The news and local production of the global

Abstract

Key to the local audience’s conceptions of the global spectacle, the marketized regional press in China has been increasingly confronted with a complex world to cover as China finds itself integrating steadily into the global marketplace and rising as a formidable power in the post-WTO era. Using the data collected from five Chinese regional newspapers in 1989 and 2009, this study indicates that the consequences of spillover in China’s growing integration with the global system and the ever-increasing media marketization have been carried into the domain of international news, particularly in terms of a more neutral journalistic perspective and a widened range of vision at the local level. The results also show that the regionalization of international news reporting is still contained within the orbit of the party-state. The comparison over a 20-year time span suggests that China’s integration into the world capitalism system has opened up a larger global landscape for the local press, but not necessarily a wider latitude to negotiate the terrain.

Keywords

China Chinese regional press content analysis foreign news foreign policy news globalization marketization

As the notion of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson, 1995) captures the global media production of the local and the local media production of the global in the growing processes of globalization, one of the most vexing questions in mass communication research is how the foreign spectacle plays out in the news that occupies an unrivaled position in shaping the ways the global reality is to be perceived by the local public in countries around the world (Löffelholz and Weaver, 2008; Stanton, 2007). China is widely considered the greatest beneficiary of globalization, finding itself integrating into the global marketplace and rising as a formidable power over the past few decades (Deng, 2008). Economic globalization and the realignment in world politics in the post-Cold War era, particularly after Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, have fundamentally changed the global landscape and China’s place therein, suggesting a new framework for international news coverage in the Chinese press, both national and local. In international communication, a nation’s view of the world and of itself has practical and theoretical implications for the news flow across national borders.

Practically, it would be particularly revealing to zoom in on the world picture presented by China’s regional gatekeepers of information about foreign events and issues in the post-WTO era. Previous studies of the international news coverage in the Chinese media, though, were largely framed within the Cold War context (Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1995). Theoretically, the location of journalists and their news organizations, both physical and social, tend to lead to different observations and interpretations of the same events (Tuchman, 1978). Journalists are cognizant, whether explicitly or implicitly, of the centrality of the domestic, rather than international, perspective in news reporting (Palmer and Fontan, 2007). Domestication of international news is often the norm, not the exception (Cohen et al., 1996). For Chinese media practitioners, the central question is no longer whether the world outside China is threatening to China and China should turn inward. Over the time that it has been a member of the WTO, China has been preoccupied with an uphill struggle for status through adapting to the social structures of world economy and politics.

Institutional theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Scott, 1987) also holds that institutions often respond to the changes, pressures or uncertainties in the external environments in ways that help enhance their continuing existence. Newspapers in China are of course part of the social institutions that cannot be immune to the impact of the national and international reconfiguration of state–media relations in the realms of economic, financial and political considerations. Despite the fact that Xinhua News Agency has dominated in controlling the flow of foreign news in and into China since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Chang et al. (1993) found that the regional press had a limited autonomy in tailoring international news services to their readers. As insightful as the previous findings might be, however, more than 20 years have passed since Chang et al. conducted their study. A new wave of marketization has brought about profound changes, equivalent to a modest revolution in China’s regional press (Chen and Guo, 1998; Huang, 2007a). There are also studies that have pointed toward Chinese policy changes in relation to transnational capital’s access to the Chinese media market in the post-WTO context (Huang, 2007b). In addition, advancing technologies in cable, Internet and other means of communication have reduced the logistical constraints in transporting the information (Golan et al., 2010). As such, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the Chinese government to deny the domestic audience an access to a wide array of global issues.

Globalization in a non-western, local context such as the Chinese supposedly implies the need for a structural change toward a more competitive and rule-based press ecosystem and accordingly more professional journalistic practices in its international news reporting (Chen, 2009). But again, this theoretical reasoning needs solid empirical evidence. Against the backdrop of economic globalization and market transformation in China, this study seeks to map the changes, if any, in conceptions of the global spectacle in the Chinese regional press. By comparing the news published in the regional press in China between 1989 and 2009, this study should help shed light on the form and content of international communication as a result of the interplay between local media and global events.

‘National prism’ reconsidered in an era of globalization

There is little dispute in the literature about the functioning of ‘national prisms’, which tend to affect both the selection and the presentation of international news. From the global events to their coverage in regional press that is crucial to molding the conceptions of the local audience, the process moves from the external reality to the mediated reality in the mass media, through what Gurevitch et al. (1991) called a mechanism of ‘domestication’. Chang et al. (2002) suggested that journalistic perspective, national structure and international circumstances jointly infringe upon the international news that the media bring to the attention of their domestic audience. Sreberny-Mohammadi (1995) argued that the prevailing government views of foreign policy issues bear upon international news coverage. From a social constructionist perspective, Pedelty (1995) further explained much of the world’s news coverage is still configured according to national boundaries and constructed in terms of national interest, in that foreign correspondents’ professional practices shape their work and produce the discourse of their reports. This is often rooted in the belief that a nation-state’s fundamental world view of itself and others is selectively constructed by a functional system of relevant or familiar practices and the end result is visible in its social transcript – the news (Chang et al., 1998). Presumably, most newspapers, consciously or not, tend to project to their readers a world view congenial to their nation’s outlook on world affairs (Skurnik, 1981; Wu, 2000).

