ABSTRACT
Membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and sponsorship of the 2008 Olympics were two major ongoing stories in the Chinese media in the 1990s and 2001. As the twin milestones in China’s integration with global capitalism, both events have profound implications for China and a rapidly transforming global order. Fundamental political economic interests-from those of transnational corporations to China’s ruling elite, and those of affluent urban consumers to impoverished farmers in interior Chinaare at sake. Press discourses on these events thus serve as useful case studies on the political and social orientations of the Chinese press. If the propaganda state is indeed crumbling (Lynch, 1999), what social forces have gained influence in its place? Who is speaking out in the press, and who is not? Now that this press is more diverse in structure (Chen and Lee, 1998; Wu, 2000; Zhao, 1998, 2000a), how is this diversity manifested at the discursive level? Now that it has abandoned a dying state socialist ideology (Z. He, 2000), what new ideological orientations does it embrace? This chapter addresses these questions by studying Chinese press discourses on the WTO. 1 It must be stated from the outset that this is not simply a study of press control or openness in the abstract sense, but one of control and openness in the context of social domination and contestation between concrete social interests over the fundamental directions of Chinese society.
