Book Review: Yuezhi Zhao Communication in China: Political Economy, .... Writing on the anniversary of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, the issue of.
Global Media and Communication http://gmc.sagepub.com
Book Review: Yuezhi Zhao Communication in China: Political Economy, Power and Conflict Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, 384 pp. ISBN 978 0 7425 1965 7 Haiqing Yu Global Media and Communication 2009; 5; 242 DOI: 10.1177/17427665090050020602
The online version of this article can be found at: http://gmc.sagepub.com
Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com
Additional services and information for Global Media and Communication can be found at: Email Alerts: http://gmc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://gmc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Citations http://gmc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/5/2/242
Downloaded from http://gmc.sagepub.com at University of New South Wales on February 2, 2010
242
Global Media and Communication 5(2)
Yuezhi Zhao Communication in China: Political Economy, Power and Conflict Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008, 384 pp. ISBN 978 0 7425 1965 7 ■
Reviewed by Haiqing Yu, University of New South Wales, Australia
Yuezhi Zhao’s new book Communication in China provides the most comprehensive, insightful, ambitious and innovative analysis of Chinese media and communication from a cross-cultural political economy perspective. It is comprehensive in the scope of subject matters – the book examines both old and new media and communication forms from broadcasting to print media to telecommunications, film and the internet, news and infotainment, book publishing and TV drama; it focuses on media production, circulation and consumption and covers both local and national communication dynamics as well as their transnational nexuses. It is insightful in its depth of critical analysis. Each chapter is replenished with incisive observations and comments supported by detailed and nuanced case studies that are based on firm, solid and comprehensive empirical materials. It is ambitious in that the book is not simply about new developments in Chinese media and communication but about the broader issues implicated in China’s developmental path, such as: the contradictions between promise and practice; the multifaceted power struggle, domination and resistance; and the social dimensions and human faces of narratives of Chinese modernization – all from a historical perspective. It is innovative in that it adopts an integrative framework that allows the author fully to interrogate the social, cultural, political and historical dimensions of Chinese media and communications, thus brilliantly integrating media and communication studies with broader Chinese studies, cross-cultural communication studies, globalization studies, and critical inquiries in and about China. Ten years after her first path-making book, Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line (1998) and a series of high-profile journal articles, book chapters and edited volumes, Zhao produces another compelling book that further consolidates her position as the most authoritative leading scholar in the field of Chinese media and communication studies. Communication in China builds upon and expands the argument in her earlier book that examines the tensions, contradictions and complicities between the ‘party line’ and the ‘bottom line’ during China’s first round of media opening-up and reforms from the 1980s to the early 1990s. This book ‘situate[s] the Chinese communication system in the evolving state-society nexus in the post-1989 China and
Downloaded from http://gmc.sagepub.com at University of New South Wales on February 2, 2010
Book Reviews
analyze[s] the dynamics of communication, the formation of class and other forms of power relations, and social contestation during a period of deepening market reforms’ (p. 5). Three major themes run throughout the book: the formation of the ‘power, money and knowledge regime’ and its internal dynamics, the subsequent societal power struggles, and the ensuing reconfiguration of power relations and subjectivities. These three interwoven themes address three layers of significance: the institutional, the discursive and the individual. As Zhao makes it clear earlier in the book: ‘Communication has never simply been an issue of “free” expression. It has always been an integral part of political organization and social mobilization’ (p. 36). Chapter 1 examines continuities and changes in the Chinese partystate’s regime of media control and censorship. It highlights the growth and innovation in the regime’s self-reinvention in the context of China’s accelerated capitalistic development, intensified social contestations and advance in new media technologies. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 move from an ‘inward’ perspective with a focus on the reinvention of power through decentralization, to an ‘outward’ one that focuses on the interactions of the party-state, its commercialized but still tightly controlled media institutions, and their integration with global capital and domestic private media capital. Contrary to the Western liberal understanding of the role of media globalization and commercialization in promoting democratization, these chapters demonstrate how ‘fusion’, ‘convergence’, ‘cross-promotion’ and ‘symbiotic relationships’ between transnational and private media capitals and the party-state have formed and how this new alliance has led to ‘complicated articulations of nationalist, class, regional, and generational politics’ (p. 167). Chapters 5 and 6 continue this argument in the discursive and individual spheres, with a focus on the theme of societal power struggles. Debunking the normative paradigm on Chinese media and communication that views the party-state as the single-handed suppressor of liberal humanistic voices, Zhao points out that a ‘power, money and knowledge regime’ known as the ‘iron triangle’ is emerging. This is exemplified in media and internet mobilizations around civil rights, legal justice, property rights and economic justice, and illustrated through extended case studies of the deaths of Sun Zhigang and Wang Bingyu, and the ‘Lang Xianping Storm’ and its related ‘third debate on reform’ (mainly between neoliberalism and leftism). These cases demonstrate the possibilities and limits of the internet as a nascent public sphere in China. The various forms of societal power struggles, while still contained by the ‘power, money and knowledge regime’, produce new knowledge,