With the end of the Cold War, the ensuing unrivaled western dominance and an overall cooperative pattern in great-power relations, there is sufficient cause to believe, as Sreberny-Mohammadi (1991) pointed out, that the world in international communication needs to be remapped, especially in the conceptual sense. Until the 1980s, China had been viewed as ‘a regional power without a regional policy’, or an Asian power without an Asian policy (Levine, 1982: 107). China’s foreign relations since the 1980s, particularly after the end of the Cold War, have witnessed a slow but steady perceptual and behavioral change in its multilateral diplomacy (Deng, 2008). Stern explications of independence and sovereignty in China have been fine-tuned to reconsider US hegemony and to espouse multilateral institutions and international responsibility. Through the post-Cold War era, the Chinese leaders have used such phrases such as ‘peaceful rise’, ‘sustained peace and common prosperity’, ‘multipolarization’ and ‘harmonious world’ to emphasize China’s determination to be an active participant in world politics and to pursue a non-violent, independent international path that would lead the nation to a great-power status (Wang, 1999; Zhu, 2010).

In the post-WTO era, China’s approach to the existing international arrangement is considered to blend conformity with revisionism under persistent uncertainties (Deng, 2008; Shambaugh, 2006). The PRC has pursued a ‘multilayered’, ‘omnidirectional’ partnership diplomacy, with a view to forging long-term cooperative relations with countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, especially after its entry into the WTO (Deng, 2008). From a historical perspective, in contrast with the previous era when the PRC could imagine achieving its global objectives by identifying with the socialist or the Third World camp, there seems to be a far-reaching paradox in China’s self-image: ‘one that is filled with increasing self-assurance, assertiveness, and some ambitious aspirations but also with deep concerns, uncertainties, and fears’ (Wang, 1999: 39). The rapidly changing political and economic landscapes in the world – the new dynamic of interaction between China and other great powers, and between China’s rise and the evolution of the world order at large – have implications for international communication. Evidence showed the collapse of the Soviet Union left a Cold War style of reporting anachronistic with very few clear and steady cues for the press to follow from the vantage point of perceived national interests (Cao, 2007). Hence the predictability of international news coverage will have significantly changed as the old paradigm of making sense of the world has waned with the end of the Cold War (Hoge, 1995, 1997). This should also be applicable to the Chinese regional press.

The Chinese regional press in transition

While in the 1980s some policies and regulations on advertising restrained the competition among the print media in China, restrictions on the ratio between advertising space and newspaper size have been gradually relaxed since the 1990s (Ha, 1996). This has had profound implications for the financial management of the Chinese regional press. The opening of access to print media resources and the loosening of control over newspaper management have entailed more equal competition among central and regional, party and mass-appeal newspapers. The regional newspapers, particularly the local mass-appeal evening newspapers, that capitalized on the new policies have successfully attracted the majority of advertisers in stark contrast to party newspapers (Huang, 2001). Under financial pressure in the mid-1990s when almost all newspapers were forced to become financially independent, the party newspapers, especially at the provincial level, launched reader-oriented ‘metropolitan newspapers’ to compete with local evening newspapers in almost all provincial capitals of China (Tang, 2003). Such competition in the regional newspaper industry has led to a more diverse media structure and a more professional media practice, particularly at the local level (e.g. Tang, 2003; Xin, 2006; Zhao, 2000).

Meanwhile, the emerging market in China’s semi-closed media industry has been rendered more open to international competitors (Guo, 2003; Hu, 2003; Zhao, 2003), with an internal shakeup and external opening up in its response to the process of globalization (Guo, 2003; Huang, 2007b). China’s integration with the global system since its entry into the WTO in 2001 has inspired a series of studies targeting the interplay between party-state control and the increasingly marketized media industry with the introduction of domestic private capital and transnational capital into the media sector (Akhavan-Majid, 2004; Keane, 2003). An increasing number of foreign enterprises covetous of China’s huge market potential have been trying to get access to the media sector, with targets sweeping across newspapers, magazines, TV channels, audio-visual products and websites. To increase international competitiveness in the post-WTO era, Chinese media enterprises themselves have been responding by means of cross-sector and cross-media integration (Fung, 2008; Huang, 2007b). A notable example is their establishment of cooperative ventures with foreign media. Meanwhile, new technologies in the media sector, including the Internet and telecommunications, not only change the way journalists gather and disseminate news information, but also alter the way in which the Chinese audience receive information (Chan, 2005; Yang and Calhoun, 2007). Satellite and cable television have made the mainland Chinese audience more easily accessible by overseas media, and the widening Chinese use of the Internet is also undercutting the government’s efforts to control the flow of information (Chan, 2005; Weber and Jia, 2007).

In the absence of clearly defined political goals, regional newspapers began to cautiously adopt a variety of coping strategies without violating government regulations in a quest for cheaper means of production and higher financial returns. For instance, some regional newspapers launched web editions to expand their advertising revenues. Massey and Luo (2005) cited a report from ChinaOnline in 2000 stating that 14% of China’s newspapers had web editions. Another notable strategy is the establishment of the metropolitan newspaper networks (Shen, 2003; Xin, 2006). These networks, which cover almost all provinces of China, comprise between 20 and 60 mainly metropolitan newspapers (Shen, 2003). In this way, local newspaper members were able to exchange news resources, and got quicker and cheaper access to cross-regional news.

