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MEDIA
DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA
I. Symposium marks
50 years of New China’s journalism.
A symposium on the “Fifty years of New
China’ s journalism” was held here today by the
All-China Journalists Association to mark the 50th
anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
Executive
vice-president of the association Zheng Mengxiong said
the journalism of New China is an important part of the
course of socialism with Chinese characteristics headed
by the Communist Party of China (CCP). All the media are
not only the voice and eye of the Party, the central
government and the people, but also have become an
information industry which has influenced the development
of China.
New
China’s journalism has gone through three phases of
development, he said. The first period started with the
founding of New China in 1949 and ended in 1966, when the
Cultural Revolution began. During those years, the former
media system was overhauled to make way for a new form of
socialist journalism.
During
the second phase (1966-78), the journalism in China
suffered great damage, especially in the field of
domestic news for overseas services.
The
third phase began in December, 1978, when the Third
Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party was held. It is a time of rapid
development for the country’ s journalism.
Zheng
noted the five characteristics of the third phase:
- The guiding principle
has shifted from coverage of “class
struggles” to that of economic construction
and reform and opening-up;
- The practice and
theory of overseas forms of journalism have been
absorbed, and a theory of socialist journalism
with Chinese characteristics developed;
- Regulations and laws
on journalism have ensured its healthy
development;
- The application of
advanced technology has quickened its
development, and
- The media information
industry has become a new growth point of
China’s economic development.
Facing the challenge of the coming new century, all
the media and journalists will continue to develop the
country’s journalism and contribute to the
construction of a prosperous, powerful and democratic
socialist China, Zheng said. (Xinhua news agency,
Beijing, 22 September 1999)
II. Newspaper
groups expect to flourish in new century.
Gu Xingwei, general manager of the Wenhui and Xinmin
United Newspaper Group, said at the current ‘99
Fortune Global Forum in Shanghai that they are preparing
to take a “rich breakfast” for the new century.
Gu
was talking about the intensifying competition that has
led to a new round of reforms in Chinese newspapers.
He
said all kinds of newspapers are looking for ways to get
their share of this “rich breakfast,”
especially after the “last supper” of the
planned economy, or the end of the old system under which
newspapers had to depend on administrative orders for
distribution rather than market competition.
The
first two newspaper groups, ‘Guangming Daily’
and ‘Economic Daily’ , appeared in China in
June of 1998. Since then, only six newspaper groups have
got government permission to organize, but a large group
of powerful newspapers are still planning to establish
newspaper groups and purchase other papers.
In
the socialist market economy, Chinese newspapers have had
to follow government policy while providing information
for readers, explained Li Yuanjiang, chairman of the
board of the ‘Guangzhou Daily’ Newspaper Group.
The newspaper’s social and economic benefits lie in
readership and establishing a group is the best way to
increase this, he pointed out.
After
merging 10 newspapers, three magazines and a publishing
house over the past seven years, the ‘Guangzhou
Daily’ News Group increased its readership to 1.2
million, which means 2bn yuan (about 240m US dollars) in
annual output value.
The
newspaper group is now trying to enter the stock market
overseas to obtain more funds for expansion. It has
already established a chain of more than 100 bookstores
and will build several large book distribution centres.
Wenhui Xinmin United has a readership of more than three
million for its two major newspapers, ‘Wenhui
Daily’ and ‘Xinmin Evening News’, and
about 10 small newspapers and a dozen companies involved
in publishing, distribution, advertising, hotels, and
taxis.
Gu
said that his group is expecting to increase profits by
more than 100m yuan this year and is planning to
establish in Shanghai China’s first large
advertising and trade centre and promotion network early
next year.
This
development has become the general trend for various news
groups which share the common goal of combining economic
and social benefits, according to Wang Chen, head of the
‘Guangming Daily’ Newspaper Group. (Xinhua news
agency, Beijing, 28 September 1999)
III. Writers win
China’s first Internet copyright lawsuit.
In China’s first case of its kind, a Beijing
court has ordered an Internet company to compensate six
prominent writers for publishing their work without
consent, the official Xinhua Daily said. The court ruled
Century Internet Communications Technology Co. had
violated copyright laws by putting the works on Beijing
Online’s website at http://www.bol.com.cn, it
reported in an edition seen in Shanghai on Wednesday. The
six writers sued the company in July. They include Wang
Meng, appointed culture minister in the 1980s but fired
months after China’s 1989 crackdown on dissent,
Zhang Chengzhi, Bi Shumin, Liu Zhenyun, Zhang Jie and
Zhang Kangkang. (Inside China Today / Reuters, September
23, 1999)
IV. China plans to
ban Internet investment.
The Chinese government is planning to ban all
foreign investment in the Internet. Information Minister
Wu Jichuan said that foreign investment was not allowed
by law and that China now planned to clean up the
“irregularities.” One Western executive said
that if the ban went through, “we would pull out of
our joint venture and move equipment, the brand name and
foreign staff overseas”. Many Chinese ICPs (Internet
Content Providers) are already based overseas, feeding
the Chinese domestic market from abroad. Some observers
suggested that the Ministry had raised the issue as part
of an internal battle over who will regulate the
Internet, which is loosely monitored by a number of
security agencies and Ministries. China has long been
worried about the ease in which foreign ideas and
movements can be transmitted via the Internet, weakening
the Communist Party’s control. The Information
Ministry has also been involved in a fierce battle with
reformers to avoid opening up the telecommunications
sector to foreign investment as the price of China’s
admission to the World Trade Organisation. As
negotiations resume with the United States over WTO
membership, it was unclear whether China’s offer to
open that sector, made in April, still remained on the
table. (BBC News, September 17, 1999)
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