Abstract
Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory and his key construct of habitus, this study examines the primary and secondary habitus of China correspondents, and proposes a habitus-based typology of foreign correspondents. Theoretically, this article attempts to advance the construct of habitus as a conceptual framework for journalism and media studies. Empirically, based on a survey analysis of 101 journalists and in-depth interviews with 20 journalists, this article maps out the primary and secondary habitus of China correspondents, and further analyzes how different habitus lands China correspondents into a typology of four: Spiralists, Sporadics, Sinophiles, and Sinojournos. These different positions, as the article argues, shape different strategies and practices of China correspondents – either to maintain or to challenge the existing power structure in the field of China correspondence. The implications of these results are discussed.
Foreign correspondents as the pivotal sense makers of the distant ‘others’, through a process of ‘selective articulation’ (van Ginneken, 1998), not only provide world citizens with the understanding of a mediated reality ‘foreign’ to them, but also affect foreign policy, international relations and global power wrestles. As Ebo (1997) notes, ‘the international image of a nation as articulated in the international media is an important assessment of the acceptance or impact of a nation’s foreign policy in the global arena’ (p. 47). A conduit for influence from policy maker, both domestic and foreign, it is also a counterforce to influence back on policy making.
This ‘mediated reality’ is a structural construction, a collective enterprise that is reached through a consensus of intersubjectivities by different agents and power relations (Benson, 2006; Bourdieu, 1998, 2005; van Ginneken, 1998). How journalists as the main agents in the field achieve their current positions and act correspondingly thus becomes a topic of both theoretical and empirical relevance.
Journalists’ individual characteristics have an impact on news production. Starck and Villanueva (1992) point out that foreign correspondents’ education, professional experience, language ability and familiarity with the history of the host country and its people all contribute to the framing of the foreign reality to home audience. Hannerz (2004) also notes, foreign correspondents tend to carry baggage from home to their overseas posting, and the baggage shapes how they view and construct concurrences into foreign news.
These qualities can and should be viewed in the frame of habitus, a key construct developed by Bourdieu as his solution to the structure-agency dichotomy, which he disregards as ‘false dilemma’ (Bourdieu, 1977; Dickinson, 2008). Journalists’ habitus, or systems of dispositions, is exemplified by traits and thoughts such as their demographic characteristics, educational background, professional background and experience, personal and professional values and beliefs. These dispositions ‘organize practices and the perception of practices’ (Bourdieu, 2013), thus are the starting points for understanding foreign correspondents’ positions and practice in the field, as their position affects the degree to which it is in their interest to support or subvert the current structure of the field (Bourdieu, 1986; Handley and Rutigliano, 2012).
Existing literature on foreign correspondents has yet to explore the Bourdieuian dispositional theory of practice, which has been actively debated and advanced by scholars in other fields such as ethnography (see, for example, Wacquant, 2004), educational research (see, for example, Lingard et al., 2015), policy research (see, for example, Greener, 2002) and music and arts studies (see, for example, Rimmer, 2012). In journalism studies, earlier scholarships mainly tap on foreign correspondents’ demographic profile and other characteristics in a static fashion (see, for example, Hess, 1996, 2005; Lambert, 1956; Mowlana, 1975; Nair, 1991; Terzis, 2008; Willnat and Weaver, 2003); some focus on the evolving overseas assignment modes (Erickson and Hamilton, 2006; Hamilton and Jenner, 2004), but ignored the dynamics of journalists’ individual dispositions in shaping these structural changes. These classic studies have a clear dichtonomous focus on either the individual agents or their structured position patterns in the field, missing the dynamic and relational agent–structure relationship. The ethnographic study by Pedelty (1995) on US war correspondents in El Salvador brilliantly locate agents in the structures to examine the dynamics of foreign news reporting, but missing a general picture of the morphology of the foreign press corps, which is the source to explain the varying practice of correspondents.
Media scholars only recently began to examine journalists and their practice of news production in the frame of field and habitus. Apart from the leading contribution by Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu, a growing number of empirical studies in the recent decade help to advance the discussion of applying journalistic field and the construct of habitus to journalism and media studies (see, e.g. Hovden, 2008; Hummel, Kirchhoff, and Prandner, 2012; Krause, 2011; Schultz, 2007; Willig, 2013). However, these scholarly efforts largely shied away from constructing and operationalizing habitus as both conceptual and methodological tool. No less worryingly, there is a strikingly acute lack of research on foreign news production in non-Western contexts such as China, thus making the current discussion pitifully incomplete.
