ABSTRACT
Economic liberalisation processes and the rapid development of the private sector are widely visible signs of over thirty years of reform policies in the People’s Republic of China. Nevertheless, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has managed to preserve the basic political institutions of the Leninist Party-state, including its own unrestrained position of political power. Against this background, this book investigates the interrelationship between processes of marketisation and commercialisation, and the stability of the CCP regime.
The aim of the book is to complement existing literature on adaptive governance in China and on the reasons for the CCP regime’s relative stability, while providing new information about the relationship between the Chinese party-state and private entrepreneurs. Taking case studies from the film and music industries, the book gives a detailed account of the political and economic history of these industries in China, with special attention given to the role played by private production companies as intermediaries between artistic creation, political and ideological constraints, and the market. A historical institutionalist approach is employed to trace the effect of Chinese policies on popular culture and the institutions of administrative, economic, political and ideological control over the film and music industries back to the 1950s, revealing the mechanisms and prospects of CCP hegemony in the cultural sector.
Examining the effects of the marketisation and commercialisation processes on the communist regime and vice versa, this book also offers a fresh perspective on the origins of today’s Chinese popular cultural mainstream. It will therefore be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics, Chinese culture and media and Chinese government-business relations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |37 pages
Introduction
part |2 pages
Chinese cultural policy
chapter |5 pages
Cultural policy in Republican China
chapter |8 pages
Towards mass culture under Mao Zedong
chapter |16 pages
Beyond propaganda in Reform China
chapter |11 pages
Chinese cultural industries
part |1 pages
Economic and administrative institutions of control
chapter |8 pages
Nationalisation and the installation of CCP control
chapter |13 pages
The emergence of private production companies
chapter |15 pages
Towards commercialisation with constrained private participation
chapter |18 pages
Piracy and the emerging copyright regime
part |1 pages
The censorship and propaganda systems
chapter |9 pages
Formation of modern political censorship and propaganda
chapter |16 pages
Erosion of political-ideological control in the 1980s and 1990s
chapter |17 pages
Institutional renovation with private producers' participation
chapter |14 pages
Mass media control
part |1 pages
Private film and music production companies as agents of change