International news reporting in the Chinese regional press

Almost all foreign news stories in the regional press were derived from Xinhua News Agency for free until the mid-1990s (Zhuang, 1999). A surging number of regional outlets tried to complement their use of news wires from Xinhua with other means of production in their international news reporting (Qian, 2011; Wei, 2010). These approaches include soliciting freelancers to translate and edit foreign news and inviting experts or editors to write exclusive commentaries on particular foreign incidents. Some regional newspapers even practice parachute journalism. For example, during massive disasters like the 2011 Japan earthquakes, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, a few regional newspapers sent special correspondents to the scene. Nevertheless, except for a handful of regional media organizations with ample financial resources in Shanghai, most of the Chinese regional newspapers do not have their own foreign correspondents.

Instead, many of them have launched overseas editions through cooperation with overseas Chinese-language media organizations (Wei, 2010). For example, the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News pioneered the launch of 29 overseas editions in 25 countries. This cooperation with overseas Chinese-language media outlets has provided the local newspapers with wider access to the foreign spectacle. Another attempt made by China’s regional newspapers is increasingly geared to the market with an editorial focus on ‘soft’ and ‘localized’ journalism (Liu, 2009). They may perceive a ‘niche’ for the audience in a particularly competitive market and then adjust the content mix of their international reporting to attract the audience. They now adapt to western marketing strategies (e.g. audience surveys) and concern themselves with market placement (Zhang, 2009). The international news desk’s duty is to localize, as much as possible, each edition of the newspaper for its designated area. Some scholars observed that the news content of regional newspapers in China varied to a large extent by local social and economic conditions as the competition intensified in the media sector (e.g. Murphy, 2007). Meanwhile, their marketized operations have prompted them to soften the propagandist edge of international news stories (Wang, 2010; Zhang, 2009).

Notwithstanding, there is evidence that indicates the regional press’s structural dependence on Xinhua persists, with their corporate goals and organizational procedures far from being institutionalized (Huang, 2001; Zhao, 2008). Murphy (2007) suggested that the notion of ‘local’ in China still has to be understood in relation to the tiered administrative bureaucracy under the control of the central government. For the local party organ in particular, they are directly managed by party committees at different levels of the sub-central state apparatus. Murphy’s (2007) case study of a local party newspaper illustrated the bottom-up and top-down dynamics in how the party-state’s monopoly on power is reinforced. Their bureaucratized practices have enabled the regional press to be regulated by the seemingly impartial and apolitical logic of professionalism and procedures, reining in cross-regional expansion of local media and cross-media expansion. A survey of eight regional dailies in China showed that their international news coverage still depends primarily on the Xinhua News Agency and secondarily on such central official mouthpieces as China Dailyand China Radio International (Liu, 2009).

Categorizing international news items in the Chinese media

Chang and colleagues proposed a differentiation between foreign news and foreign policy news in analyzing international news items in the Chinese media (Chang et al., 1993, 2002). Conceptually and methodologically, they showed that these two types of international news serve as distinct analytical lenses to view the nation-state in different contexts. Foreign news involves foreign countries alone without mentioning China, chiseling a bystander role for the media to screen the remote outside reality. In contrast, foreign policy news refers not only to foreign countries but also China itself, thus indicative of China’s interplay with other nation-states in the journalistic definition of the external situation. Similarly, based on the findings from her qualitative research, Stockmann (2011) developed measures to distinguish the stories that involve the target foreign country alone from those that mention China in addition to the target foreign country. She labeled the former as the non-sanctioned topics and the latter the non-sanctioned ones in the international news reporting. As Stockmann observed, the editors and journalists in the Chinese media follow the rule of using an issue’s relationship to China’s foreign policy to determine the issue sensitivity in international news reporting. They considered the topics that do not involve China – such as the Iraq war and American domestic politics – to be not sensitive. Such non-sanctioned topics may give more leeway to the media practitioners to tap into audience demands (Stockmann, 2010).

While foreign news only serves as sources of information, the editors have to further make sure that foreign policy news conveys ‘the Chinese point of view’. As shown in Chang et al.’s (1993) study on the Chinese regional press, the world sketched in the foreign news was not subject to the influences of a home nation’s responses to changes in the international environment as compared with the foreign policy news. Chang et al. (2002) further showed that international spectacles in foreign policy news are more cautiously sketched so as to further advance China’s national interests in the global diplomacy. While foreign news denotes a perceived range of vision in viewing the world, foreign policy news is more directly related to a country’s pragmatic needs, social practices and geopolitical considerations.

It has been two decades since Chang et al. (1993) sketched out the world picture in the Chinese regional press. Both within and outside China, the world has changed significantly during the past 20 years. While the regional press and their principal international news source – Xinhua News Agency – are all more or less adopting western news values and practices in order to sustain operations or to flourish in an increasingly competitive media market in the post-WTO era, the bureaucratized codes and routines in their international news reporting deserve to be revisited. This is particularly important because the Chinese government strives to maintain control over a fast-changing society on many fronts, notably its interplay with other countries. How has the world view of the Chinese regional press shifted as China plays an important emerging role in the global system following a new wave of media commercialization? When China moved its position from observer to that of a participant at the international level, how did the transformation affect the local newspapers’ view of the global reality? What are the implications for the recalibrated journalistic constellations or national stances in the ever-changing international circumstances of the post-WTO era?