China’s rapid economic development and growing assertive diplomatic stance have brought it as the emerging new power, or even the new world order leader, to extensive global media attention. The wide variety of foreign media operating in China, the country’s strong tradition of party-media system in which media are held to be ‘mouthpiece of the party’ and restrictively controled (Shirk, 2011) 1 , and the long-standing antagonism between China and foreign especially Western press corps, make the field of China correspondence an interesting case to unpack. Yet, of the increasingly proliferating studies on China and international journalism, few focused on the news makers behind the mediated image of a rising China in recent decades.
In an exploratory effort to fill the said gaps, this study employs the Bourdieuian construct of habitus as both conceptual and methodological tool to map the morphology of the field of China correspondence in the most recent decade of China’s rise, in an effort to propose an alternative theoretical framework for journalism studies; the empirical findings are expected to deepen the current understanding of the gravely under-studied group of foreign correspondents in China.
Habitus and the field of foreign correspondence
Bourdieu (1986, 1994, 1996) famously uses ‘field’ to refer to the social space in which agents, whose positions in the field are defined by their habitus and the capitals they possess, compete or struggle with each other for economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capitals. In his late academic life, Bourdieu (1998, 2005) further proposes the notion of ‘journalistic field’, seeing news production as a ‘microcosm with its own laws’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 39). Following this vein, foreign correspondents can be considered as agents with certain habitus structured during their previous socialization, competing for all forms of capitals in the field of foreign correspondence.
The habitus, ‘an organizing principle of practices’ (Neveu, 2007), shapes journalists’ different positions, which legitimize their power and capitals in the field. Meanwhile, habitus has its own socio-historical trajectory. Bourdieu (1989) defines habitus as ‘a system of schemes of perception and appreciation of practices, cognitive and evaluative structures which are acquired through the lasting experience of a social position’ (p. 19). Journalists’ habitus, aquired from their own social positions and experiences, not only land them in varying positions in the journalistic field, but also structures their journalistic strategies and practices in the field. Bennett (1990), for example, in reflecting on American journalists’ mistakenly over-optimistic coverage on China’s pro-democracy demonstration in 1989, notes that the ‘very powerful, sometimes unarticulated feelings about some very basic American values’, or ‘myths’, are the major reasons that contributed to the distortion.
Habitus as a socially embodied system of individual and collective dispositions is both natural and nurtured, thus can be distinguished into primary habitus which is generic and secondary habitus which is acquired through socialization in school or the workplace. Wacquant (2014) details out three dimensions of habitus: cognitive (perception), conative (skills) and affective (desire, or the ‘lustful dimension of habitus formation’). Following the three dimensions to deconstruct habitus, one can operationalize the construct into components including the demographic characteristics, educational background, priori life and career experience, values and interests in the profession and in general.
But habitus is not static. It is fluid, constantly structured by the structure. In the case of the evolving field of China correspondence, the habitus of China-based journalists partly vary from that of the previous generation, transforming or maintaining the power structures in the field. For example, Song and Lee’s (2014, 2016) studies on US journalists covering China in the 1970s and 1980s identified the changing authority structure and ‘enduring values’ behind US correspondents’ ‘journalistic paradigm shifts’.
This study, acknowledging the fluidity of habitus, tries to unpack that of the current generation of China correspondents in the field of China correspondence, and proposes an operationalization of habitus in an explorative attempt, so to offer a habitus-based typology of China correspondents. It is expected that this largely heuristic attempt could shed lights on understanding the dynamics of China reporting in the new global order and, more importantly, to contribute to the promising new paradigm of field theory and using habitus as both methodological tool and concept in future journalism studies.
Research methods
The difficulty to empirically operationalize the concept of habitus has been acknowledged (see, for example, Swartz, 1997). In the very limited scholarly endeavour to measure habitus, the majority employed qualitative ethnography (an example would be the work of Wacquant on boxers) or interviews; some scholars also tried quantitative survey data to disclose conceptions of habitus (see, for example, Bodovski, 2015). Acknowledging the merits and limits of either method, this study employed a concurrent triangulation design, collecting data from both survey and semi-structured in-depth interview, complemented with literature of China correspondents’ reporting notes, interviews, which are all available on Internet. The combined research design is intended to understand China correspondents’ primary habitus including their basic demographics (age, gender and education level), and secondary habitus including their perception, past experience related to China and journalistic skills. The measurement of habitus is further used to categorize China correspondents, proposing a habitus-based typology.
The survey was implemented from October 2015 to February 2016. The whole population of foreign correspondents effectively registered in mainland China at the time of the study (May 2015 to April 2016) with a valid email address provided by the ‘Foreign Press Directory’ issued by China’s Foreign Ministry is selected (N = 604). By the end of 2016, a total of 101 valid responses were collected, with respondents from various news outlets of 25 countries. The response rate is 16.7%.
