ABSTRACT
Introduction The “cultural public service” policy introduced by the Chinese government in the middle 2000s has prompted renewed discussions on the public service functions of broadcasters in China. After emerging first in Britain during the 1920s, public service broadcasting (PSB) has taken root in societies characterized by democratic institutions and pluralistic values. This pattern is beginning to change. Despite significant differences in its political conditions and policies, since 2006 the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China has undertaken the construction of a PSB system of its own. The result, as described in this chapter, is a new form of a top-down public communications network with similarities to both Chinese and European precedents. Coinciding with the new emphasis placed by the Chinese state on public cultural service (PCS), a vigorous academic debate has also emerged about how basic cultural rights, such as equal access to stateowned media in both urban and rural locations, should be guaranteed and protected. Academic researchers and state officials seem to agree that China’s PSB system plays an important role in achieving such aims, and advocate the establishment and expansion of a system according to China’s social conditions (see Chin, 2012; Chin and Johnson, 2012). These developments come at a time when public service media (PSM) around the world face serious economic challenges that have been exacerbated by global recession. In contrast, the Chinese state is beginning to take initiatives in major urban areas to extend PSB and other public information services (e.g., digital information resources, museums and libraries) to citizens, and that PSB will be likely to continue to expand there as a result. These developments raise interesting questions concerning the origins and role of PSB within an ostensibly authoritarian society, and the extent to which the media’s public service functions can co-exist with a state-owned broadcasting sector. Meanwhile, the contentiousness and ambiguity of the public service concept and the lack of coherent models of PSB poses hard questions regarding the aims and principles of PSB policy in the Chinese social and political context. Answering them is essential to framing a meaningful critique that may help us understand the role of PSB in China and its implications for the lives of Chinese citizens and for the limitation of state power.