Methods

This study picked up where Chang et al. left off in 1989 by replicating their 1993 study. The same four provincial and one municipal daily newspapers – Anhui Ribao, Gansu Ribao, Heilongjiang Ribao, Wen Hui Bao and Xinhua Ribao – were included. From 1989 to 2009, the circulation of these newspapers has decreased to a varying degree. In the previous study, a constructed week in May 1989 was randomly selected from the five newspapers for analysis. For comparative purposes, the current study used the same sampling method to choose one constructed week in 2009: 11 May, 1 December, 21 October, 16 July, 6 February and 28 March. The constructed week sample is a type of stratified random sampling (SRS) technique that has been shown to be representative of the population from which it is chosen (Jones and Carter, 1959) and accounts for cyclic variation of the news content in the United States (Riffe et al., 1993). In the context of Chinese daily newspapers, it is also documented that the method of constructed week sampling is not only efficient but also reliable in estimating the news content in a population of six months of newspapers (Song and Chang, 2011).

In the 1993 study, the period represented the peak of the crisis of China’s incomplete reform in 1989 (Dittmer, 1990), which eventually gave way to a bloody repression in early June. The period in the present study saw China come through the global recession unharmed, joining the US in a pledge of combating climate change, and with China's manufacturing competing beyond its borders. From an epistemological point of view, it should be noted that the two study periods represented two different kinds of crisis for China: the former was largely internal while the latter external; the trajectory of each followed different logic and paths. Over time, their comparison therefore reveals the interplay between the news and the environment within which the local newspapers found themselves in a specific setting at a particular point in time.

The present study adopted the coding schemes of Chang et al. (1993). The unit of analysis is the complete news item. Each news item that addressed a foreign country (foreign news) or China’s interaction with another nation (foreign policy news) was included. The coding categories were identical to the original scheme: geographical region, primary country and direction toward the country. Using the data from days not coded to test the coding reliability, the Scott’s coefficients were unity (1.0) for types of news (foreign news vs. foreign policy news), geographical region and primary country involved, and .826 for direction of coverage. Two independent coders then examined all the selected items of the five regional newspapers during the constructed week.

Results

Table 1 shows that the picture in the five regional newspapers remains non-uniform. This is more so in foreign news than in foreign policy news. The data nevertheless indicate a more visible shift in the composition of foreign policy news than that of foreign news between 1989 and 2009. For foreign news, in mid-1989, nearly 20% of the United Nation’s 159 countries were covered by at least one of the five regional newspapers. In 2009, the proportion of countries covered showed no noticeable change (19.3%) even though there was a considerable growth in the number of UN member states (192).

Table 1.

Coverage of countries by the Chinese press.

Number of countries covered		By number of newspapers	% of total countries
Foreign news^a
1989	2009		1989	2009
6	4	5	3.8%	2.1%
7	8	4	4.4	4.2
7	13	3	4.4	6.8
16	22	2	10.1	11.5
31	37	1	19.5	19.3
128	155	0	80.5	80.7
Foreign policy news^b
1989	2009		1989	2009
1	1	5	0.6%	0.5%
2	3	4	1.3	1.6
5	8	3	3.1	4.2
7	11	2	4.4	5.7
9	15	1	5.7	7.8
150	177	0	94.3	92.2

Notes: The number of total countries for 1989 is based on the 1989 UN membership (N = 159), and that of 2009 is based on the 2009 UN membership (N = 192). Entries denote number of countries covered by at least one newspaper under study. In 1989, for example, 31 countries were covered by at least one paper, 16 by two and so on. Six countries were covered by all five papers and a total of 128 countries were not covered by any paper. ^aNews not involving China. ^bNews involving China.

Six countries (fewer than 4% of all UN nations) – the US, former Soviet Union, Japan, Cambodia, India and Panama – received invariable attention in all five papers in 1989. Twenty years later, in 2009, four countries (2.1% of all UN countries) – the US, Iran, Russia and Great Britain – were covered in all five papers. With the collapse of Communism in 1989, as the largest and leading constituent of the former Soviet Union, Russia continued to play a key role in China’s screening of the global arena. Japan (7.1%) remained a focus of foreign news as it was covered by four newspapers. Except for the US, the former Soviet Union/Russia and Japan, different arrays of countries emerged over time. The overall pattern of foreign news coverage suggests a non-monotonous survey of China’s external landscape that was insusceptible to the shifting global order and the Chinese involvement. It is evident that between mid-1989 and 2009, neither the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe nor the post-Tiananmen international sanctions discouraged the papers from turning out to the external environment. Meanwhile, China’s increasing participation in the global system did not widen the perceived scope of the world in the regional press either. It means that the world as sketched in the foreign news in China is not necessarily subject to the influences of its responses to changes in the international setting.

In foreign policy news, however, the picture in the five local newspapers was different and the range of journalistic vision varied according to the changing global landscape. In 1989, about 6% of all UN countries appeared in China’s interactions with the outside world. Twenty years later, the number of UN countries in foreign policy news rose to 8%. In 1989, only the Soviet Union was picked up by all five papers in their foreign policy news coverage when President Gorbachev’s visit to China drew extensive attention (e.g. Lukin, 1991). Four other countries (the US, Iran, Canada and Japan) could be seen in at least three newspapers. In 2009, it was Japan that featured in all five newspapers in their foreign policy news. As many as seven other countries (Great Britain, Somalia, the US, Iran, Palestine, India and Kuwait) were visible in at least three newspapers. To a large extent, the results showed that the scope of vision in the foreign policy news had increased, echoing China’s recent proactive diplomatic initiatives in a growing global engagement.