From November 2015 to March 2017, I conducted 20 in-depth interviews with former and current China correspondents. These interviews, done mostly face to face in Beijing and Shanghai, ran from 50 minutes to 120 minutes, averaging just over 1 hour. Permission to audio-record the interview was granted in all cases, but the identities of some interviewees are withheld, upon their request.
As the sample may not meet the stringent statistical requirement of randomness, it should be noted that significance tests to be performed in what follows are intended primarily for heuristic purposes. They may, however, become rather revealing if the results of such tests are consistent in terms of direction and pattern.
Primary habitus: Demographics
Demographics of a group connote the picture of age, nationality, gender and education, revealing much about the primary habitus of the individual agents entering the field. The survey data provide the opportunity to picture the basic demographic dispositions of China correspondents, who are generally well-educated (97% of the respondents hold a college degree or above) and experienced (with an average of 15.8 years working experience as a professional journalist), but heavily male-dominated (only 23.2% are women). They are mostly middle-aged in their 30s or 40s. Only two respondents are fresh college graduates in their early 20s.
The collective primary habitus of high education level figures in prominence. Only 3 of the respondents have not attended formal college education; 45.5% of them have a master’s degree, and 7 out of the 101 respondents hold a doctoral degree.
Demographic characteristics: age.
Demographic characteristics: education.
Demographic characteristics: personal ties with China.
China prohibits its nationals from working as journalists for foreign news organizations operating in China. As a result, all officially accredited China correspondents are foreign nationals. Almost two-thirds of them do not have any connections to China or living experience in China prior to their postings here. Yet resourceful Anglo-American media organizations always manage to keep several ethnic Chinese. Around 15% of the respondents were born Chinese, or with Chinese origin. Chinese-majority city-state Singapore is another major source for such talents for China reporting. 2 The increasingly prominent backflow of migrated ethnic Chinese, born in China but educated in the West, are figuring their ever-growing importance in the foreign press corps in China. 3 Most of them speak native Chinese, which is an asset for entering the field and, in most cases, for consolidating their positions as well.
In the restrictive journalistic environment of China, being ethnic Chinese also helps to evade unwanted attention and ensuing obstruction, thus lessening the tension between journalists and local coercive apparatuses. AFP’s Beijing correspondent Joanna Chiu, a Canadian national born in Hong Kong, notes the convenience of being an ethnic Chinese: ‘Most of the time I’m not being noticed, which is a big advantage’. 4
Overall, the data on journalists’ primary habitus suggest some collective dispositions including heavy male dominance and high education level. The next section tries to unpack their secondary habitus, which is nurtured, rather than by nature. As for China correspondents, both Chinese habitus and journalistic habitus are key tools for entry and augmentation in the field of China correspondence. Therefore, I will discuss these two sets of habitus separately, before detailing the habitus-based typology of China correspondents.
Chinese mind, Chinese habitus
A ‘Chinese mind’ is argued to be needed for fair reporting and understanding of China (Fu, 1990). This ‘achieved’ status (Lee, 1990) is bred through correspondents’ previous life experience connected to China, such as education background in China (learning Chinese or China studies) and personal connections with China (born Chinese, having family in China, etc.). Chinese language proficiency and how long a correspondent has stayed on his or her China posting are also important indicators for such Chinese habitus. Following the aforementioned Wacquant’s (2014) three dimensions of habitus, I computed a new composite variable ‘Chinese habitus’ covering Chinese language proficiency, Chinese education, personal connections with China 5 and years of working experience in China, largely encompassing the three dimensions of cognitive, conative and affective. The four variables are converted to their z-score, respectively, and added up to compose the new variable Chinese habitus. 6
Generation gap?
A multi-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) test shows age is a significant predictor of correspondents’ Chinese habitus, F(7, 63) = 3.59, p = .003 (Figure 1). Yet it is not a linear correlation between Chinese habitus and age. Those aged between 46 and 50 on average score the highest in Chinese habitus (M = 1.88, SD = .68), while younger correspondents below 30 and those between 41 and 45 score the lowest.
Chinese habitus score by age group.
Take US journalists as an example. Bennett (1990) categorizes American correspondents to China into three waves: the first wave studied China afar in the 1960s and 1970s; the second wave are professional journalists assigned to China in the 1980s but knew very little on China; and the third wave were educated after China’s opening-up in the 1970s, elite and liberal, with more realistic experience and in-depth understanding on China, as they have easier and more diverse access to either formal or informal China education, unlike their American peers doing ‘embedded journalism’ in China in the 1970s (Song and Lee, 2014).
