Conclusion

This concluding chapter discusses and reflects on the three key perspectives of dynamics both within and outside the field of foreign correspondence: the habitus of individual journalists, the journalistic logic in newsrooms and in the press corps as an interpretative community, and state coercion of the host country as well as different media cultures. It looks back at the various power relations that structure the field of China correspondence, as identified in preceding chapters, and how China correspondents perceive these pressures. In general, China correspondents perceive a hierarchical level of influence from the identified power relations. Individual habitus, both journalistic (‘professional value’) and Chinese (‘China-related experience’), and difficulty in information access in China are perceived as the most influential forces shaping their news production. China correspondents, while operating on a journalistic logic, are considerably influenced by heteronomous pressures typically in the forms of state coercion and national media cultures. These key external non-journalistic pressures, as well as the innate social and cultural gap, define the ‘unreportability’ of the rising authoritarian China. While acknowledging the still prominent heteronomous pressures that are cramping the autonomy of the field of China correspondence, the study reports on a tendency, even though only partial and mild, towards a globalized journalistic culture within the globalization in the broader social space. Hence, we hope in this chapter that given a change to less restrictive coercion on the press and civil society in China, the theme of ‘unreportable’ fades in reporting China; both China and the international community would benefit.