ABSTRACT
Scholars have historically applied a top-down model to examine China’s communications systems. In this volume, we argue, Chinese communications network and its relationship to the state should be understood as that rather functioning similar to a musical orchestra, with the state as a conductor hopeful of faithful, talented, and homogenised musicians. The state’s desires, however, are only part of the story as to who shapes and informs the broad range of communications in China despite their role as conductor. State interventions oftentimes sit alongside people-oriented and commercial objectives that are also informed in light of opaque signalling by the state and their peers for what is at the time acceptable behaviour, identities, and national mythologies. In this volume, we consider these prospects from the angles of: internet censorship, news production, television entertainment, controls of foreign film imports, internet business governance, “Red Collectors”, public political participation, responses to the Hong Kong protests, issues of gender, propaganda campaigns, and children’s reading textbooks.
