News media commercialization in Chindia: Changing theoretical perceptions

Abstract

There are many descriptions of media realities in China and India. Few of them, however, look at these countries from the theoretical classification framework, and those who do often do not pay proper attention to the Western orientation of existing classifications. Denis McQuail’s models of dominance and pluralism are not frequently mentioned in global media studies, and this article adds to the scholarly discussion about their use to explain media environments in the countries like India, which uses Western standards of media system, although having a cultural and historical background that is different from the West, and China, which despite implementation of one part of the Western approach, such as commercialization, ignores or rejects the others.

Keywords

Censorship China classification models commercialization Denis McQuail dominance global media government control India pluralism

Introduction

China and India represent 40 per cent of the world’s population and over 20 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and economic activity. China has the second largest economy in the world, while India has the fourth largest. According to Goldman and Sachs (GS Asset Management, 2010), at the current speed of economic growth, China will become the largest economy by 2035. India, in turn, will become the second largest economy, exceeding the United States, by the same year. These two Asian countries have completely different political systems, grounded in mutually exclusive ideologies, which, in turn, have characterized different types of news media (further referred to as media) systems with different standards, work routines and professional standards.

When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms in the 1970s, he impacted the media industry within the country as well. One of the most significant outcomes was the partial or complete commercialization of certain media outlets. China considers Deng Xiaoping’s reforms to be part of a necessary evil to stay relevant within the world. However, it does not believe that evil cannot be controlled. On the contrary, the country actively uses different tools to control the media industry.

The media industry in India, on the other hand, is different in many aspects. It has adopted many Western style media standards, including market relationships and self-financing, which China is still trying to fit into its ideological framework. This article will discuss the similarities and differences between the media systems of China and India with a focus on the recent trend of liberalization. It will also define the role of commercialization as it relates to changes in the media environments of the two countries.

The offered comparison of a media system in a Western-style democracy (India) with an example of the controlled media in China is interesting because the two countries are very similar in some non-political areas, especially in the current state of their economies. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it seeks to discover whether the differences caused by the dominant ideologies are significant enough to place them on opposite poles of McQuail’s media classification models. Second, it wants to determine whether the changes towards liberalization were caused by the commercialization of the media industries. McQuail (2010) offered a practical way of looking at theoretical questions when he talked about the set of questions one should ask to evaluate the country’s media system. This article aims to look at the two countries, India and China, from the prism of those questions.

In addition to its theoretical basis, this article focusses on several aspects of the commercialization process, including the history of media commercialization and liberalization, institutional differences in the media, official regulations placed on the media, the role of globalization and international media players, and government interference in the commercialization and liberalization of the media. At this point, it is important to understand that significant differences exist with regard to the meanings of the concepts of commercialization and liberalization (Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011). If the first serves primarily economic goals and can be achieved in different kinds of political systems without affecting their ruling strategies and ideologies, it seems unrealizable to implement liberal values of free choice, free speech and citizen participation in governing into societies with single-party/leader/ideology structures. Even if the media industry becomes commercialized in a country, it still tends to follow party viewpoints and goals. Without significant political changes in such a society, marketization and commercialization will not be able to improve the level of media autonomy (Kuang, 2012). In fact, commercial liberalization of the media can be an additional factor in authoritarian resilience (Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011) and, therefore, understanding the differences in the realities of the practical implementation of the concepts of liberalization in the two countries of interest is crucial for the contextual perception of this study.

Theory

Within this article, I will compare the quality of media systems between two countries, India and China. As I plan on comparing quality, one must first ask, ‘What is quality?’ In this study, quality is defined as compliance with a certain set of journalism standards, such as independence from government control and the ability to report without direct or indirect censorship.

This article contains many parts. First, I will provide a historical overview of media to give the audience a general idea of the traditions and cultural background of media as these can be important factors with regard to legislative and financial regulations. Next, I will briefly discuss the role of media as an institution in both societies, following by an overview of the key points of media legislation. This section will include a discussion on the influence of globalization and, as a result of globalization, the existence of foreign media players will be observed for their importance with regard to the liberalization process. Finally, using previous studies, I will look at the true nature of government–media relations to discover the importance of media commercialization with regard to liberalization in both countries.

An important part of this discussion will focus on an overview of the indirect censorship mechanisms used by the governments of both countries to gain/retain control over commercialized media outlets. These factors serve as indicators to be identified to make informed statements about the current situation of the freedom of the press in both countries, while, at the same time, discuss possible connections between commercialization and freedom of speech. Previous studies that have analysed changes in the media systems of post-Soviet countries (Mickiewicz, 2000; Mollison, 1998) can help us to understand how the new trends of commercialization and liberalization in Chinese media may change media–government, media–business and media–society relations. It should be noted that examining different theories to find the best theoretical framework within which to describe and explain the differences between the Chinese and Indian media systems is a central point of discussion here.

The most practical, but least theoretical, approach would be to use the evaluation methodologies employed by media organizations to create rankings of media freedom. One of them is a set of indicators that focusses on ‘press freedom’ and is used by Freedom House (Norris, 2010). Although some scholarly articles rely on practical methodologies as they focus on important issues found in journalism studies, such as the structure of news delivery systems and the economic constraints of media content, specific characteristics of their data collection processes differ significantly from the ones used in social sciences. Part of it is a lack of external control over the objectivity of the studies, which, in scholarly research, is operated through different organizations like academic Institutional Review Boards. However, academic studies that use their data as background information and as part of the justification for a problem have been successful (Woods, 2007).

