ABSTRACT
China is becoming an increasingly affluent and vibrant society that is building a rapidly growing market economy. Correspondingly, Chinese media are also becoming increasingly open, lively, and even assertive at times vis-à-vis the state. These are among the visible changes that have made the state-society dynamic an appealing theoretical focus among China scholars (e.g. Brodsgaard and Strand 1998; Brook and Frolic 1997; Hook 1996; P. Huang 1993; White, Howell, and Shang 1996; G. Yang 2003). But, while many have noted the increasing alignment of the media with the society pole in the state-society axis (e.g. Lin and Zhao 2008; Sun 2008), there has been no convincing demonstration that China’s reforms have enabled the media to function as the Habermasian public sphere or a public arena sustained by a flourishing civil society.
