ABSTRACT
The one-sided depiction of the some realms is perhaps at least partly due to the fact that the public realm happens to coincide politically with the formal institutional structure, the private with the inner court and their informal organization. If the Chinese Communist revolution endeavored to override and reverse certain elements of traditional Chinese political culture, with regard to the public/private distinction and its implications the impact seems to have been rather to reinforce the momentum of the past. The Western concept of the public presumes diversity and internal contradiction, particularly in the American "melting pot," but also in all systems with low economic and political entry barriers. The Chinese draw a rough distinction between two forms of political privatization: formal and informal. The concept of "publicity" in contemporary China is derived from the age-old concept of the "public". Economic reform has also substantially expanded the diversity of China's media structure, content, and audience constituencies.