The third wave Anglo-American journalists, now in their 40s or early 50s, have become the backbone of the foreign press corps in China. Their Chinese habitus excel among all age groups. An exemplar is Anthony Kuhn, NPR Beijing correspondent for 4 years. Born in the 1960s to the prestigious American sinologist Philip Kuhn and his Chinese wife Cheng Wu, Anthony Kuhn attended the China studies graduate program in Nanjing University in China. His Mandarin is good enough to impress the Chinese public at a state press conference in Beijing. 7 The New York Times Beijing correspondent Chris Buckley earned his PhD in China studies in the 1990s and had been working in China as a translator and teacher before becoming a China correspondent; his Chinese language proficiency and understanding of the culture are hailed by his peers as a model to look up to.
In the same age group, however, correspondents from Continental European countries (especially Social Corporatist countries in Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) classification of media systems), most on their first China stint, are much less equipped with such Chinese habitus.
But Chinese habitus of younger correspondents in their early 30s or late 20s is rather homogeneous across different home countries. Mostly born in the 1980s or even 1990s, and educated in a new global order where China is growing to unprecedented prominence, they may well be labelled as the ‘fourth wave’. Their encounter with China is largely facilitated by the country’s rapid economic development and, especially in metropolis, the social networks and a growing number of Chinese millenniums who share more similarities with their Western peers compared with older generations.
Chinese language
Chinese language ability, as the conative dimension of ‘Chinese habitus’, is the most dominant disposition for individual agents to enter the field. Being able to speak local language is always much valued for foreign correspondents. Of the survey respondents, 40% speak fluent or native Chinese (8% of the surveyed correspondents are native Chinese speakers), 29% speak intermediate Chinese, while another 24% say they only speak basic Chinese, 7% of them do not speak any Chinese. Although the result only reflects self-evaluation of their language ability, the overall picture is very telling in many ways. Knowing the local language is an important component of habitus in fighting for an advantageous position in the field of foreign correspondence. Especially for the most resourceful Anglo-American news wires (Associate Press, Reuters, etc.), sufficient Chinese language ability is not only desired, but also required.
Peruvian journalist Isolda Morillo is one of the very few, if not the only, foreign correspondents in China who write and publish literature in Chinese. Her parents, both being university professors, moved to China to teach literature since the 1980s, bringing young Morillo to her first contact with China. Such experiences bred, in her own words, her ‘strong Chinese complex’, an avid interest in China’s society and culture which shaped her thirst to learn the language. She mainly taught by herself, and entered the field of practicing journalism in China, first as a journalist for Spanish Television and then for the Associated Press of the United States.
But institutionally, for most foreign correspondents, inept Chinese skills do not harm the chance of getting the job, as it is still very challenging for smaller news organizations to recruit such talents with both language skills and journalistic literacy. Apart from the aforementioned Anglo-American news wires, most news organizations do not offer incentive nor impose any requirement for their correspondents to learn Chinese. So learning Chinese on the job is more a self-initiated challenge, on which many China correspondents become a quitter.
Journalistic habitus: Professional training
Willig (2013) proposes to examine journalists’ professional habitus, or ‘journalistic habitus’, as a mastering of a specific bodily knowledge based on practice and experience. Like other dispositions, journalistic habitus influences correspondents’ position and practice in the field. Pedelty (1995) found among foreign correspondents in El Salvador that those ‘trained in fields other than journalism’ tended to produce more in-depth, critical reporting. Van Ginneken (1998) notes that ‘journalistic ideology’ bred in professional journalism training guides journalists towards routine frames. The former HuffPost China correspondent Matt Sheehan, who had no journalistic training before taking up the job at the HuffPost, describes such journalistic habitus as a baggage: ‘If you arrive in China as a journalist, without really knowing the country yet, everything you see is organized in a story pattern, with a good guy and a bad guy, and certainly with a conclusion’. 8
Unlike Chinese habitus, journalistic habitus to be measured on a point-based scale would be problematic, as the specific content of the required expertise and values of the profession in different media systems, though seen with a convergence towards the Anglo-American liberal journalism tradition, still diverge in various forms (see, for example, Hanitzsch et al., 2011; Voltmer, 2012; Zeng, 2017). Yet journalistic professionalism, which covers the cognitive and conative dimensions of habitus, is widely argued to foster and maintain a professional consensus and recognition among journalists (see, for example, Deuze, 2005; Schudson and Anderson, 2009), though the social base and the specific value of the professionalism differ across countries and media systems. Formal journalistic education and training help foster such professional culture (Tumber and Prentoulis, 2005), though with debatable contribution. Here I only discuss the professional training of China correspondents as a partial indicator of their journalistic habitus, through the variable of ‘journalistic education’.
