2007 China Media Yearbook & Directory, 2007

May a hundred flowers eternally bloom

By James F. Paradise

This review was originally published by AsiaMedia on March 22, 2007. Republished by permission

2007 China Media Yearbook & Directory
CMM Intelligence (HK) Ltd., €450.

Bloggers versus bureaucrats. Bureaucrats against each other. Old media versus new media. The Chinese government's love-hate relationship with foreign companies.

These are some of the main fault lines in China's new media environment. How the tensions are resolved will go a long way toward determining what kind of media industry China will have in the coming years. One safe prediction is that the Chinese government will fight tooth and nail to control and manage media change, and that Chinese regulators will be working overtime to keep up with fast-changing technologies and new kinds of media expression. There will be some citizen journalism in China, but it will exist between a rock and a hard place, at least for the time being.

There are now in China something like 30 million blogs, 59 million users of bulletin-board services and a large number of websites focused on user-generated content, according to the 2007 China Media Yearbook & Directory (CMYD), a publication of CMM Intelligence that contains a lot of interesting statistical information, lively commentary, and the names, addresses and contact information for major players in the China media industry. Combine these numbers with the large economic inequalities and the variety of social problems afflicting China, and there could be some serious stress points in the years ahead. As long as the economy continues to grow and as long as people remain focused on making money, problems may remain contained. But if the economy seriously weakens or more attention is focused on the darker side of economic progress, then all bets are off.

To prevent such an occurrence, the government is taking preemptive action. Besides doing what it can to keep the economy humming along (and it should be said that the China enthusiasts still probably outnumber the China doomsayers by a large margin, though recently people have been taking a more critical look at the country's success), the government is engaged in a jihad to get the new media forms and technologies under control. Last autumn, reports said that China was moving toward a system in which bloggers would be required to register their real names (though apparently pseudonyms could still be used online) and there have been concerns that user-generated content, such as videos, might need approval before being distributed on the Internet. At the end of January, People's Daily Online reported that the first blog site in China in which real names had to be used online was set up.

Complicating the situation are serious turf battles within the Chinese government. On some issues, there can be cooperation, such as when 14 government departments recently issued a directive that local governments could not allow any new Internet bars or cafés to open this year, or when a number of ministries came together to create new regulations for the Internet uploading of user-generated videos. But on other issues there can be serious conflict.

One issue on which there is conflict is IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television. The CMYD says that the conflict is between the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, much of whose activity has traditionally been focused on broadcasting, and the Ministry of Information Industry, which is more telecommunications-focused. As the book puts it, "Until there is a unified regulatory structure where one body has control over both the pipes and the content, IPTV initiatives in China will continue to exist in a policy purgatory: neither completely legal or illegal." Some change could happen in late 2007 when a "ministry re-shuffle" is thought to take place -- the South China Morning Post reports that the Ministry of Information is moving toward network convergence and that this might increase its power -- but what this might mean for the Chinese media industry as a whole is not dealt with by the book.

As if the domestic challenges were not enough, the Chinese government also has to worry about the large number of foreign companies pounding at its door. On one hand, the Chinese government may be very receptive to assistance from foreign companies in the area of television co-production with the approach of the Beijing Olympics, and there may be opportunities associated with the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and the development of digital television in China, says a report by Deloitte (PDF).

But the government also wants to keep foreigners at bay in content areas where its control extends only so far. The CMYD offers as examples of efforts to limit the influence of foreign companies in China an informal ban (through the withholding of approvals) on the import of Korean and U.S. television dramas from the second half of 2006, a stop to new foreign magazines in China unless they deal with science or technology, and the reversal of a decision to allow foreign newspapers to be published in China.

Fears of being inundated by foreign cultures may be one factor driving the Chinese government and local protectionism another. But the protectionism may have not only to do with foreign companies versus Chinese companies, but also between old media and new media as it applies to China in general. Says the CMYD: "The robust development of the online industry as driven by new companies threatens not only to undermine the government's traditional means of social administration, but also threatens to weaken the hold of traditional media players over the masses." This is causing the Chinese government to protect "entrenched players" while it closes regulatory loopholes that could benefit newly-rising media companies, the book says.

As the different conflicts play out in the coming years, one thing should be clear: citizen journalism in China will not be the same as in the West. People will engage in all sorts of self-expression, in real-time online forums, YouTube-types of websites, online diaries and so on, but all of this will take place under heavy administrative supervision, much more so than in the West. Thus Web 2.0 in China will have its own unique characteristics: it will be cleaner and less political (though there should not be any problem expressing nationalist sentiments) and more in tune with the desires of a nanny government. Whether the government can completely control and manage the media environment in an era when market forces are producing unintended consequences is doubtful, but the government will certainly try to steer things in a direction that keeps China a "harmonious society", one not prone to destabilizing influences sometimes seen elsewhere.

************************************************************

James F. Paradise is an AsiaMedia writer and advisor. He has more than a decade of experience reporting from Asia and is currently researching China’s participation in the World Trade Organization. AsiaMedia provides daily coverage of media trends and policies.