Geographical proximity appears more or less to be a key determinant in the way Chinese regional newspapers might cover the world. In 1989, Chang et al.’s study reported that North Korea and Vietnam, two major neighbors sharing borders with China, were covered sparingly; they continued to receive scant coverage. Russia was less prominently displayed in the news as compared with the former Soviet Union. The configuration underscored Chang et al.’s observation that the world of China’s foreign relations in the news consisted of a couple of hot spots, both of which clearly had something to do with Chinese national interests. Between 1989 and 2009, in a sharp contrast to an unchanging exposure to overseas events, foreign policy news in the regional press demonstrated China’s increased interactions with other countries in response to beneficial changes in the international community (e.g. accession to the WTO and the role it played during the global financial crisis).

A clear differentiation between the two types of news in the Chinese regional press is shown in Table 2. In foreign news, almost all world regions were reported with varying degrees of focus, whereas in foreign policy news only three regions (Asia, North America and Africa) received persistent coverage over time. Again, the shift of attention between 1989 and 2009 in the five regional newspapers was more discernible in foreign policy news than in foreign news. In foreign news, the rise and fall were mostly small and insignificant. The findings in Table 2 evidently index China’s reactions to the changing international environment in its ever-shifting assessment of the world situation in relation to other countries. In 2009, the regional press significantly increased its coverage of China’s interactions with other Asian countries (24.4%), followed by coverage of the Middle East (19.2%) and Western Europe (10.6%). In contrast, Eastern Europe drew the least attention.

Table 2.

Coverage of regions over time.

	Type of coverage^a
	Foreign news^b			Foreign policy news^c
Region	1989	2009	% change	1989	2009	% change
Asia	23.4%	25.5%	+2.1%	36.5%	42.6%	+6.1%
E. Europe	21.4	10.4	–11.0	32.7	4.3	–28.4
N. America	21.4	28.8	+7.4	17.3	10.6	–6.7
Middle East	9.7	15.7	+6.0	9.6	19.2	+9.6
W. Europe	7.6	9.8	2.2	–	10.6	+10.6
C. America	7.6	0.0	–7.6	–	–	–
S. America	4.8	2.6	–2.2	–	4.3	+4.3
Africa	4.1	7.2	+3.1	3.8	8.6	+4.8
Total	145	153		52	47

^a Comparison between foreign news and foreign policy news: χ² = 16.10, d.f. = 7, p = .02. Entries not reported. ^b News not involving China. χ² = 23.72, d.f. = 7, p = .00. Australia/New Zealand, reported only once during 1989 and 1990, was not included in the table of the earlier study. This region, reported only twice in 2009, was also excluded in this table. The European Union (n = 5) was not included in the table. ^c News involving China. χ² = 21.62, d.f. = 6, p = .00. The European Union (n = 14) was not included in the table.

Table 3 shows an increased neutrality in coverage of both foreign news and foreign policy news in the Chinese regional press, though this was more so in the foreign news than in the foreign policy news. The year 2009 saw a large increase in the number of neutral items, suggesting a mixed self-image of China as well as a softening propagandist tinge to the international news reporting in the Chinese press. For one thing, the regional newspapers have been reckoned as one of the major forces to weaken or even subvert the centralized political and ideological control in China (White, 1990; Xin, 2006; Yu, 1990). In order to appeal to the increasingly demanding domestic audience whose access to the global spectacle has been rendered immediate and wide with the advent of the Internet and its surrounding technologies, the regional press, and even the Xinhua News Agency itself, began to make their news content less ideologically charged and instead more informational and entertaining.

Table 3.

Direction of coverage of over time.

	Type of coverage
	Foreign news^a			Foreign policy news^b
Direction	1989	2009	% change	1989	2009	% change
Positive	16.0%	0.6%	–15.4%	67.3%	36.2%	–31.1%
Neutral	77.3	98.8	+21.5	25.0	38.3	+13.3
Negative	6.7	0.6	–6.1	7.7	25.5	+17.8
Total	150	155		52	47

^aNews not involving China. χ² = 33.54, d.f. = 2, p = .00. ^bNews involving China. χ² = 10.81, d.f. = 2, p = .00.

Although foreign policy news began to assume a more neutral tone, the shifts in its positive and negative coverage are still worthy of note. The proportion of positive foreign policy news items in 2009 was smaller than that of two decades ago. The negative and positive loci in foreign policy news, as an indication of a country’s geopolitical consideration, seem to be selective. In 1989, North America (in essence, the United States) was the main target in the regional newspapers’ negative coverage of China’s foreign relations, while coverage of Asian and African relations appeared positive. In 2009, the local newspapers portrayed Japan and India, two rival neighbors in China’s rise to a regional power, negatively.

This observation again confirmed Chang et al.’s (1993) finding about the regionalization of news content in the Chinese local papers. Although almost a majority of the news stories about foreign relations and events based their sources on the Xinhua News Agency, the regional press did not necessarily reproduce facsimile accounts.

From 1989 to 2009, the gap among the regional newspapers decreased over time in terms of the number of countries covered in the news, In 1989, the Anhui Ribao reported the least number of countries (12), while the Xinhua Ribao covered the most (40), with other papers varying in between (Heilongjiang Ribao, 31; Wen Hui Bao, 23; and Gansu Ribao, 22). Two decades later, with Xinhua still ranked the first (20), the other four newspapers were neck and neck (Heilongjiang Ribao, 18; Gansu Ribao, 16; Anhui Ribao, 16; Wen Hui Bao, 14). Although some sort of quantitative consistency appears to be taking place among the regional newspapers, an analysis of co-coverage of countries among the five papers, however, revealed an unchanging incongruity of treatment of the countries involved. Table 4 reports the degree of common coverage between newspapers. The five regional newspapers shared fewer than one-third of the countries covered. The data show little evidence of massive changes in the extent of homogeneity among the five papers’ coverage of the world.

