ABSTRACT
China has over a thousand county-level (including county-level city) television stations. Although these stations serve as a mouthpiece for the local Party committee, they also broadcast local news programs, transmit local cable and broadcast television signals, relay central and provincial television programs, and facilitate the development of television coverage in rural areas. Together, they constitute a major part of China’s television industry. At one point, the central government planned to ban these stations and merge them with more competitive stations at the city level, maintaining the original stations only as relay stations with few employees (SARFT 1999). However, this policy ultimately failed after collective resistance by the county-level television stations, and the majority of county-level stations remained in place. With the exception of the integration of radio, broadcast television and cable television stations into one organization, county-level television stations have not undergone a process of massive conglomeration and capitalization (SARFT 1997). They have maintained their original structure, in which local government broadcast and television bureaus and locally run television stations operate in practice as unified entities.