Several theoretical approaches with the potential to explain the reasons behind the possible differences exist. One of these approaches is an influential, but outdated classification model offered by Siebert et al. (1956). Although their work reflects the polarized conflicts of the Cold War, their justification for separating countries based on their ideological differences would work for this study because we are looking at two countries with significantly different governing systems created by different ideologies.

Four theories suggest that totalitarian regimes (the Soviet communist model) rely on the media, among other institutions, to rule society and transform it as required for their own goals, which is slightly different from their description of media under authoritarianism, which states that the goal of the media is to keep society stable (Siebert et al., 1956). Here lies the main problem in using the four theories. India, with its relatively developed democratic media, falls quite strictly under the libertarian model in their classification; however, China, especially in light of the changes made within the framework of economic reforms, can no longer be considered totalitarian, but has not yet reached the authoritarianism level as its social and economic institutions are not under government control. Although the announced form of modern, commercialized media organizations is closer to an out-of-government institution description, in reality, we can see that the government in China is not ready to let it happen in the near perspective and is more likely to create official media monitoring government structures to control the content of all media in the country (Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011).

One of the most frequently used theoretical groundings is Hallin and Mancini’s (2011) classification of global media. The design of their model fits with the questions raised in this study with regard to the nature of government–media relations in the two countries. Their comparative study of Western European countries was based on observations of such relations, in addition to an analysis of economic, social and cultural factors. However, as mentioned in the works of many scholars (Hallin and Mancini, 2011), what is good for Europe may not be appropriate for the East. Zhao (2011) adopted their approach to describe Chinese media from a historical perspective and focussed on problems related to the use of Western theoretical categories to describe Eastern societies. She provided a more realistic description of Chinese media, showing that in many cases, it does not fit into the West-centric categories provided by Hallin and Mancini.

This realization led me to search for an approach that did not utilize the Western understanding of the quality of the media and, instead, uses the fundamental keystones of journalism standards (i.e. the logic of freedom of the press that states that media must be independent and seek the truth; Eun-Suk, 2013). To this end, McQuail’s models of the media fit the above requirements. Aiming to answer questions, such as who controls the media, whose social reality is presented, how is the access to the media organized and does the media use its power to influence, McQuail came up with two opposing models: dominance and pluralism. Behind this separation is an analysis of the aspects of mass media power, which seems to be used as a universal set of criteria. As a result of using these criteria, one is able to test media realities in a particular society with regard to the level of government interference and control among other factors.

To describe China’s media system, which is controlled by a small group of individuals who hold political and financial power, I will use the dominance model. Using the characteristics of the dominance model, it is possible to see whether the Chinese media are serving the interests of the political/financial establishment by legitimating the prevailing structure of power (McQuail, 2010) instead of executing its professional goals.

To describe India’s media system, the control of which has been disseminated among different groups in society, I will use the pluralist model. The dissemination of power and interests across different political, financial and social interest groups makes the media system diverse and unpredictable (McQuail, 2010). In its perfect form, the pluralist model represents everything that a journalist could wish for in terms of working independently, without any type of control or censorship, and it can be considered the long-term goal of newly commercialized media in certain countries. Using this model, I will examine the Indian media to see how successful it has been in reaching this goal.

Two shortcomings of McQuail’s models are their extreme interest in external influences and lack of attention to internal factors that affect the quality of media. This is also the case in many earlier studies that have focussed mainly on such factors as ideology, advertisers and ownership, which could potentially limit freedom of speech in democratic countries (Woods, 2007).

While each of these factors is important, especially in India, one should not ignore organizational influences or the personality factor among journalists. As mentioned above, in this discussion, we are comparing the quality of the media, which is in many ways closely related to the professionalism of individual journalists. In the rapidly changing media realities of recent years, the role of individual journalists is on the rise. In the recent edition of Shoemaker and Reese’s (2014) fundamental Mediating the Message, the entire structure of the influences model has been reconsidered with regard to the macro-to-micro model because of the new, strong role of the individual, a level that was previously considered to be of lower importance. The authors think of this new role of the individual journalist as a game changer. It was triggered by technological changes and the rise of freelance journalism with relative independence from editorial, organizational or social regulations. It reflects the realities of contemporary newsroom environments with part of the staff already being freelance workers. They operate on a different level with fewer boundaries and this is crucial in understanding the differences between them and staff reporters. These differences can include speed, ethical decision-making, working for several outlets, and so on.

Despite paying special attention to the role of individual journalists, this approach, along with many others, does not take into account non-Western media realities and specific factors often not applicable to the Western model media systems. In fact, China, where not just the dominance of political ideology over journalism standards, but also state ownership of media is a fact, is one of the most notable countries where Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchical model would not have any explanatory power by definition. In particular, the main affecting factor, freelance journalists, is not a significant part of Chinese news media even after their commercialization.

Professional journalists, even working for the partly controlled media entities, can play a significant role in the democratization of societies with limited freedom of the press and can certainly become one of the moving forces because, very often, they represent one of very few independent sources of information. But it requires a certain level of cooperation and tolerance from the media organizations, which, unfortunately, is rare in Chinese media realities. A study by Tong and Sparks (2009) overviews the state of investigative journalism in China and concludes with the disturbing statement that the opportunities for this kind of reporting are significantly reduced because of party-state pressures. Although for some newspapers, investigations are strong revenue makers, they still have to limit the tone and the frequency, while ‘others have more or less abandoned investigative journalism’ (Tong and Spark, 2009). Scholars who have examined the decision-making process in Chinese media note the differences from Western-style journalistic practices in the issues directly linked to the definition of professionalism such as the sources they turn to for information (Zhong, 2008), self-censorship response to political pressures (Lee and Chan, 2008; So and Chan, 2007) or only a partial commitment to professional standards (Ye and Pan, 2002; Zou et al., 2014).

