Media, Market, and Democracy in China

Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line

Author: Yuezhi Zhao

Contradictions and synchronicity in the history of Chinese media

Paper – $25

978-0-252-06678-8

Publication Date

Paperback: 01/01/1998

Series: The History of Media and Communication

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About the Book

How do market forces influence the media in China? How does the Party both introduce and try to contain the market's influence? How do commercial imperatives both accommodate and challenge Party control?

Yuezhi Zhao interviewed a wide range of scholars, media administrators, and media professionals to answer these and other questions. Working in China in 1994 and 1995, she monitored media content, carried out extensive documentary research in Beijing, and held off-the-record meetings with Chinese media insiders. What she found informs an in-depth look at the intertwining nature of the Communist Party and the news media in China, how they affect each other, and what the future might hold for each.

A rare on-the-ground portrait, Media, Market, and Democracy in China is must reading for scholars, media and business professionals, and policymakers who need to understand what happened to China and its mass media during a period of dynamic growth and change.

About the Author

Yuezhi Zhao is a professor in the School of Communications at Simon Fraser University. Her books include Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict.

Reviews

"Offers a vivid, authoritative, and nuanced topical view of the state of the Chinese journalistic media during a period of epochal transition."--Dan Schiller, author of Theorizing Communications: A History