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Nothing but the Truth: News Media, Power and Hegemony in South China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Kevin Latham
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The post-Mao reform era in China has seen the demise of utopianism. Where once the rhetoric of an unfolding socialist utopia worked to spur on the masses in their subjugation to a national cause, since the 1980s the rhetoric has entailed varying degrees of hedonism with the proliferation of consumerism, individualism, self-reliance and personal responsibility devolved to the individual or family. This has produced Chinese worlds increasingly riven with anachronisms represented by the apparent contradictions of a “planned market” or “socialist market” economy. The realm of media production in the 1990s has found itself caught in the middle of this sphere of social and rhetorical contention, engendering its own contradictions. Indeed the contradictions exhibited there may be more exaggerated than elsewhere; most notably in how Party control of the media has continued alongside increasing pressures on media organizations to compete for readerships, audiences and advertisers on an open market. Characteristic of this situation has been the emergence of new forms of media populism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 163 , September 2000 , pp. 633 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2000

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References

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6. This article is based upon extended fieldwork conducted in the summers of 1996, 1997 and 1999 and spring 1998 in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. I conducted research at the two main television stations in Guangzhou, one Guangzhou radio station, one city-level radio station in Guangdong, four newspapers in Guangzhou and three city-level newspapers in Guangdong. At all of these organizations I conducted formal and informal interviews with junior and senior journalists and editors; I worked as a television presenter of an English-language news documentary programme at one of the television stations and as a journalist at one of Guangzhou's top selling newspapers, also attending daily editorial meetings and shadowing duty editors in the daily production of the newspaper. In Hong Kong I conducted interviews at both of the main Hong Kong terrestrial television stations, at cable television news and with editors from leading newspapers and magazines. I have carried out extensive ethnographic audience research in different audience environments (domestic, public, family, working) both in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, including formal and informal audience interviews on television and radio reception and newspaper reading. I spent time teaching and researching at the Department of Journalism at Jinan University, Guangzhou and talking to scholars at the Department of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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10. This observation is based on reader interviews conducted between 1996 and 1999. Guangzhou has two daily economic newspapers and all of the top five daily newspapers carry stock market information daily. Guangzhou's most recent daily newspaper, New Express, has partly focused its marketing strategy around the provision of practical, readable economic news (interviews with editors, 1997–99). Both local and national television stations give prominence to economic and business news. It is also common for pagers and mobile phones to provide stock market information as well as telecommunications services.

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13. E.g. for Foucault: “Truth' is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. ‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it.” From Foucault, Michel, “Truth and power,” in Power/Knowledge (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980) at p. 133Google Scholar; See also Hartley, , Tele-ology, p. 46Google Scholar, for discussion of “regimes of truth” in television news production.

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15. Foucault, , “Truth and power,” p. 131.Google Scholar

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17. In interviews with audiences, readers and journalists in Guangzhou it was usually one of the first things that interviewees pointed out to me and no one ever refuted it. In the large majority of cases interviewees saw it necessary to make this point when explaining Chinese news and media to this foreign researcher.

18. Cell, Charles P., “Communication in China's mass mobilization campaigns,” in Chu, Godwin C. and Hsu, Francis (eds.), China's New Social Fabric (London: Kegan Paul International, 1983), p. 27Google Scholar. See also e.g. Bennet, G., “China's mass campaigns and social control,” in Wilson, A. A., Greenblatt, S. L. and Wilson, R. (eds.), Deviance and Control in Chinese Society (New York: Praeger, 1977)Google Scholar; Greenblatt, S. L., “Campaigns and the manufacture of deviance,”Google Scholar in Wilson, et al. , Deviance and Control in Chinese SocietyGoogle Scholar; Bennet, G., Yundong: Mass Campaigns in Chinese Communist Leadership (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).Google Scholar

19. See Lull, James, China Turned On: Television, Reform and Resistance (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar and Ximing, Zhang, “Dianshiye: kong zhong jingzheng riqu jilie” (“The television industry: competition in the air gets daily more fierce”), in Jieming, Weng, Ximing, Zhang, Sui, Zhang and Kemin, Qu (eds.), 1996–1997 nian Zhongguo fazhan zhuangkuang yu qushi (The Situation and Direction of China's Development, 1996–1997) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe, 1996)Google Scholar for details of the current state of development of television in China. Zhao suggests that “the proposals of Chinese scholars have been heavily biased toward print journalism, primarily because many leading scholars were press scholars to begin with and because the press has been at the center of both Party journalism and journalism theory in China. But such a bias is no longer justified. Given that television has become the most important medium… television should be at the center of reconstruction of the media system” (Yuezhi, Zhao, Media, Market and Democracy in China, p. 193)Google Scholar. It is nevertheless important to note that radio has taken on a new significance in the Chinese media landscape. Although it is secondary to television, with the emergence of populist radio programming such as that of Pearl River Economic Radio (see above) and the proliferation of live call-in shows in recent years, it has made something of a resurgence and its role in the complex media mix of the reform period is not to be underestimated. The arguments presented in this article regarding contending truths and hegemony apply equally to radio as to television or print media.