The professionalism debate in Indian media takes a different path. Studies looking at the challenges faced by journalists find that among mostly routine concerns such as changes caused by new technologies and citizen journalism or issues of copyright, addressing different groups in society (Chadha and Steiner, 2015; Ramaprasad et al., 2015; Ravi, 2013), they are also concerned about political ownership and rapid corporatization of news outlets. The consequences of these influences potentially show in the paid content or the attempts of the political elites to use the news media for their own purposes. Although these are important questions, they are still not directly related to the major cause of the problems with professionalism in China – direct government control. In fact, most Indian journalists express rather strong commitment to independence from government control (Ramaprasad et al., 2015) and it makes the approach to the issue of professionalism very different in the two countries.

The factor of professionalism is even more important to mention in a comparative study. Even if the misuse of the power given to the media on one side (India) is not strong enough to equalize the influence of ideology and government control on the other side (China), it is still a noticeable part of the media realities.

Rose and Meszaros (1980) said that ‘facts without a framework with which to put them into perspective are of little use’. There are many descriptions of media realities in China and India. Few of them, however, look at those countries from the theoretical classification framework, and those who do often do not pay proper attention to the Western orientation of the existing classification. McQuail’s models are not frequently mentioned and this article adds to the scholarly discussion about their use to explain media environments in countries like India, which uses Western standards of media systems, despite having a cultural and historical background that is different from them, and like China, which despite implementing one part of the Western approach, such as commercialization, ignores or rejects the others.

The history of media commercialization and liberalization

The history of media in China and India are directly tied to the evolution of the relationship between the governments of these countries and media organizations. In communist China, governmental influence over the media has always been open and straightforward. When the Communist Party of China took control of the country in 1949, it also took control of its media. All private media were shut down during this time (Fraioli, 2011). Most often, the media was used as a tribune for political elites as well as the main propaganda tool for the Communist Party. This system followed the Russian model of collective propagandist and collective organizer of the socialist society. During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the media’s role in society became that of a propaganda machine (Cheek, 1989) and it became an integral part of the state apparatus to serve the state’s political and social needs (Liu, 1971).

Beginning in the late 1970s, political and economic reforms started by Deng Xiaoping had an invaluable impact on Chinese society. One of the main responses to these reforms was innovations in the media and the recognition of its importance by the communist elites at the time as an efficient method of propaganda. As part of the reforms, in 1979, for the first time, the media was allowed to accept advertisements (Akhavan-Majid, 2004) instead of government subsidies. Most scholars agree that Chinese newspapers changed their advertising strategy to survive without additional government subsidies (Lynch, 1999), and one has to ask whether accepting advertisements truly made the media financially independent and, if so, did financial independence mean freedom of expression for Chinese journalists?

As with everything in China that has the ability to affect society, the development of the print media industry in the country was carefully planned. First, the newspaper industry was separated into party newspapers and market-oriented newspapers, both still controlled by the government but using different control mechanisms. However, in both cases, the content and circulation of the newspapers was under centralized control (Lee CC, 1994a). However, today, the newspaper industry is structured differently. Following the economic reforms, the government relaxed its licensing policy and many newspapers emerged in response to the needs of the market (Sun and Tsan-Kuo, 2001).

Today, scholars have identified nine categories of newspapers: institutional, general national, mass socially oriented, enterprise, military, evening, digests, business and leisure-oriented (Lee CC, 1994a). The content of these newspapers is also significantly different from the ones that existed before the reforms. Under the new rules of the game, Chinese media play a complicated role trying to make everyone happy. It needs to reach audiences by providing entertaining content, while, at the same time, it serves as a tribune for ideological propaganda. Decisions to achieve these goals have caused an increase in the volume of entertainment content in the print and broadcasting media (Lee CC, 1994a). Although a much smaller percentage of airtime and page volume are being spent on direct official information and propaganda than for politically neutral entertainment content, the political message is still being distributed through the media.

The true effect of the reforms lies in the government’s approach to media subsidizing as it has limited these funds in favour of allowing the media outlets to have more financial independence (except for several national and at least one local media organization in each province; Chen and Lee, 1998). While this approach has been beneficial to the media, it occurred much later than the other reforms, only beginning in 1994 when government agencies required all newspapers to become financially self-sufficient. Therefore, it can be seen that, despite statements from the government that media commercialization was part of the economic reforms started in 1978, the financial independence of the media from government funding took much longer to become a reality. Indirect subsidizing practices lasted even longer and only in 2003 did the Central Propaganda Department cancel its practice of required subscriptions to the party newspapers (Cheung, 2007).

In both countries, the television industry was the last to become commercialized. The official decentralization of Chinese television happened in 1983 and, today, only the China Central Television (CCTV) is still under direct central government control (Huang, 1994). However, the true commercialization of the television industry in China, much like the newspaper industry, took place much later when, in 1995, the government announced a new wave of media modernization and a new diversification plan (Weber, 2005).

