entertainment category,  even if the project was successful
  • This is because the TV industry prioritized uplifting and light entertainment as safest and fasted way to popularity and money 
  • If ads mobilized the audience to pursue happiness through the consumption of material goods, entertainment shows mobilize the audience to pursue happiness and Chinese identity affirmation through the consumption of TV discourses
  • Culture was a cheaper item of consumption
  • Commercialization has engendered a general structure bias towards value orientations, and tastes of advertisers most sought after affluent urban consumers and the business strata in coastal areas, and ultimately neglect farmers, low income women and other marginalized groups. 
  • This social bias is presented in the lack of attention to rural topics in entertainment and the absence of specialty channels dedicated to the needs of socially identifiable groups and the proliferation of speciality channels catering to the lifestyle of urban class consumers. 
  • The system of structured asymmetries in relation to power is not directly constituted by state control, this is the result of intersecting dynamics of political control and carefully managed market liberalization
  • The twin process of economic enfranchisement/ dispossession and social inclusion and exclusion was vital and is demonstrated in social communication
  • The party state sets the the tone, the press actively orchestrates the discourse and the voices of the elite dominate, but are presented as the general voice of the nation
  • The twin process of economic enfranchisement/ dispossession and social inclusion and exclusion was vital and is demonstrated in social communication
  • Commercial media is more diverse, less manipulative. We must recognize the new mobilizing and disciplinary role and the new power relations it serves to establish and legitimize. 
  • Within this chapter, we have examined how the media and cultural sector has a dual role in the process of class formation.
  • Commercialization strategies in media resulted in consolidation, monopolistic attitudes and media became very profit driven
  • As a result, we see a rise in advertising and mass entertainment 
  • The actors within the media are highly corrupted and work to better the lives of the elite, but claim to speak a universal language for the general public
  • The chapter examines issues of ownership, property rights, corporate identity and sustains an examination of how these factors conspire to marginalize subaltern voices of society 
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