ABSTRACT
On September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States shocked the world. In the aftermath of the suicide missions on New York and Washington, governments, media and the general public in virtually every country scrambled to understand what had happened and why the attacks had occurred. The response in China to these extraordinary events provides a good introduction to some of the main themes of this chapter, revealing a complex relationship between government, media and youth in a partially reformed system. We find a central Party-state still attempting to control and massage the flow of information, a decentralized media market in which entrepreneurial forces compete aggressively with the government and with each other, and a population, especially among the young and the restless, hungry for information. While it was not uncommon elsewhere-for example, in Taiwan-to preempt normal programming and substitute it with direct feeds from CNN International and the Fox News Channel, with a voice-over Chinese translation, Chinese Central Television (CCTV) was under strict orders, reportedly directly from the Politburo, to play down the attacks. Although some local stations were bolder in their reporting-for example, Chongqing Cable Television broke into regular programming to broadcast live CNN footage for about two hours after the attack-in the general absence of an aggressive “official” media, students and other youth descended on Internet cafes and sought out other sources of information. The Hong Kong-based Phoenix television channel, which broadcasts in Mandarin to nearly 42 million mainland households and is available in hotels with three stars and above, compounds where foreigners live, and homes with a satellite dish, broadcast live for thirty-six hours, dropping advertising and using material from news agencies and U.S. networks. Students, as they have done during other major events, pooled their money and booked hotel rooms to watch Phoenix’s live coverage (O’Neill, 2001).