In India, the historical development of the print media was different from that in China, but the development of the broadcasting industry was similar. The foundation of Indian media was influenced by British media traditions, which, by the time India gained independence in 1947, was already based on beliefs in freedom of speech and free media. Further development of the industry also relied strongly on the idea of freedom of speech. However, although the newspaper industry was mostly controlled by market demands and the rules of competition, the broadcasting system remained under government control until Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s reforms in 1991 (Parthasarathi, 2010). These reforms can be compared with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms due to their importance to the media and the rapid expansion that they caused within the industry. For example, Doordarshan was the official government television broadcaster and held a national monopoly on television broadcasting. Despite the generally democratic nature of the Indian society and the financially and politically independent profiling of the media in general, it was only in the 1990s that the television market became more liberalized and open to private ownership (Sinclair and Harrison, 2004).

Chinese media have come a long way from the unofficial but still obligatory prohibition of negative reporting, where ‘good news is news, bad news is not news’ (Cheung, 2007), to the modern rise of investigative reporting. Even though the investigative part of journalists’ work has strict restrictions on it and is semi-controlled, the fact that it exists is a major shift in the Communist Party’s vision of the media.

In its current form, this type of permissible criticism of selected parts of the bureaucracy, usually from the lower or middle levels, still serves the general goal of supporting the regime’s decisions by denouncing individuals whose irresponsible and greedy actions cast a shadow over the general party line and government policies. While it could be said that this type of control is not much different from the ‘no criticism’ strategy, exposing a new generation of journalists to the techniques and opportunities of investigative reporting should lay the groundwork for even more drastic changes in the media industry in the future.

At the same time, despite these positive trends, many members of Chinese society still view the media as part of the old school propaganda-oriented Marxist ideology (Parthasarathi, 2010). One of the reasons for this view is the relatively recent perception of Asian countries by the Western world as the ‘periphery’ (Wallerstein, 1979), as a result of which there is a growing resistance within China towards the Western cultural invasion of Chinese society. Over the years, this type of resistance has developed independently from the ruling ideology, even though it has complied with the dominant political ideology of opposing the capitalist world.

The preservation of culture is another influential factor that cannot be ignored. Although Communist ideology attempts to replace some of the traditional values and beliefs with ones offered by Marxist ideology, several thousand years of reliance on traditions cannot be easily swept away (Hu et al., 2013). Instead, the Chinese government has found that utilizing these traditions as ways of further justification of political decisions is an effective strategy. While India is also a young nation, its culture and traditions are based on a heritage of ancient civilizations and the same importance applies to its culture and traditions as well.

Differences between the historical developments of the media systems in these countries can be explained if we try to fit them within the framework of Western perceptions of typical media development. For the majority of Western scholars, the logical development of media transformation is the path from authoritarian/totalitarian to a liberal system with clearly articulated freedom of speech. Due to its British legacy, India mostly fits into this framework. Although British colonial rule was not ‘formally’ an authoritarian regime, the interest of a few (colonial administration) power groups and financial elites who ruled the media created a situation in India similar to that found in authoritarian countries. At the same time, it was the British understanding of freedom of speech, borrowed from libertarian philosophies, that made the transition from controlled to independent press quick and relatively painless for the Indian media once independence had been gained. Partly it was the language, since pre-British Indian literature did not contain much information about different forms of social ideologies (Desai, 1966), including nationalism, that later became a major force in the independence movement.

Despite being introduced in the 16th century, the printing press did not exist in India in the pre-British period (Desai, 1966), but although the establishment of the Indian press is linked to colonialism, the role that media, and especially the nationalist press, played later was an unintentional consequence. Furthermore, this was an unwanted consequence and the colonial administration actively expostulated the role of the media in the national movement through various press acts to limit and control the press. Despite all the limitations and frequent repressions, the Indian press during colonial rule played a significant role in awakening the nation and many leaders like Gandhi, who elaborated his political philosophy on the pages of Young India (Kaul, 2003), used the press as a tribune. It was the power of agitation among the general public that carried India through the stages of achieving independence (Sarkar, 1989). Major changes started when the masses became a part of political life and the role of the media in this process was invaluable.

China, however, is a different story. At some points in its history, it fits into the Western transformation model in a form of the ‘state vs market’ scenario (Akhavan-Majid, 2004), but it only describes the process, not the final outcome of the transformation.

In reality, the two systems ended up on opposite sides of the classification model, which is the basis for the theoretical grounding for this article. While India, after going through the logical steps of transformation, emerged as a ‘pluralist’ country by creating one of the world’s freest media systems (Thussu, 2013), China, despite its de jure commercialization and the financial independence of its media organizations, is much closer to the ‘dominance’ model of government–media relations.

The role of official regulations and international media players in media commercialization

India and China used to have different approaches with regard to the ownership of their print media (Pashupati et al., 2003). China, from the early days of the Communist revolution, preferred to have official control over the newspapers, but formal regulation changed in the early 1980s. Representing the official position of the Chinese government, Section 34 of the Regulations of Internal Supervision of the Chinese Communist Party states: ‘Media is required to adhere to Party principles and media professional ethics, to direct public opinion on the right course and to be aware of the social impact of public opinion supervision’ (Central Committee of CCP, 2003) and it does not seem like the government is ready, even today, to look into the possibilities of free speech. Some scholars argue that ‘elaborate licensing systems and frameworks have rendered private ownership almost impossible’ (Keller, 2003) in China; however, we will discuss the realities of government–media relations in the next section. Within this section, we are interested in the formal regulations on the newspaper industry and their similarities and differences in the two countries.

