Paper 2 about Chinese media industry - Essay Example

Although there are still reports of suppression by the state of independent media sources, there is tacit encouragement given to these media sources to participate in China’s culture industry and the media. Moreover, although state authorities continue to exert control on the use of domestic private capital in the core production of news items, there is increased recognition of this capital should play in china. Taken together, the media system in China is characterized by the domineering role of state capital in controlling the media’s heights, whereas private capital makes investments in production and sales.

This has led to a system where the state continues to exert ideological control of the media, while also enabling the cultural and media markets to respond better to the needs and preferences of popular Chinese culture (Zhao, 2008). The Chinese state authorities have managed to gain increasing managerial and regulatory control over the media system, playing a gate-keeping role that enables it accumulate capital by strategically controlling media outlets and subsequent rental-seeking behavior.

On the other hand, the state has sought to increasingly outsource most of the distribution and production work, thus giving up its ‘heavy lifting’ role to private capitalists (Zhao, 2008). In turn, the character and nature of private capital in the domestic media market has been transformed from private capitalist owners with a media background to industrial conglomerate owners embedded within the current power structure. For example, there is a growing class of financial capitalists in the media industry who view the industry as a new capitalist frontier, rather than a medium for cultural expression and social communication.

In addition, there is a significant shift towards the incorporation of domestic private capital into transnational capital’s distribution