Foreign correspondents traditionally are not prominently identified by formal journalism education. Tunstall (1974) characterizes many British foreign correspondents as the product of Oxford or Cambridge in fields other than journalism; Harding (1990) and Bennett (1990) recount that some of US journalists in China who did not major in journalism or Chinese studies ranked among the most distinguished performers. Similar pattern is also identified among China correspondents. Overall, only one-third of the respondents have received formal journalism education in college or graduate school; the ratio is even lower for non-Western correspondents: only 25.9% (N = 27) of them have had formal journalism education. They are mostly trained in other related fields of political sciences, international relations, history, economics and China or Asian studies. The result shows formal journalism education does not seem to be a general entry requirement in the field of foreign reporting, as found elsewhere in previous studies (Willnat and Weaver, 2003; Wu and Hamilton, 2004).
Yet in America with strong journalistic professionalism, formal education in journalism does appear to be a more important quality to enter the field. Many correspondents from US news organizations hold a degree in journalism from elite universities. Former the New York Times Beijing bureau chief Edward Wong gained his master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkley, and Rob Schmitz, Shanghai correspondent for NPR, has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. In contrast, the only African correspondent, Aina Julietta of Nigerian National TV, majored in French in college; Indian correspondent Ananth Krishnan of India Today holds a master’s degree in Indian history; and Sutirtho Patranobis, another Indian correspondent for the Hindustan Times, majored in English literature.
Spiralists, sporadics, sinophiles, and sinojournos
As discussed earlier, the variance in foreign correspondents’ habitus is closely related to their positions in the field. Hannerz (2004) categorizes China correspondents into three types: spiralists who come for a certain length of stint and leave for the next posting afterwards, Sinophiles whose priority is to live in China rather than to report in China and was barely based somewhere else as a journalist, and national journalists sporadically on one overseas stint (I call them ‘Sporadics’). The typology helps to identify how individual agents are positioned differently with different habitus in the field of China correspondence.
However, Hannerz’ typology does not cover all patterns for current China correspondents. Besides Sinophiles, there is another group who try to balance staying in China and doing journalism both as their priorities. They are different from Sinophiles mainly in their affective dimension of journalistic habitus, or the desire and commitment they invest into the journalistic field. Unlike Sinophiles who hold rather weak affection in journalism and practice it only as a conduit for their strong affection in other China-related fields (academia, foreign policy, or public relations), this fourth category are heavily committed to both China and journalism; they stay in China for a considerably long term to report China as professional journalists. For convenience, I call them ‘Sinojournos’.
Hence, in the field of China correspondence, we observe four types of journalists: Spiralists, Sporadics, Sinophiles and Sinojournos, with distinctively varying habitus. They represent four types of positions in the field, unavoidably resulting in different strategies and practices.
For a clear empirical picture of this typology, I used a two-step clustering analysis to group the survey respondents based on their Chinese habitus, number of previous overseas postings and years of working as China correspondent. 9 As discussed earlier, Sinophiles and Sinojournos should score the highest in Chinese habitus but Sinojournos have much more experience working as a China correspondent; Spiralists are the most experienced in previous overseas assignments, while Sporadics do not excel in either Chinese habitus or foreign correspondent experience.
The cluster result is satisfactory, with an average Silhouette at 0.6, and all three variables score a larger than 0.65 predictor importance (Table 4).
Cluster analysis result of China correspondents’ positions.
The majority are Sinophiles (43.6%) and Sporadics (35.6%), both of whom do not have much foreign reporting experience; 10.9% of the respondents are Spiralists, or professional foreign correspondents, for whom China posting is only one passing chapter in their excitement-ridden journey of foreign reporting around the globe; they did not have much China-related socialization before being posted to China, scoring the lowest in Chinese habitus. An even smaller proportion is categorized as the most committed Sinojournos, who score the highest in Chinese habitus, and have stayed in China as foreign correspondents for most, if not all, of their professional life.