Formally, both China and India allow private ownership of their newspapers (although this is extremely limited in China). Especially in India, freedom of the press and private ownership of media were important achievements of the independence movement. The broadcasting industry, however, chose a different path from print and is usually the central focus of interest in conversations regarding media regulations in the two countries. In this comparative study, it is even more justified: first, because, in India, broadcasting was the only part of the media that did not originally follow the general trend of independence from the government. The broadcasting industry did not become independent until the early 1990s. Second, because, in China, television broadcasting legislation was issued specifically in the period of the economic and media reforms (Chen, 2009). The Ministry of Radio and Television (MRT), established in 1983, has become the main broadcasting administrative authority in China (Guo, 2003). The lack of attention to broadcasting regulation can be partly explained by low standards of living in both countries and, accordingly, a small distribution of television sets among the general population.

In a comparative study (Chang, 2006), the case of STAR TV, the first pan-Asian satellite television station in India, has been analysed from the nation-state perspective. It was found that although both governments executed formal regulations that often stand in the way of globalization efforts by international media players, there are differences between the two states. China uses strict regulatory mechanisms that aim to fully control both distribution channels and the content of the broadcasts. India, in turn, is more willing to compromise and does not significantly interfere in the content, but it retains regulatory power in cases where national security or national identity is compromised.

Both sides have justified strict control over television broadcasting using arguments that include its role in the nation-building process (Melkote, 1991). However, after the reforms, commercialization brought additional factors into reality. New realities of market competition caused the networks to rely heavily on advertising money, which, in turn, caused internal conflicts (Pashupati et al., 2003). While these conflicts affected both countries, they dealt with the problem differently. For Chinese television, the decisive factor was ideology and it announced ideas of broadcasting as matters of ‘public interest’, ‘nation building’ and ‘defending original culture’, which, in the government’s opinion, had clear priority over the ‘battle for profit’. After the reforms in India, the Indian media, in many cases, did the opposite and sacrificed public interest for the sake of profit, thereby demonstrating commitment to the spirit of free market relations and commercialized media.

The unofficial place, the weight of a media organizations can be measured in rating points, but this aspect also has differences in terms of being market driven and ideology driven. Previous studies have attempted to make connections between the rank of a newspaper in China and its autonomy and have found that the higher the ranking of the paper, the lower its autonomy. For non-party newspapers, however, a higher rank is usually associated with a higher level of autonomy (Kuang, 2012).

Differences exist in the conceptions of rankings in the West and in controlled societies. In a market-driven society, a higher rank usually means that the paper has higher journalistic standards and has gained the trust of the audience through its reliance on those standards. In a controlled society such as China, ranking is important with regard to surviving against local competition, but its importance becomes secondary when party or government interests appear. For the Chinese media, a ranking is less important than the media–government or ‘independent’ orientation (Kuang, 2012). In some ways, it indicates that there is less government control over the content. This type of control would be hard to operate without the imposition of self-censorship among media workers. In the current form of the Chinese media, it is one of the main mechanisms against further liberalization (Wang and Chang, 1996).

The process of the internationalization of the media industries began in both countries in similar ways and was caused by the interests of similar players in both India and China. However, at the same time, significant differences exist in the forms and strategies and, therefore, the same approach cannot be used for both countries. First, legislatively, China had stricter restrictions banning direct access to foreign media outlets unless sanctioned by the government. This included internet media sources as well as television and print media (Associated Press, 1998). Later, when not only foreign ownership, but also foreign programming was allowed into the country, it became a part of a long ongoing process of commercialization (Parthasarathi, 2010). Foreign investments began to play a significant role in the new media realities. Despite being clearly ineffective in solving the government control problem of Chinese media, investments and the associated interests of international corporations introduced additional factors into the media realities. This was so, in particular, with regard to the beginnings of financial independence for the media as the survival of these industries depended not only on their ability to win the audience’s attention, but also on finding alternative investments. In these situations, foreign partners helped to shape the media sphere (Hanson and Zheng, 2010). First, the Western-style competitive media market models used by them increased the need for higher quality programming (Lin, 2004). Second, the post-World Trade Organization reality of the external opening-up actually changed both policy and practice of media by forcing transition from the market socialism model to the state controlled capitalist corporation model (Huang, 2007).

In India, with its focus on pure market interests, the government encouraged the industry by providing both domestic and foreign media players with equal opportunities and rights. China gave priority to state-owned enterprises with limited access to foreign companies (Hanson and Zheng, 2010). However, by the middle of the 2000s, the share of internationalized media was significant in both countries (Parthasarathi, 2010). As much as it is commercially important for international media players, such as CNN and News Corp., to gain access and keep stable positions in markets as large as China and India (Lagerkvist, 2003), their significance for those countries’ democratic development is also crucial. It is especially important for Chinese audiences who benefit from having access to opinions different from the ones widely distributed by the commercially free, but politically dependent domestic media organizations.

Country-specific issues related to government interference in media

The government’s interference in the reformed media is radically different in the two countries. The difference is partially in the very nature of governing in the two countries. On the one side, China is a party-led state without substantial political opposition, and on the other side, India is a federal parliamentary republic which has already adopted many of the traditions and values of Western democracies. The government rarely, if ever, interferes in the Indian media, especially the newspaper industry. Due to the country’s history, the Indian media experiences a relatively high level of independence from all types of direct and indirect governmental control. The problems that appear from time to time are usually related to the concerns and interests of various social and political groups about their representation in the media. Since all groups have relatively equal access and opportunities to have their own print media outlets, the main concerns usually focus on television coverage. One of the waves of concern began in 2003 with complaints regarding the representation of minority groups. The forces behind this movement were several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights activists who wanted coverage of certain problems with regard to the public service responsibility of television (Parthasarathi, 2010). Although some argue that in its current form, the Indian broadcasting industry often represents the interests of its owners rather than public interest (Jin, 2007), it matches the aims and goals of commercialization and independence from government control.