Table 4.

Co-coverage of countries among the regional press.

Foreign news	Anhui Ribao (6)	Gansu Ribao(11)	Heilongjiang Ribao(16)	Wen Hui Ribao(12)	Xinhua Ribao (22)^a
Anhui Ribao(16)^b	5 (1)^c	35.3%	27.3%	33.3%	21.4%
Gansu Ribao(16)	16.2	3 (3)	29.6	30.4	24.2
Heilongjiang Ribao (18)	21.6	18.9	3 (8)	28.6	31.6
Wen Hui Ribao(14)	24.3	21.6	27.0	0 (7)	26.5
Xinhua Ribao(20)	18.9	29.7	32.4	27.0	4 (18)
Foreign policy news	Anhui Ribao(7)	Gansu Ribao(3)	Heilongjiang Ribao(2)	Wen Hui Ribao(4)	Xinhua Ribao(8)^a
Anhui Ribao(7)^b	0 (1)^c	30.0%	11.1%	36.4%	40.0%
Gansu Ribao(10)	40.0	0 (0)	20.0	28.6	27.3
Heilongjiang Ribao (5)	13.3	33.3	0 (1)	16.7	20.0
Wen Hui Ribao(13)	40.0	60.0	26.6	4 (0)	33.3
Xinhua Ribao(3)	13.3	13.3	13.3	13.3	0 (1)

^aEntries in the upper half represent percentage of co-coverage of countries between the papers in 1989. Figures in parentheses note total number of countries covered by each newspaper. ^bEntries in the lower half represent percentage of co-coverage of countries between the papers in 2009. Figures in parentheses note total number of countries covered by each newspaper. ^cEntries in the diagonal represent frequency of countries covered by the newspaper only. Figures outside parentheses note frequency of countries covered by the newspaper only in 2009, and figures in parentheses note total number of countries covered by the newspaper only between 1989 and 1990.

In foreign news, shared coverage of countries between the newspapers in 1989 ranged from 21% (Anhui Ribao–Xinhua Ribao) to 35% (Anhui Ribao–Gansu Ribao), with an average of about 29%. In 2009 the proportion decreased slightly to about 23.8%, ranging from 16.2% (Gansu Ribao–Anhui Ribao) to 32.4% (Heilongjiang Ribao–Xinhua Ribao). On the one hand, the result lends support to the contention that the world view in the news at the local level defied the dictation of the central authority; on the other hand, the extent of heterogeneity did not increase remarkably, hence suggesting a limited degree of autonomy in the process of foreign news selection and presentation by the regional press. After all, the source of foreign news still stems largely from the central agency, which limits the scope of editorial choices in the first place.

In foreign policy news, the small number of countries covered by each paper should demonstrate a shared, narrowed world view across China. In 1989, the proportion of co-coverage varied from 11% (Anhui Ribao–Heilongjiang Ribao) to 40% (Anhui Ribao–Xinhua Ribao), with an average of 26%. In 2009, the average amount of co-coverage remained almost the same (26.6%), ranging from 13.3% to 60% (Gansu Ribao–Wen Hui Bao). In other words, in post-WTO China the regional press failed to expand its co-coverage of countries, echoing the above observation that its editorial autonomy in coverage of international issues remained limited under the watchful eyes of the government.

The above results also point toward the finding that in addition to the global pattern of political economy, geographical proximity plays a key factor affecting how each paper would report on the foreign landscape. On the one hand, except for the US, Japan and the former Soviet Union (Russia) that have been critical to global affairs, the leading emerging economies such as Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa were more prominently covered in Chinese regional press as they became an increasingly dominant force in global economic, social and environmental affairs especially after the outbreak of global financial crisis. On the other hand, Asian countries that are closer to China tended to receive more coverage in the regional papers than the rest of the world: Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and North Korea. The localities of the papers and the geopolitics of the countries also showed a certain degree of association. For example, the Heilongjiang Ribao (northeastern) and Xinhua Ribao have been responsible for coverage of the two Koreas across the study periods.

Conclusion and discussion

In the context of institutional theory and related theoretical perspectives in international communication research, this study seeks to determine how the changing environment, both domestic and international, might affect the ways Chinese local newspapers come to see the world. In comparison with the world picture sketched out in the regional press almost two decades ago, this study illustrated in microcosm the contradiction between the party logic and the market logic in China’s local production of the global spectacle.

On the one hand, the consequences of spillover in China’s growing integration with the global system and the ever-increasing media marketization in the post-WTO era have been carried over to the content of international news, particularly in terms of a more neutral journalistic perspective and a widened range of vision at the local level. On the other hand, these changes did not suffice to bring the Chinese regional press the editorial autonomy to cope with the international issues; the regionalization of international news reporting is still contained within the orbit of the party-state in China.

First, China’s reassessment and redefinition of relations with other countries in the shifting global landscape are indexed more often in foreign policy news than in the foreign news. The range of journalistic vision remains almost unchanging in the category of foreign news after two decades, whereas the scope of foreign policy coverage has widened evidently, indicating China’s growing integration into the global system. This lends credence to the assertion that as far as China’s position in the world is concerned, the definitions of the situation lie in its foreign interactions, not in its survey of the international spectacle as a bystander. Both types of news are intended to map an international spectacle for the domestic audience in China, though they come with different constellations of the external reality.