An overseas assignment for most news outlets runs between 3 and 5 years. Both Spiralists and Sporadics stay in China for barely one term, and Sinophiles on average stay for one to two terms. Although most Sinophiles and especially Sinojournos try to stay on longer after their term is done, 10 most news organizations expect their foreign correspondents to return to home desk, or switch bureaus. The rationale behind such common practice of news organizations, as explained by Morrison and Tumber (1985), is that staying on an overseas posting too long may make the correspondents ‘go native’ (p. 461), meaning upholding too strong local habitus, which is argued to blind the fresh eye of correspondents when reporting the over-familiar host country. Similarly, familiarity with Chinese society and the language structurally facilitates understanding cultural messages, but it also breeds inattention to occurrences. Thus, most news organizations set limits on each overseas posting, to keep their foreign coverage ‘fresh’. As veteran China correspondent Chris Buckley notes, ‘without any Chinese skills correspondents can still do a very good job with their fresh eyes and different perspectives’. 11
However, news organizations tend to go flexible with the contract length if the correspondent exhibits strong Chinese habitus, so to minimize organizational cost on training a new replacement. This is especially common with Anglo-American news organizations who have been in effect setting the international news agenda. A senior editor at Reuters said they encourage correspondents to stay longer because ‘even if you are an experienced journalist (and) you speak Chinese, it takes at least a year to figure out what’s going on’. 12
Spiralists: Globetrotting news hotspots
Spiralists make foreign correspondence their career, but not confined to one specific posting. They cover different transitional and volatile regions in the world, moving between stints which normally range from 3 to 5 years, thus are most likely to possess the ‘cosmopolitan’ habitus (Hannerz, 2004). Jane Perlez of the New York Times in Beijing is one of such typical cosmopolitan Spiralists. She covered the Afghan war, the famine in Somalia, the civil wars in Sudan and Somalia and gold mining in Southeast Asia, before joining the Times Beijing office. Bernhand Zand of der Spiegel has been based in Istanbul, Cairo and Dubai covering wars and conflicts before coming to China in 2012.
To certain extent, they are international correspondents rather than foreign correspondents. This is especially true for those working with international media such as Reuters, AFP and CNN. A Beijing-based Reuters correspondent objects to being labelled as a ‘foreign correspondent’: ‘We are not foreign correspondents. At Reuters we only have correspondents. No country is “foreign” to us’. Yet such ‘stateless’ quality is only ideal. ‘Cosmopolitan’ international correspondents still carry baggage from home, from the social system and education system they came from. As Hannerz (2007) admits, ‘any claim to cosmopolitanism would seem to be weakened’ (p. 307).
Although lacking local knowledge and connections, they are seen as contributing to the field of China correspondence with the strongest journalistic habitus, especially in the affective dimension. ‘The best job in the world’ is what I heard most from Spiralists on how they like their job as a foreign correspondent.
Having based in a number of other global news hotspots, they tend to believe that their professional perception and practice are well applied into different social settings they cover. Thus, this group of China correspondents would transfer their doxic practice in the journalistic fields in other national contexts directly into that of China, in many cases, challenging the power relations with institutional constraints. How der Spiegel Beijing correspondent Bernhand Zand compares China assignment to his previous postings could serve as a typical example here: I interviewed, in the Middle East, heads of the states, from the king of Jordan, president of Syria, to the prince of Dubai, the president of Turkey, etc. All these people spoke relatively freely to us … But (in China) I don’t know why they (Chinese leaders) are so shy to speak to western press. (Zand, 2016, personal communication)
Spiralists’ challenges to the status quo of the field may come with real impact. A ‘Sinojourno’ himself, Chris Buckley notes that such ‘Spiralists’, by daring to ‘do stories that would offend the government, knowing that they are only staying for a short time’, create pressure on the whole foreign press corps to stay alert and sensitive to topics which they might otherwise overlook or self-censor.
Sinojournos: Lifetime commitment in both China and journalism
Sinojournos tend to stay for a considerable length in China, in some cases for their entire professional life, strongly committed to China or the Greater China area. They are affectively devoted to reporting China, regarding China as ‘one of the wonderful places to be for a reporter, because it is both amazing and important’. 13 Sinojournos are mostly found in Anglo-American media organizations.
Veteran China correspondent Jaime FlorCruz, who has spent more than 40 years living and working in China, was a student at Peking University in the 1970s before he started working as a news assistant with the Time magazine, which led to his lifelong profession as a China correspondent. Chris Buckley started as a researcher for the New York Times in Beijing before becoming a professional journalist with the Reuters for 7 years and then with the New York Times again. Both have spent their entire career life in China and are established as exemplary China correspondents, highly respected for their resourceful local connections and unbeatable knowledge of the host country.
Possessing such vital cultural and social capitals, Sinojournos are most likely to become the star journalists—journalists with huge symbolic capital, which transforms into more social and even economic capitals, thus further consolidates their already advantageous position in the field. As one example of Sinojournos’ outstanding social and symbolic capitals in China reporting, they are known for being able to maintain good relationship with high-ranking Chinese officials. Former Foreign Ministry spokerwoman Jiang Yu is said to habitually only address Jaime FlorCruz and Chris Buckley by their first names on formal press conferences, which is rare in China. 14 These accumulated capitals breed inertia, keeping Sinojournos in the field of China correspondence even longer.