Despite the advantage enjoyed by Indian media over the Chinese one in something as important as the level of government control, it faces its own problems. The major one, which has been discussed frequently in both periodical and academic publications is the issue of market censorship. Potentially, it can create the same form of self-censorship that has been mentioned above in the Chinese context, although for a different reason and goals. The actual goal of the interest groups, although being far from full control, can still affect professionalism in the coverage of topics sensitive to the government, thereby affecting the quality factor, which is central to the argument in this discussion. Rao, in her examination of the specific characteristics of Indian democracy, finds that as part of a media commercialization process that started in the 1990s, the conduct of political reporting has changed. Despite the new, selective nature of criticism, after commercialization, the power of politicians is severely limited. The press, ‘independent from government funding, can afford to critique powerful leaders’ (Rao, 2012: 90). The very fact that an initiative to offer ‘paid news’ to politicians before elections provoked a scandal is a sign of the overall commitment to the values of professional journalism both in Indian society and mass media.

Some of the influential media outlets in India are owned by political leaders, others belong to corporations and have been informally, but clearly, supportive of some of the leaders because of their beneficial policies. In explaining these complicated market realities, some scholars go so far as to describe the role of the media in the Indian national elections as the ‘logical extension of crony capitalism’ (Mazumdar, 2014: 4). Truly, it can be stated that market interests are clearly present in Indian political journalism, but at the same time, those interests come from different, often competing interest groups, which, despite going against the public interest responsibility of the media, still contribute to the principle of the marketplace of ideas by providing some diversity of opinion. The key factor, though, that distinguishes this media reality from the one in China is the relations with the central government, since Indian news outlets, despite problems with some level of market censorship, are still inclined to preserve their watchdog function with regard to the government.

Considering that the Indian broadcast industry was the last segment of the media to be controlled by the government, changes towards the rules of the market as motivation allow us to consider the much higher success rate of media reforms in this field as compared to China. This does not mean though that there is no room for further improvement. In addition to the further move towards independence from the influence of both government and interest groups, despite financial support of the media, there is also a third way. A study by Fürsich and Shrikhande (2007) talks about the possibilities of community media on a local level. Although funding remains the major issue in this model, it has proven viable, especially with community radio.

A division exists in opinions about the role of commercialization and liberalization in China and its importance for government–media relations. Nevertheless, the majority opinion is that, despite the announced principles behind liberalization, it has actually helped to entrench state control (Zhao, 2008a) as the media now have personal and financial interests in maintaining the political status quo. It can be argued that the media–government dialogue has changed (Wang and Chen, 2008): instead of using fear of punishment as a motivation, the government’s new system of control is based on the ‘carrot and stick’ method with stress on positive encouragement and using pressure only when that fails. As many scholars have stated, we need to look at the general picture of commercialized media in China without being preoccupied with the formal absence of censorship or government subsidies. This will allow us to see the new system of financial independence as a part of a larger, sophisticated control mechanism.

Although the idea behind ‘liberalization’ has the same type of influence on media as before, while convincing internal and external audiences of having made significant changes in media policy, the Chinese government does not always feel the necessity to camouflage its true intentions. For example, in 2002, China introduced the ‘Dual-Track’ policy for the television industry. The goal was to separate editorial and business operations (Parthasarathi, 2010). This decision is one of the brightest examples of double standards and the selective use of liberalization. Despite the announced media liberalization, the entire work process of the editorial staffs has been traced in a way not much different from those used by the Department of Propaganda. It is still clear that the goals of the party are the dominant priority of the media, but, in this case, the financial control of the ‘editorial sectors’ has been kept away from any type of private or foreign investments (Parthasarathi, 2010).

Serving two masters is not an easy task. To survive in a market where the media must please the government, and at the same time meet the expectations of the audience, the Chinese media have had to develop their own model of journalism, which some scholars have described as ‘propagandist-commercial’ (Zhao, 1997). Within this approach, the marketized media provide convincing messages (Stockmann and Gallagher, 2011) hidden behind entertainment and permitted journalistic investigations. In this way, government propaganda is no longer direct and you will rarely see official government information or the government’s opinion on the pages of commercialized newspapers; instead, everything will be done to convince the audience that the best possible solution to a problem was found or that all the perpetrators of a crime were punished. The individuals named in the media in such cases, not surprisingly, usually belong to the lower levels of government management, who can be sacrificed without affecting the image of the party. For those who can be touched, the media, in fact, have become the second greatest danger to society. Conflicts are being reported, but in ways approved by the regulators and under strict structural conditions (Donohue et al., 1995).

At the same time, the ‘stick’ is as important as the ‘carrot’ and it shows us another face of the Chinese government. In 2004, several editors, including the top management of the Southern Metropolis Daily, were arrested and sentenced to several years in prison (Watts, 2005). This was followed by a suspension of the printing of the liberal papers (Cheung, 2007). This is one of the dangers of taking liberalization ideas too seriously. Section 34 of central clearing counterparty (CCP) regulations (Central Committee of CCP, 2003) includes both ‘party principles’ and ‘professional standards’ as important parts of the new media strategy, but, in reality, media freedom depends upon the benevolence and patronage of ‘enlightened leaders’ (Lee, 2010), even though, in the ratings war, the media may sometimes lose its sense of reality.

