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The political economy of China’s media and
telecommunications industries has been undergoing momentous changes in the
post-Tiananmen and post-Cold War milieus. At present, virtually every major
world media, information, and telecommunications investment is significantly
tied to China. Seeking to take account of media transformation from the very
beginning of China’s WTO membership, this study will use a multiplicity of
research methods to answer two major questions. First, as the WTO entry sets
a stage for China’s bureaucratic-authoritarian regime to negotiate with the
global capitalist structure, how will global media capital enter China’s market, and how will China meet the challenge? Second, China’s official policy has been to
let global media capital invest in technology, but not in content. As
technology and content are not strictly separable, how will technological
infusion produce market impetuses leading to changes in media routines,
conventions, values, and discourses?
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This project seeks to examine the political economy of
mass media in Greater China in relation to different dimensions of modernity:
democracy, marketization, and political power. Among the questions being
addressed are:
theoretical approaches to the study of media and power;
the emancipatory potential of social theories to Chinese
media;
regime change and media control;
democratization, social movements, and media practice; and
a dialogue between Chinese media studies and mainstream
western scholarship
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