Sinophiles: Give me China. I don’t care much about journalism
Sinophiles, though highly committed to Chineseness, hold very weak affection in the field of journalism. They do not desire to be playing the game of journalism. Usually, Sinophiles aim at a career as China experts or Sinologist, rather than China correspondents. They may serve a very short stint as a professional journalist in China, followed by other professions outside journalism, either in academica or business, but always with their career focus on China.
HuffPost’s Matt Sheehan, having lived in China for 5 years, passionate about Sino–US relations and Chinese culture, left the China correspondent job only after 2 years. When asked why the retreat, Sheehan said: ‘Well, it’s interesting, but, not a sustainable career’. Now, he joined a US think tank on China policy and meanwhile runs his blog and newsletter on Sino–US relations.
In the case of aforementioned Associate Press’ Isolda Morillo, though having been a China correspondent for more than a decade, she recently left her job as a journalist for family reason, and says that she will not be practicing the profession in other parts of the world. ‘I will only practice journalism in China … Practicing journalism for me is doing field research, which is the best way to understand China’. When asked how she would identify herself, Morillo used the term ‘empirical Sinologist’: ‘Between “China studies” and China reporting, I chose the latter; I don’t want to be a Sinologist in the Ivory Tower. My research and studies are my field research, i.e., the stories I filed’. She is now running a publishing company, to continue her passion in Chinese literature.
Other Sinophiles can be even more detached from the trade of journalism. A Turkish journalist has been in China for more than a decade. He helped set up the China bureaus for a number of Turkish media including its national news agency and a national TV. At the time of this study, he serves as the China correspondent for Turkish national newspaper Yurt, but is planning to retreat from journalism. ‘The income is very bad (practicing journalism)’, he reflects on the profession as a China correspondent. But it was a reporting trip to Japan that made him determined to divorce journalism. Sent to the neighbouring Japan to cover the devastating earthquake in 2011, he realized upon arrival that the situation was life-threatening. He asked to leave the site but his employer insisted him to fly to the epicentre and report from there. Frustrated, he chose to sneak away with a rescue team from Australia. ‘I can still write something about China if the Turkish embassy or whoever approach me for stories. But now I’m mainly engaged in film making’, he concludes in relief and satisfaction.
Sinophiles usually do not try to challenge the existing power relations in the field. Instead, they mostly follow the norms in the safest way, interact less with peer correspondents. To them, journalism is just a means for gaining ‘Chineseness’ or even just for living, sometimes a transition to other more lucrative fields, namely, where they can more easily gain capitals of all forms.
Sporadics: Journalism alright; China just a passing
Unlike Spiralists, Sporadics do not take foreign correspondent as their lifetime profession. They exhibit very limited affection in the game of foreign correspondence. Their Chinese habitus is also weak. They have long been journalists at home desks and are brought to China by some sporadic assignments. Most of them do not have plans to stay in China for long, and, in most cases, expect to return home after the China stint, ideally with a promotion. To many of them, China assignment, apart from its innate attractiveness, serves as a passing stepping stone.
Sporadics are mostly seen among correspondents from non-Western and Continental European countries. German public radio ARD’s Shanghai correspondent began his China assignment first as a summer replacement for the then Shanghai correspondent for several months, which led to a 5-year stint in China. His predecessor, after 5 years in China, went back in Berlin where he opened a café, never in journalism again. His colleague in ARD Beijing office had just started his China posting (his first overseas assignment) when we met in early 2016, after more than 10 years reporting in Germany. Finnish public broadcaster YLE Beijing correspondent at the time of the study, a veteran journalist with more than 20 years experience in his home country Finland, was serving a 2-year China stint, which is, according to the journalist, a ‘company norm’.
Sporadics, exhibiting very limited Chinese habitus, more resemble what Hannerz (2004) distinguishes as ‘expatriates’. They do not have strong commitment to the host country and its culture, often enjoying a lifestyle close to home. A German correspondent based in Shanghai chooses to bring everything from Germany to China – from olive oil to flour – and lives in the heart of the old French Concession – a life nothing but European. In contrast, a typical Sinophile or Sinojourno is most likely to be found in a typical hutong (small and historical alley in old residential area of Beijing) house and indulging himself or herself in street food.