Additional limitations were placed on the media as and when the government deemed it necessary, especially with regard to criticism of the party. In cases where the popularity of certain programmes or editorial content increased significantly due to such criticism, the government interfered by posing additional regulations. Take the case of the popular investigative programme, The Probe, in which, although the criticism was within the limits of the approved structures, the government created additional guidelines stating that the share of critical reporting could not exceed 50 per cent of the programme’s airtime (Cheung, 2007). Such new regulations force those within the industry to self-censor to avoid retribution from the governmental regulators (He, 2004).

Looking at the possible role of the media as an independent player in the political and economic changes in both countries is an interesting approach, since it could add to the argument of applying McQuail’s opposing models. In cases of sensitive or high salience issues, where the media’s standing could actually change public opinion and result in a shift or adjustment of the government’s policies, it is interesting to see how these issues have been treated in actuality by China and India. While looking at such case studies, we must focus on the evaluation of the influence of the government or political elites, since it provides a perspective of what kinds of standards – journalism or political – are dominant in the media realities of both countries.

A study by Yang (2008) looking at the media coverage of the Iraq War across three countries – the United States, China and India – found significant differences between them. Yang believes that in each country, the overall tone and level of backing of the government’s message were differently motivated. In the United States, the country which started the war, the media rallied around the government’s decision for patriotic reasons, and later questioned this decision and became very critical of the government when the alleged weapons of mass destruction were not found. Chinese media emphasized the need for diplomatic solutions and was not supportive of the war rhetoric. The major argument was the economic consequences of the military intervention which mostly echoed the Chinese government’s announced position. In the Indian press, an anti-war attitude was dominant and the media were significantly more aggressive than the Indian government in raising their voice against the war.

Another study (Luther and Zhou, 2005) comparing the coverage of the SARS epidemic in the US and Chinese media found that despite similarities in the news frames, the extent and manner of coverage varied significantly. Among other frames, ‘leadership’ was different: while the US media made frequent references to the responsibilities of the Chinese leadership, Chinese newspapers focussed on the positive initiatives undertaken by the party leaders. Although the study proves indirectly that as a result of the economic changes in the news industry, Chinese media now share many frames with Western-style journalism, political control over the content and manner of coverage has remained strong in China. This is evident in the choice of information sources as well. Stuart et al. (1991) describe the level of dependence on official sources in India, Australia and China: 37 per cent reliance on press releases in India and 63 per cent in China.

It is no secret that the media in China are required to operate under the principles of socialism, and even in cases where Western models were used to create or restructure Chinese media organizations, special attention was given to making it a socialist, rather than capitalist, form of media. Therefore, it does not seem possible for a major shift towards marketization and profit orientation to occur in media development in China, since it would disregard the fundamental relationships between the media and the Communist Party. The idea that under new realities the Chinese media would actually begin to execute its ‘fourth estate’ function remains wishful thinking. It was never the intention of the government to provide the media with opportunities to be anything more than a tool of propaganda. New, reorganized media organizations have become even more effective at silencing social issues and providing space for public discussion of issues within the framework of the government’s views and positions (Cheung, 2007).

Although the processes of digitization in China contributed – within the realities of the government having the power to ban entire online communities such as Facebook – to undermining the government’s monopoly on information through different formats of user-generated content, most significantly through video sharing, blogs and microblogs, digitization did not trigger fundamental changes in terms of newspapers and broadcast news organizations (Open Society Foundation, 2012a). Even with the availability of online news delivery platforms, to operate without the constraints of party-guided news policies, journalists had to take their work outside the commercialized, but nevertheless controlled newsrooms.

The digitization process in India had a different effect on the news media. Although the number of online news sites increased significantly, most were extensions to existing news outlets. User-generated content, which was one of very few options to share information relatively freely in China, became in India only an additional information source, which was valuable because of its unprecedented scale, but not different in content from existing news gathering mechanisms (Open Society Foundation, 2012b).

To determine the country’s position in his classification, McQuail offered to look at the control mechanisms of the media as well as other factors to determine who controlled the media and whether the media uses its powers to influence society. In the cases of India and China, these questions can be answered with a high level of confidence. The Indian media are mostly controlled by groups, independent from the government’s influence, and if certain parts of media organizations represent the government’s views, then they are often counterbalanced by those groups that operate as business organizations. Together, these two groups create a liberal environment based on a free marketplace of ideas; therefore, governmental interference in India can be placed within the pluralism model in McQuail’s classification.

China is the direct opposite of India. Despite having announced the liberalization of its media, the influence of the government on media content, coverage strategies and ideology is the most important factor within the industry. Although commercialization has taken place and most of the newspapers and broadcasting media are self-sufficient, their financial independence does not mean independence from the government. It is not only ideological dependence, but also political servitude to the ruling establishment, ignoring journalistic values and standards, if they oppose the position of the ruling forces that makes the Chinese media fall into the other side of McQuail’s classification as a country with the dominance model of media.

Conclusion

In the contemporary media environment, we should avoid black-and-white reading of the complex media realities in India and China. One can argue that in India, despite a free press, governments have regulated the media both directly as was the case during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s infamous Emergency and indirectly by withholding public sector advertisements. The Indian press has been implicated in the ‘paid news’ scandal in which some of the major newspapers in the country were found to have been paid by politicians to carry favourable news about them. Similarly, the media in China too can be both open and closed. Surely, there is enough evidence to show that the media in China now report on a number of social issues that were not reported on even a decade or two ago.

