ABSTRACT
Nature of transformation Until 1997, the political interests of the CCP and government still largely dominated China’s television policy. Although television policy changed between 1998 and 2015, the political goal did not change. The Party’s prerequisite for any policy change is the maintenance of television’s mouthpiece and propaganda apparatus function so that it can protect the political interests of the Party and government (see Chapters 6 and 7). However, with China’s political and economic integration and interdependence with the world, it is increasingly difficult for the government to suppress societal unrest. For domestic political elites, all the resources and privileges they enjoy are subjected to a monopoly in political power. The Party considers “national stability,” “being sustained and supported by the public” and “being trusted by the public” as three elements crucial to maintaining their political status. The public’s trust and support become especially important in a situation where social stability is under threat or some unstable elements are emerging (Xian, 2002: 199). In order to maintain political stability, the government needs to respond to social demands to a certain extent, reinventing itself and reforming the existing system, with a scope and at a pace that it can control, while also trying to divert public focus to less politically sensitive areas. Reflected in the national television policy between 1998 and 2015, the best way to achieve both goals – responding and diverting – is to deregulate apolitical content while keeping tight control over politically sensitive news and current affairs materials. This is one of the crucial reasons behind the Party’s decision to separate the economic and political functions of broadcasters and separate program production and broadcasting. This has led to the division of the broadcasting system into a dual model – the co-existence of state owned media institutions, i.e., broadcast stations, controlled by the Party’s Propaganda Department and state owned media enterprises, i.e., commercial content production companies, supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (see Chapter 9). This strategy is the continuation of the mid-1990s policy, i.e., to allow a limited consumerist democracy to satisfy social desire but retain complete
political control (see Chapters 5, 6 and 8). However, the differences between the mid-1990s and 2000s are in the scope and means of political control. From the mid-1990s to 2015 the scope of control was narrowed from wide ranging content down to the core of media content – the news and current affairs. The leading principle of restructuring was to transform the sector from a state owned model to a quasi-market economic model, featuring mixed-ownership and the co-existence of the state and commercial sectors. The focuses of the reform were about “three-separation” and “three-transformation” based on the division of the governmental and commercial attributes of the media. First, this meant the separation of governmental institution and enterprise, the separation of ownership and operational autonomy, and the separation of production and broadcasting (see Chapter 9). Second, it meant the transformation from stateowned institutions to state-owned enterprises; transformation from state-owned enterprises to corporate enterprises, and transformation from corporate enterprises to listed companies. In other words, the broadcast station was responsible for the broadcasting of all programs, program planning, evaluations, examinations and acquisitions, as well as the production of news programs. The stateowned media enterprise was responsible for the content production, new media and media-related business operation services. By keeping the existing governmental institutional status of news and current affairs channels and maintaining the state’s monopoly of ownership, operation and production, the Party aimed to maintain its control of mainstream public opinion. These news and current affairs TV channels were categorized as Chinese versions of non-profit public service programs – a term borrowed from Western Europe that has become popular in China’s policy circles. The favoring of one or other of the versions of the idea of public service broadcasting was also observed in many former Eastern European countries (Sparks, 1998). In China’s context the adoption of the public service policy was motivated by the pragmatic end of securing social stability and cohesion, rather than by moral or humane concerns for the development of citizens. The public service broadcasting policy still focuses predominantly on social equalization between urban and rural and universal coverage of broadcast networks. The political independence, at least in theory, of the public service media, is not a feature being considered. In the commercial sector, the objectives of non-news and current affairs channels are to pursue economic profit and achieve the reconciliation of social and economic benefits. In other words, the policy required those commercial television channels to satisfy consumers’ needs and make profits, while at the same time providing an advanced and healthy culture. The definitions of “advanced and healthy culture” are not the focus of discussion in this book, the interesting point is the mechanism employed to secure reconciliation. First, the production units of TV channels were allowed to convert from state-owned institutions to companies, such as the case of Channel Young Media Co., Ltd, and the conversion of the government institution, Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group (SMEG), to a solely state-owned enterprise – Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group Inc. This transformation from institution to commercial
enterprise could spur the production and managerial autonomy of the media. Instead of relying heavily on advertising revenue, listing on the stock market could strengthen their financial power and improve the diversity of their business models. Like most state-owned enterprise in China, the biggest boss, i.e., the Party-State, still sets the rules through employment of key personnel and the ownership pattern. More importantly, the Shanghai case in Chapter 9 showed that with the split between government broadcasting bureaus and broadcasters, and the separation of broadcasting and production, the role of the Propaganda Department of the CCP’s Shanghai Committee moved from the background to the foreground. It not only controls the ideological work, as it did before, but also directly manages Radio and Television Shanghai (RTS, 上海广播电视台). In other words, before transition, it was the government’s broadcasting department functioning as an agent representing the Chinese state and Chinese people to manage the broadcaster. After transformation, the Party replaced this role, becoming the virtual agent. If Shanghai’s case is propagated to other regions,1 the long-term impact upon Chinese broadcast stations needs to be closely monitored. In addition, the cases of Channel Young and China Media Capital (CMC) in Chapter 9 demonstrated that entrance to the commercial sector is not equally open to every player in the media field. Only certain personnel with the political approval of the ruling group are allowed to join the sector and share the interest. These personnel may either be someone who has been in the ruling elite group, and thus, the movement is about the redistribution of interest and power among elites themselves; or it could be someone who was out of the ruling group, but whom the dominant ruling elites aim to absorb into the existing structure. This is more about the expansion of the ruling base through integration, and it is a very important means through which the ruling group maintains the political stability of their power. In either case, the self-interest of these personnel is subjected to their political compliance to the dominant structure. The change from institution to enterprise and from state-owned to mixedownership is partly about the autonomy of the broadcasting media and partly about capitalization of political power to personal welfare. The appearance of mixed-owned and state-owned commercial media enterprises do not guarantee plurality of voices, given the control of broadcasting channels by the Party and self-interest-oriented media. This has supported the observations of Colin Sparks (1998 and 2008) that the transformation in China is not a social revolution but is a political process: it is the transformation of the way in which the country and the media is governed, but not a fundamental change of social order and elite composition in media or the state machine. There was continuity amongst the elite personnel in the media sector and throughout the society, which demonstrates a shift from political to economic power. The development of China’s broadcasting policy and structure since the late 1990s was largely influenced and constrained by the country’s economic transformation and the political adjustment of the CCP (see Table 11.1). The nature of the broadcasting sector’s transformation has reflected the logic of the
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