Second, this study shows the Chinese regional press assumed a much more neutral tone in both foreign news and foreign policy news, though it was less so for the latter. This somewhat suggests that the Chinese local newspapers are increasingly seeing the world out there as foreign countries were presented to them so as to remain competitive in a dynamic media market. As noted earlier, the Xinhua News Agency has begun to soften its propagandist edge to international news reporting, illustrating its efforts toward marketization in terms of modification of its business and journalistic practices in the post-WTO era. Moreover, it signals a shift in China’s self-image. The PRC has sought to join the world and taken advantage of the opportunities the globalized world has to offer, as amply shown in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai Expo and other global events.

Third, as an indication of China’s geopolitical consideration, the treatment of countries in the Chinese regional newspapers, especially in foreign policy news, appears to be both selective and responsive. It is selective because the countries that appeared prominently in the Chinese local press seem to be guided by not only international political economy, but also by how they might stand in the trajectory of China’s rise to power. It is responsive because the portrayal of countries varies significantly between foreign news and foreign policy news, depending on where and how China might position itself vis-a-vis other countries.

Fourth, the homogeneity of world pictures in the Chinese regional press remains largely unchanged and unchanging. On the one hand, the regional newspapers’ efforts to ‘localize’ their own editions are discernible, paying particular attention to stories with a news value of proximity presumably for the interest of local audiences. On the other hand, the pattern of common coverage of foreign countries between Chinese local newspapers turns out to be almost consistent, although the range of journalistic vision narrows somewhat. It seems that the wave of commercialization in the Chinese media market has not produced a homogenizing effect on the international news, nor has it stimulated an increased scope of regionalization in international communication. The steady pattern of co-coverage among the Chinese local newspapers indicates that international communication in China has been hampered by the institutional control mechanism in the realm of news flow in and out of the country.

After almost two decades of ever-increasing media marketization, the regional press still relies heavily on the Xinhua News Agency for most of its international news coverage. In the post-WTO era, through regulatory levers and bureaucratic discretion, the Chinese government has managed to keep the effects of media commercialization in check with its traditional constituents intact. If the findings from the comparison of Chinese regional newspapers over time are any indication, decentralization and diversification of international news coverage at the local level do not necessarily mean the global has expanded the autonomy of the local.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References

Akhavan-Majid

(2004) Mass media reform in China. Gazette 66(6): 553–565.

Cao

(2007) Western representations of the Other. In: Shi-x (ed.) Discourse as Cultural Struggle. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 105–122.

Chan

(2005) Trans-border broadcasters and TV regionalization in Greater China: Processes and strategies. In: Chalaby

(ed.) Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order. London: IB Tauris, pp. 173–195.

Chang

T-K

Chen

C-H

Zhang

G-Q

(1993) Rethinking the mass propaganda model: Evidence from the Chinese regional press. International Communication Gazette 51(3): 173–195.

Chang

T-K

Wang

Chen

(1998) The social construction of international imagery in the Post–Cold War era: A comparative analysis of U.S. and Chinese national TV news. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 42(3): 277–296.

Chang

T-K

Wang

Chen

(2002) China’s Window on the World: TV News, Social Knowledge, and International Spectacles. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Chen

(2009) Press coverage of international news in the era of globalization. Practical Journalism 4: 48–49.

Chen

Guo

(1998) Opposites apart: Explaining differential revenues between China’s party and mass appeal newspapers. Asian Journal of Communication 8(2): 70–99.

Cohen

Levy

Gurevitch

Roeh

(1996) Global Newsrooms, Local Audiences: A Study of the Eurovision News Exchange. London: John Libbey.

10.

Deng

(2008) China’s Struggle for Status: The Realignment of International Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.

11.

DiMaggio

Powell

(1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48(2): 147–160.

12.

Dittmer

(1990) China in 1989: The crisis of incomplete reform. Asian Survey 30(5): 25–41.

13.

Fung

AYH

(2008) Global Capital, Local Culture: Localization of Transnational Media Corporations in China. New York: Peter Lang.

14.

Golan

Johnson

Wanta

(2010) International Media Communication in a Global Age. New York: Routledge.

15.

Guo

(2003) Playing the game by the rules? Television regulation around China’s entry into WTO. Javnost/The Public 10(4): 5–18.

16.

Gurevitch

Levy

Roeh

(1991) The global newsroom: Convergences and diversities in the globalization of television news. In: Dahlgren

Sparks

(eds) Communications and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media Age. London: Routledge, pp. 195–216.

17.

(1996) Concerns about advertising practices in a developing country: An examination of China’s new advertising regulations. International Journal of Advertising 15(2): 91–102.

18.

Hoge

Jr (1995) End of predictability. Media Studies Journal 9(1): 111–118.

19.

Hoge

Jr (1997) Foreign news: Who gives a damn? Columbia Journalism Review 36(4): 48–52.

20.

(2003) The post-WTO restructuring of the Chinese media industries and the consequences of capitalisation. Javnost/The Public 10(4): 19–36.

21.

Huang

(2001) China’s state-run tabloids: The rise of ‘city newspapers’. International Communication Gazette 63(5): 435–450.

22.

Huang

(2007a) Editorial: From control to negotiation: Chinese media in the 2000s. International Communication Gazette 69(5): 402–412.

23.