20. Xiaoping, Li, “The Chinese television system and television news,” p. 347.Google Scholar

21. Cheng, M. and Tong, B., Xinwen lilun jiaocheng (A Course in News Theory) (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1993), p. 178.Google Scholar

22. Baowei, Zheng, Xinwenxue daolun (A Guide to the Study of News) (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1990), p. 33.Google Scholar

23. Cheng, and Tong, , A Course in News Theory, p. 172.Google Scholar

24. See e.g. Ibid.; Baowei, Zheng, A Guide to the Study of News, pp. 32–55Google Scholar; Hongshu, Zhou, Xinwen lilunxue lunwang (An Outline of the Study of News Theory) (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1995) pp. 130–140Google Scholar. The Chinese term keguan is usually glossed as objective being literally the view of a “guest/outsider” as opposed to subjective, zhuguan, “the view of a host/insider.” Implicit in these terms is the differentiation of viewpoints. It would be of interest to pursue the implications of these terms further.

25. Cheng, and Tong, , A Course in News Theory pp. 172–78Google Scholar; Baowei, Zheng, A Guide to the Study of News, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

26. Cheng, and Tong, , A Course in News Theory, p. 172.Google Scholar

27. See e.g. Baowei, Zheng, A Guide to the Study of News, pp. 33–39Google Scholar; Hongshu, Zhou, An Outline of the Study of News Theory, pp. 130–34.Google Scholar

28. Cheng, and Tong, , A Course in News Theory, p. 178.Google Scholar

29. From a speech in May 1956, quoted in Hongshu, Zhou, An Outline of the Study of News Theory, pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

30. Quoted in Hartley, , Tele-ology, p. 46.Google Scholar

31. In interviews with television news producers in Hong Kong in 1996 and 1997 and print journalists and editors in 1997 and 1998, interviewees stressed the balanced and uncensored principles of Hong Kong news production, usually explicitly linking Hong Kong news to European and American practices. See also below.

32. Interviews with author, 1996–99. The need for news reporting to be “objective” and “truthful” was always one of the principal points made to me in interviews with journalists. However, it is also important to note that many saw increasing, tough competition between Hong Kong newspapers starting to stretch the application of these principles. Television journalists felt a greater duty to control sensationalist reporting. Television news reporters were also often scathing about the lax journalistic principles of peak time “infotainment” programmes which had become very popular in recent years. They often referred to these jokingly as bagua xinwen (“eight trigrams” news), suggesting they were speculative and unscientific. This term was also used for the increasingly “tabloid” nature of some Hong Kong newspaper reporting.

33. I held a series of interviews with this editor in July and August 1997, each lasting between three and four hours and conducted in private away from his place of work. Although he found the topic of objectivity particularly interesting, I give this as just one example which is representative of comments made by many journalists interviewed.

34. He nevertheless had reservations about the quality of Hong Kong reporting in general which he thought less rigorous than reporting in Guangzhou.

35. What I have been discussing here are, of course, the ideological principles of news reporting, Western and Chinese. News producers that I spoke to were fully aware of the differences between these principles and their own practices of news production and often spoke of such principles with detached reflexivity rather than epistemological commitment. Indeed, news production involved complex articulations of divergent and contradictory practices in the same way that I suggest viewing and reading did. This is something I have discussed elsewhere (Latham, “Between markets and mandarins”).Google Scholar

36. Baowei, Zheng, A Guide to the Study of News, p. 33.Google Scholar

37. Professional journals are another matter. In these the practical problems of maintaining audience interest are openly discussed. See e.g. Wangxin, Xie, “Seeking reform, development and improvement amidst co-operation”Google Scholar; Kang, Fang, “21 shiji dianshi fazhan zhan lüe–guanyu Guangdong dianshi fazhan zhanlüe de sikao” (“A strategy for the development of television in the 21 st century – thoughts on the development strategy of Guangdong television”), South China Television Journal, No. 1 (1997), pp. 4–12.Google Scholar