This ‘expatriate’ positioning of Sporadics colours their way of journalistic practice in the field of China correspondence. They tend to rely more on press review and local hires (Chinese news assistants), instead of investing time to develop local connections, thus landing with very limited cultural and social capitals, which in turn effectively reinforcing the existing power structures in the field. Compared with other three types of correspondents, especially Spiralists, expatriate Sporadics are also more attuned to organizational norms and control of their home countries.
Conclusion and discussion
This study is an exploratory sociological analysis of the field of China correspondence, from the theoretical and methodological focus on the habitus of China correspondents. Using a concurrent triangulation design with 101 online survey, 20 semi-structured in-depth interview and online self-accounts of current generation of China correspondents, the study tries to map the morphology of the field, which is composed of a largely male-dominated and well-educated mass of agents, who share some collective primary habitus which function in effect as the entry limit. Foreign correspondents as agents enter the field in China with different secondary habitus. Neither Chinese habitus nor journalistic habitus is found to be a prerequisite for entering the field of China correspondence, or, at least not yet, though both types of secondary habitus contribute to compete for all forms of capitals and consolidate an advantageous position, such as in resourceful elite Anglo-American news organizations. The varying degree of journalistic habitus and Chinese habitus is structured in their own histories prior to their China posting, and also is structuring their positions and practice in the field.
One of the major contributions of this article is the proposed habitus-based typology of journalists. China correspondent’s habitus distinguish them into four types. Spiralists are more committed to their profession as a ‘foreign correspondent’ rather than ‘China correspondent’, demonstrating weak Chinese habitus. With strong cosmopolitan professionalism, they are most likely to challenge the existing power relations in the field.
The less cosmopolitan Sporadics have little commitment to China. Assigned to a usually brief overseas posting from home desks, they are more attuned to bureaucratic and organizational norms and control, more reliant on press review and local hires, thus enhancing the existing power relations of the China correspondence field.
In contrast, Sinojournos and Sinophiles have gained strong Chinese habitus prior to their China postings. Sinojournos tend to secure a stable position as China correspondents in a long run, with high mobility between news organizations but low mobility in location. With extensive local connections and rich knowledge about China, they often become the ‘reference group’ among foreign press corps, for sources, story frames and so on.
The least journalism-committed group, Sinophiles, have strong Chinese habitus. They are most likely to leave journalism for other fields; while within the field, they do not intend to change or challenge the existing power relations, neither do they try to consolidate or elevate their positions.
Theoretically, findings of this study are expected to shed lights on exploring the construct of habitus as a conceptual framework for journalism and media studies; the measurement of habitus hopefully inspires further debates and discussion on the operationalization of the central construct in Bourdieu’s dispositional theory of practice. Empirically, the measurement of the primary and secondary habitus of China correspondents, and the habitus-based typology, advance our understanding of foreign correspondents in the new political economy of international reporting; such understanding helps predict some patterns in China reporting: as more correspondents exhibiting stronger Chinese habitus are entering the field, we may expect to see the breadth and depth of China reporting being advanced and the further complex dynamics between journalists and state coercive apparatus; yet the majority of China correspondents still being Sporadics or Sinophiles, rather than Sinojournos or Spiralists, contribute to maintaining the status quo of the field of China correspondence.
This exploratory study has its limitations. As noted earlier, the three dimensions of habitus are not equally operationalized as measurement for the habitus-based typology of foreign correspondents. The affective dimension is largely discussed normatively using qualitative data. Future studies could explore alternative methods to measure journalists’ habitus.
It also needs to be noted that the pattern predictions in this study are based on the thesis that habitus of the agents set the basis of power relations in the field of foreign correspondence. But as much as Bourdieu is not a determinist, I am by no means suggesting habitus has the ominous power to structure or determine if an agent is to take the position of Sinojourno, Spiralist, Sinophile or Sporadic. Habitus, especially journalistic and Chinese habitus, does play a major role in setting an agent’s position and shaping his or her practice in the foreign journalistic field in China; yet as discussed earlier, habitus per se is always in a fluid state, shaped and accumulated during the ever-stretching personal and social trajectory. The structuring of the position and field is a dynamic process, forever developing and evolving.
Besides, habitus at individual level aside, other factors including newsroom norms, or routines, organizational constraints and institutional pressure, all contribute to the structure of the field of China correspondence and the position and practice of correspondents. Further studies could address the power of these factors and China correspondents’ negotiation with these factors.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I thank Prof. Chin-Chuan Lee for his valuable critiques and suggestions on this study and the manuscript; my gratitude also goes to all China correspondents who participated in this study, and the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the previous versions of this manuscript.
Author’s Note
Yuan Zeng is also affiliated with Xi’an International Studies University, China.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