Huang

(2007b) Trace the stones in crossing the river. International Communication Gazette 69(5): 413–430.

24.

Jones

Carter

(1959) Some procedures for estimating ‘news hole’ in content analysis. Public Opinion Quarterly 23(3): 399–403.

25.

Keane

(2003) Creativity and complexity in post-WTO China. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17(3): 291–301.

26.

Levine

(1982) China in Asia: The PRC as a regional power. In: Harding

(ed.) China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 107–145.

27.

Liu

(2009) Regional newspapers’ coverage of international news in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. Practical Journalism 3: 33–36.

28.

Löffelholz

Weaver

(2008) Global Journalism Research: Theories, Methods, Findings, Future. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

29.

Lukin

(1991) The initial Soviet reaction to the events in China and the prospects for Sino-Soviet relations. The China Quarterly 125: 119–136.

30.

Massey

Luo

(2005) Chinese newspapers and market theories of web journalism. Gazette 67(4): 359–371.

31.

Murphy

(2007) The paradox of the state-run media promoting poor governance in China: Case studies of a party newspaper and an anticorruption film. Critical Asian Studies 39(1): 63–88.

32.

Palmer

Fontan

(2007) Our ears and our eyes. Journalism 8(1): 5–24.

33.

Pedelty

(1995) War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents. New York: Routledge.

34.

Qian

(2011) Why does the international news in the regional media have to make a breakthrough. Youth Journalist 15: 9–11.

35.

Riffe

Aust

Lacy

(1993) The effectiveness of random, consecutive day and constructed week sampling in newspaper content analysis. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 70(1): 133–139.

36.

Robertson

RIE

(1995) Glocalization: Time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In: Featherstone

Lash

Robertson

(eds) Global Modernities. London: Sage, pp. 25–44.

37.

Scott

(1987) The adolescence of institutional theory. Administrative Science Quarterly 32(4): 493–511.

38.

Shambaugh

(2006) Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

39.

Shen

(2003) Report on research on metropolitan newspaper networks. Journalistic Practice Weekly (internal journal) 40: 17–18.

40.

Skurnik

WAE

(1981) A new look at foreign news coverage: External dependence or national interests? African Studies Review 24(1): 99–112.

41.

Song

Chang

T-K

(2011) Selecting daily newspapers for content analysis in China: A comparison of sampling methods and sample sizes. Journalism Studies 13(3): 356–369.

42.

Sreberny-Mohammadi

(1991) The global and the local in international communications. In: Curran

Gurevitch

(eds) Mass Media and Society. New York: Routledge, pp. 118–138.

43.

Sreberny-Mohammadi

(1995) How US media covers the world. In: Downing

Mohammadi

Sreberny-Mohammadi

(eds) Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage, pp. 296–307.

44.

Stanton

(2007) All News is Local: The Failure of the Media to Reflect World Events in a Globalized Age. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co.

45.

Stockmann

(2010) Who believes propaganda? Media effects during the anti-Japanese protests in Beijing. The China Quarterly 202: 269–289.

46.

Stockmann

(2011) Race to the bottom: Media marketization and increasing negativity toward the United States in China. Political Communication 28(3): 268–290.

47.

Tang

(2003) Economics and Operations of the Newspaper Industry. Beijing: Xinhua.

48.

Tuchman

(1978) Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press.

49.

Wang

F-L

(1999) Self-image and strategic intentions: National confidence and political insecurity. In: Deng

Wang

F-L

(eds) In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 21–46.

50.

Wang

(2010) Tabloidization of international news reporting: A content analysis of three urban newspapers in Xi’an. Journalism Knowledge 6: 31–33.

51.

Weber

Jia

(2007) Internet and self-regulation in China: The cultural logic of controlled commodification. Media, Culture and Society 29(5): 772–789.

52.

Wei

(2010) Solutions for international news reporting in the era of new media: An exploration of the crowd-sourcing model in the regional press. Journalism Review 5: 81–84.

53.

White

LT III

(1990) All the news: Structure and politics in Shanghai’s reform media. In: Lee

C-C

(ed.) Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Journalism. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 88–110.

54.

(2000) One head, many mouths: Diversifying press structures in reform China. In: Lee

(ed.) Power, Money, and Media: Communication Patterns and Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, pp. 45–67.

55.

Xin

(2006) A developing market in news: Xinhua News Agency and Chinese newspapers. Media, Culture and Society 28(1): 45–66.

56.

Yang

Calhoun

(2007) Media, civil society, and the rise of a green public sphere in China. China Information 21(2): 211–236.

57.

(1990) The structure and function of Chinese television, 1979–1989. In: Lee

C-C

(ed.) Voices of China: The Interplay of Politics and Journalism. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 69–87.

58.

Zhang

(2009) Effective ways of giving advantage to international news in regional press: A case study of Dazhong Ribao. Youth Journalist 36: 62–64.

59.

Zhao

(2000) From commercialization to conglomeration: The transformation of the Chinese press within the orbit of the party state. Journal of Communication 50(2): 3–26.

60.

Zhao

(2003) Transnational capital, the Chinese state, and China’s communication industries in a fractured society. Javnost/The Public 10(4): 53–74.

61.

Zhao

(2008) Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

62.

Zhu

(2010) China’s New Diplomacy: Rationale, Strategies and Significance. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

63.

Zhuang

(1999) Developing subscribers of Xinhua and innovations. In: Proceedings of Xinhua Annual Journalism Symposium 1998, Beijing, Xinhua, pp. 146–153.