Downloaded from http://gmc.sagepub.com at University of New South Wales on February 2, 2010
243
244
Global Media and Communication 5(2)
relations and subjectivities – the third major underlining theme of the book. This theme is embedded in a class-based social analysis, and like all other themes, runs throughout the book. This reflects Zhao’s view that ‘the story about contemporary China is also the story of the reconstitution of class relations in China’ (p. 4). Zhao’s sympathy with China’s subaltern classes is represented by her use of the old, poor and disabled woman newsstand vendor who not only adorns the book cover but also serves as a convenient medium to begin and end the book. The reconfiguration of power relations and subjectivities is demonstrated through multifaceted interactions and relationships among and within the party-state, various forms of media capitals, the Chinese elite and bourgeoisie, the disenfranchised social groups, and those in between. In other words, ‘[t]he economic, social, and intellectual spheres are equally important sites of power’ with the party-state in the contestation over China’s future (p. 326). Zhao is a rigorous scholar and superb storyteller, who achieves a delicate balance between critical and dispassionate analysis on the one hand and compassionate and engaging interrogation on the other. She is careful not to provide a definite projection of the future of China’s media and communication system or China’s future in general. Rather, she suggests caution against the neo-liberal perspective, while remaining secretly hopeful that China’s developmental path will be ‘around the goals of human-centered and balanced development, environmental sustainability, social harmony, and “people’s democracy”’ (p. 354). This is a lengthy book with six full chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. All chapters and sections are tightly packed with sophisticated analyses, detailed case studies, engaging narratives and poignant comments, supported by facts, figures, formal and informal interviews, personal communications, government documents and other rare sources in Chinese. The book illuminates much more than communication in China as the title suggests. It also interrogates the complex issues that China faces in its structural transformation. Communication in China, together with Zhao’s 1998 book, is therefore not only an indispensable book for scholars and students who wish to get the most sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of media and communication in China, but also recommended reading for anyone who is interested in finding out about China’s developmental path at the turn of the 21st century. As Dan Schiller’s endorsement of the book aptly puts it, Communication in China is ‘instantly indispensable’. Those who finish reading the book will agree that its ‘monster’ thickness is justifiable for such an audacious and ambitious project. All minor works in the field, including my own, have a lot of catching up to do.
Downloaded from http://gmc.sagepub.com at University of New South Wales on February 2, 2010
Book Reviews
Reference Zhao, Yuezhi (1998) Media, Market and Democracy in China: Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Elisabeth Eide, Risto Kunelius and Angela Philips (eds) Transnational Media Events: The Mohammed Cartoons and the Imagined Clash of Civilizations Nordicom: Sweden, 2008, 290 pp. ISBN: 978 91 89471 64 1 ■
Reviewed by Elizabeth Poole, Staffordshire University
Writing on the anniversary of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, the issue of ‘free speech’ is again being debated in the media. At the time of the Rushdie affair there were those who decided that this was an issue of free speech and those who argued that it was about the position of a minority (and under-privileged) ethnic group in an increasingly plural society. For some, then, the event marked a moment in time where managing different sensibilities in a multicultural society really became an issue. So how far have we come? Debate in the media in response to the Danish cartoons ‘controversy’ may be one way of measuring this. This book provides a timely assessment of how far different European countries have adjusted to a growing immigrant population. However, this is not its primary objective. As the title suggests we are now living in different times where internationalism has been overtaken by globalization and transnationalism. In this political, social and cultural context how does the media, both in Europe and the across the world – in particular the Muslim world – report on such an issue? One could argue that the publication of the cartoons, which were commissioned by the right-wing newspaper Jyllands-Posten, were actually a comment on free speech. However, it could also be argued that the objective of the newspaper was to assert dominant liberal ideas in a country where immigration is currently highly controversial. This book is an examination of the cartoons themselves, the circulation of meaning in a variety of contexts and how political events, actors and the media were instrumental in creating a ‘global media event’. For those interested in these issues, particularly in relation to the Danish cartoons, the book provides a comprehensive analysis. With 14 chapters it would be easy for the book to appear as a disparate set of articles. However, largely down to the collective nature of the research project behind it, the book presents a coherent and complementary
Downloaded from http://gmc.sagepub.com at University of New South Wales on February 2, 2010
245