38. I use the term audiences to include readerships as well as television and radio audiences.

39. “People watch street sweeping with cool detachment. People face slovenliness with indifference. On the Spot News of the Third Guangzhou Clean-up Campaign,” Yang Cheng Evening News, 16 08 1997, A2.Google Scholar

40. Ibid.

41. Yuezhi, Zhao, Media, Market, and Democracy in ChinaGoogle Scholar; Latham, “Between markets and mandarins”Google Scholar; Zhurun, Li, “Popular journalism with Chinese characteristics.”Google Scholar

42. Yuezhi, Zhao, Media, Market, and Democracy in China, p. 53.Google Scholar

43. Ibid. esp. pp. 127–150

44. Ibid. esp. pp. 52–93.

45. Commercially inconvenient were the obligations to report Party and news which journalists commonly perceived to be considered dull by audiences. For instance chief editors of radio stations, television news and newspapers noted the problem of reporting Party and government meetings. They were obliged to do this but knew that audiences on the whole had little interest in such stories. Those who saw Party control as an unwelcome fetter would refer to the constraints entailed upon journalistic style, content and freedom to practise investigatively. Several senior editors of newspapers complained that Party restrictions restricted the kinds of news they could report and where stories could be placed in newspapers. They also pointed out the negative commercial implications of such restrictions.

46. However, survey data from the early 1990s suggested that the Guangzhou populace in fact rated mainland Chinese news production slightly above Hong Kong news production in terms of credibility (source Joseph M Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, personal communication, 1996).

47. Scholars have often noted how important such alternative sources of information and channels of communication were during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 (see e.g. Yuezhi, Zhao, Media, Market, and Democracy in China, p. 174.Google Scholar

48. Barmé, Geremie, “CCP™ & Adcult Prc,” The China Journal, No. 41 (01 1999), pp. 1–23Google Scholar; Zhurun, Li, “Popular journalism with Chinese characteristics.”Google Scholar

49. Dirlik, and Zhang, , “Introduction: postmodernism and China,” p. 3.Google Scholar

50. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar

51. Jiwei, Ci, Dialectic of the Chinese RevolutionGoogle Scholar; Croll, , From Heaven to EarthGoogle Scholar; Tang, Xiaobing “New urban culture and the anxiety of everyday life in contemporary China.”Google Scholar

52. Quote from Tang, Xiaobing “New urban culture and the anxiety of everyday life in contemporary China,” p. 112Google Scholar. See also Dirlik, and Zhang, , “Introduction: postmodernism and China”Google Scholar; Kang, Liu, “Popular culture and the culture of the masses in contemporary China,” Boundary 2, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Fall 1997), pp. 99–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Anagnost, Ann, National Past-times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 10.Google Scholar

54. Foucault, , “Truth and power,” p. 131.Google Scholar

55. See above. I suggest, however, that it is more useful to think not in terms of subjectivities but of subject positions: the multiple truths of Guangzhou's mediated realities don't so much produce subjects as make available subject positions between which people may effortlessly move. See Laclau, Ernesto, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), p. 61Google Scholar, on the distinction between subjects and subject positions which I follow.

56. Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985)Google Scholar; Laclau, , New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time.Google Scholar

57. Cf. Anagnost, , National Past-timesGoogle Scholar; Dirlik, and Zhang, , “Introduction: postmodernism and China.”Google Scholar

58. Laclau, Ernesto, “Why do empty signifiera matter to politics?” in Emancipations (London: Verso, 1996).Google Scholar

59. Others would include, for instance, the “problem” of China's large and ever growing population. Hence, Anagnost argues that “the discourse of the Chinese socialist party-state constructs China's population as ‘too large’ and mobilizes images of the body as being consuming or producing. These images are intrinsic to the pedagogical imperatives and disciplinary practices of the Chinese socialist state in ways that serve to displace political critique of the internal contradictions of Chinese socialism” (National Past-times, p. 12)Google Scholar. She adds: “Mapping the complex ways in which notions about population circulate throughout Chinese society helps us to account for the hegemonic power of China's population policy” (p. 137).Google Scholar

60. Ibid. p. 12. Compare also Dirlik, and Zhang, , “Introduction: postmodernism and China,” p. 8Google Scholar, for a similar argument about fragmentation, subjectivity and the undermining of past narratives.

61. An interesting question then is to what extent those who have most benefited from the reforms, China's nouveau riches, similarly reproduce these hegemonic arguments. My research on this is limited but indications are that they do. If so, the irony is even greater, for it is then precisely those whose new economic power might otherwise lead to the most direct challenges to government authority who maintain the hegemony for the Party through the discourses of chaos and an unmanageable uneducated population. I am indebted to one of the The China Quarterly's anonymous readers for this observation.