16 - Media boom and cyber culture: television and the Internet in China

Summary

Media and communications have played a crucial role in China's historic transformation since 1979, especially as China has become increasingly involved in the globalization process. Revolutions in information and communication technology have both empowered and weakened the state, and China's reform and opening up policies have ushered in an era of unprecedented autonomy and diversity in Chinese media and communication, influencing public opinion, public policy, political, ideological and socioeconomic changes in this country of over 1,300 million people. Once a complete propaganda vehicle of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state, media in China have now become increasingly market oriented and profit driven. Television is arguably the most important medium in China's social and cultural life, providing over one billion viewers with news, information, entertainment, points of view and lifestyles. The emergence and phenomenal growth of the Internet in China, on the other hand, promises to bring the information revolution to bear on social change in a more intense, often unpredictable fashion. The number of Chinese Internet users has grown from around 100,000 in 1996 to over 120 million in 2006 (an annual growth rate of more than 200 per cent). Surrounded by controversy and at times outrage from Western societies over the state's censorship and crackdowns on political dissent in cyberspace, the Internet has become an indisputable alternative medium, providing news and voicing public opinion largely unavailable in the state-owned media.