According to Lee CC (1994a), ‘No media systems are totally free of control, but the causes and consequences of control vary significantly’. Media scholars from both sides of the new ‘iron curtain’ have employed this basic idea. It is interesting to see how some scholars, published as a rule in Chinese academic journals, justify the government’s strict control and official dominance of the ideological, how party interests control the daily activities of the media and how they are able to find examples of government regulations in Western countries as evidence to show that their own regulations are not extraordinary. On the other hand, scholars have also pointed out that the Chinese media industry is not comparable with its Western counterparts due to the freedom of speech available in the West.

This article compares the media systems in two countries with particular focus on two major goals. The first goal is to examine whether the differences are significant enough to assign each country with a particular role as described in McQuail’s media classification. The second goal is to define the role of commercialization in news media in the continuing liberalization of the industries in two countries. Following McQuail’s (2010) approach to ask specific questions to define the place of the media system in the classification model, we are summarizing by asking those questions.

Who controls the media? The answer can be found in our discussion of government interference in the work processes and content of media in both countries. For India, even if we consider the government’s monopoly in broadcasting that ended long after print media became independent, we can still say that the media content in this country would be extremely difficult to control because of the variety of media organizations that represent a wide range of interests. Open discussions have taken place about the methods and strategies used by the Chinese government to control the media, but the existence of government control is rarely questioned. According to the announced goals of the country’s commercialization, the process was supposed to align the industry with international standards, but, even in theory, the Chinese government did not state that the reformed media could challenge the authority of the party (Darrell, 2010).

Whose social reality is presented? At the very core of the Chinese media is its officially announced and unofficially applied propagandist role. Propaganda is a tool used by the party to convince the general public of the correctness of the party’s path. Commercialization caused many changes in the media industry, mostly with regard to financial operation mechanisms, which, in turn, affected the content produced by the media. Dictated by market rules, entertainment has become the main content of the media used to attract audiences. It is true that compared with the pre-reform period, one can find much less official propaganda within the Chinese media, but when it comes to politically/socially/economically important issues, market interests and profit orientation become secondary. The only version of reality that matters is the one supported by the party establishment, although this opinion is buried within the media produced. On the other hand, the Indian media industry evolved differently, historically and professionally. Instead of one having one right answer for everything, it chose to have an open marketplace of ideas in which a variety of opinions could be presented.

How is access to the media organized? One of the important parts of media diversity is providing equal opportunities for everyone to have their voices heard. Within the examples of the two countries, we can see how important this factor is. The answer to this question is easy for India and complicated for China. Licensing procedures for print media in both countries have been formally simplified as one of the steps of commercialization, but, in reality, this easy access is an illusion in China. If India, in fact, has one of the simplest licensing systems, then China’s system, in addition to being used as an additional method of control, is one of the most complicated.

Do the media use their power to influence? To define the positions of China and India within McQuail’s classification, we need to rephrase this question. What is really important is what types of influence the media bear upon society. In a democratic society, as in India, the distribution of influence on society is one of the ways to create a variety of opinions. However, in China, the only truly influential factors in the Chinese media are the interests of the ruling elites and ideological compliance with the ways of the party.

Does the Chinese media industry use its power to influence society in directions beneficial to the ruling elites and the party? Previous studies say yes, which allows us to add additional factors towards classifying China under the dominance model of classification. Once again, India is the complete opposite. Although the Indian broadcasting industry has been criticized recently for ignoring its public service responsibilities in favour of commercial interests, it still fits within the ideas behind the concept of commercialization when the market, instead of the interests of the ruling forces, is the decisive factor in its products.

Democratic and authoritarian societies have some similarities in that the roles of both systems and the function of the media are usually ‘shaped by the larger politico-social landscape, which is usually compatible with the national political ideology’ (Sun and Tsan-Kuo, 2001). However, in democratic countries, the media is expected to reflect a diversity of opinions (Bi, 2012), which matches one of the principles of the democratic ideology – having informed citizens who make educated decisions about their own and the country’s future. India, as an example of a country that has adopted democratic values and principles as its main ideology, in fact, provides opportunities for its media to be a fair and equal tribune for all opinions. Certain limitations exist, but they mostly revolve around the rules of the market and competition. Considering previous experiences of the country’s media evolution and based on current trends, it can be predicted that India will follow the model of developed European countries’ media systems, therefore, reinforcing its position as a pluralist country in McQuail’s classification.

Unfortunately, China is not that predictable and it has puzzled scholars for many years. In some ways, it follows the path of economic development typical of Western democracies and has formally changed its media regulations so that they reflect free market ideals. However, at the same time, the real situation in China does not reflect most of the government’s announced strategies. It is almost as if the country is travelling in two directions at the same time: the way in which it wants the world to view it and the way in which it is operating (Sreberny-Mohammadi et al., 1997). The media in China is being driven by two major factors, the country’s dominant ideology and market competition. By examining the historical development, formal and informal regulations and nature of government–media relations, it can be stated that the ideological control operated by government officials and party ideologists are the most important factors using which the country’s media system can be defined as a dominance model.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Rashad Mammadov

Author biography

Rashad Mammadov is a communication and journalism expert with over 20 years of professional and 12 years of international teaching experience. His research interests include visual communications, government–media relationships, the implementation of mass communication theories to the media systems of countries with developing democracies and media realities under different political systems.

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