Voices in the Gap: Media and Culture in China's Era of Transition

Abstract

International reporting on China often suggests a repressive media environment marked by crackdowns and tightening of control and only sporadically punctuated by “surprises of boldness.” The full picture is of course far more complicated. China’s media policy has shifted over the past 30 years, from “supervision of public opinion” to a more proactive post-1989 “guidance of public opinion”, to a recent focus on “public opinion channelling” in which resources of commercial media are used—in addition to traditional controls—to influence public opinion. Most journalism in the West do not properly engage the recent emergence of a diverse variety of “voices in the gap” that uproot the officially endorsed narrative. The 2008 social unrests in Tibet were internally seen as media policy failure exactly because the international press continued their reporting even though local access and news coverage were strictly controlled. Learning from this experience, after the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in 2007, a consensus emerged that in order to strengthen the international influence of Chinese culture China needs to raise its communication capacity overseas. This high-budget push for cultural “soft power” has since enlarged the rift between supporters and critical “voices in the gap” who believe that soft power can or should not be created by executive order. What is crucial for China’s long-term development and its image internationally is more openness in cultural policy and more freedom for professional news media in China.