The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

The Chinese Press in the United States

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• While media ownership under a capitalistic dictatorial regime remains in private hands, the press is authoritarian in character in China

• It supports the politico-economic goals of the regime at the expense of freedom of speech.

• By contrast, Western democracies have bred a libertarian press system and philosophy with ideals of freedom from outside control and freedom to perform watchdog functions vis-à-vis the political system

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• As means of mass communication within the minority communities these subcultural media often play an exclusive and important role that the mainstream press either ignores or is incapable of playing due to language and cultural barriers.

• The Chinese-language press in the United States is a case in point.

• For decades Chinese newspapers of different political orientations have operated in the United States to serve ethnic Chinese communities from the East to the West coasts

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Until the late 1980s, many leading Chinese dailies in the United States toed the political lines of motherland governments so closely that they could better be categorized as authoritarian or Marxist (totalitarian) in orientation rather than as an integral part of a libertarian press

• The ethnic Chinese press has its unique role to play in U.S. society, a role that can hardly be judged in terms of the symbiotic concept of social resposibility of the press.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• In a sense, Chinese newspapers published in the United States are an extension of the press in the motherland societies of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

• As a matter of fact, to reduce costs many pages of certain major dailies are produced in their headquarters in Taiwan or Hong Kong and transmitted to the United States through satellite facilities.

• Some of these pages are even shared by a sister newspaper published in the motherland society

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• But a closer look into the ethnic Chinese situation reveals a unique subcultural pattern of what may be termed "dual identity," whereby an immigrant from Taiwan, mainland China, or Hong Kong acquires a new identity as a U.S. citizen or permanent resident while simultaneously maintaining close social, economic, and/or political connections with the motherland.

• Unlike old immigrants who rarely had a chance to revisit the homeland once setting foot on the new continent, the new immigrant can now fly home easily for personal visits, thanks to his wealth and the improved air transportation service along with fare incentives offered by competing airlines.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• In a sense, Chinese newspapers published in the United States are an extension of the press in the motherland societies of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

• As a matter of fact, to reduce costs many pages of certain major dailies are produced in their headquarters in Taiwan or Hong Kong and transmitted to the United States through satellite facilities.

• Some of these pages are even shared by a sister newspaper published in the motherland society

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Chinese communities are comparable to a Third World society in that the U.S. media treat both with a good-news-is-no-news memality. If Third World leadership has a good reason to complain about their national image being distorted by Western media, as communication research has revealed, so does its counterpart in. U.S. Chinatowns.

• The readerships of Chinese newspapers in the United States have grown over the years as the ethnic Chinese populace expands.

• First, there is an older generation of huaqiao (overseas Chinese) who have never given up the habit of reading Chinese newspapers. Secondly, under current U.S. immigration quotas, more than 50,000 Chinese immigrants arrive in the United States annually from Taiwan, mainland China, and Hong Kong, plus an unkhown number from Southeast Asia.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• An important part of the editorial policy of Chinese newspapers in the United States has been for the editors-in-chief to decide on toutiau (lead stories), namely, the most important news story of the day to occupy the top position on the front page.

• Most of the tuatiau positions were taken up by the economic and political news from mainland China.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• First, it indicates that the China Press emphasizes motherland news coverage, as is the general pattern of Chinese newspapers in the United States.

• Second, the fact that such a practice persists suggests that the newspaper in question remains under the influence of the totalitarian/anthoritariarn journalistic paradigms, which regard mass media as an instrument to advance the political goals of the state

• It also suggests the extent to which a motherland government or ruling party can exert control over the newspaper in question.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The outward orientation of the Chinese press in the United States can be analyzed from two perspectives.

• First, on the level of media-audience relationships, the outward orientation of the press is defined as a situation in which newspapers cater to reader interests in an outside society with which the readership feels a psycho-cultural identity.

• In terms of newsworthiness, the criterion of proximity applies in this connection. Proximity not only refers to geographical closeness; it also means cultural, ethnic, and emotive affinity that determines audience interest in certain news events.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Journalism scholars have observed instances where events transpiring far away geographically are given prominent space in the press because of proximity thus defined.

• For example, when an African American newspaper, the Amsterdam News, reported on the disastrous explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986, the focus was placed on African Afrerica'n astronaut McNair being among the casualties

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Chinese newspapers in the United States probably demonstrate an even stronger propensity to adopt ethnic-cultural affinity as a primary news value criterion.

• After all, African Americans were born and educated in the United States and socialized into U.S. culture and the English language. since childhood.

• By comparison, with few exceptions Chinese immigrants and non-immigrants are overwhelmingly nurtured in the motherland culture and language, to the extent that virtually all major Chinese newspapers published in the United States are in Chinese rather than English—a practice markedly different from African American and, for that matter, Jewish American newspapers

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The news value criterion of proximity in an ethnic-cultural sense applies not only to local ethnic Chinese communities, but also to motherland societies thousands of miles away. The fact that news about mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong occupies prominent place on the front and second pages of major Chinese newspapers may be taken as an indicator of the low degree of cultural assimilation on the part of the ethnic Chinese

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The second perspective from which to analyze the outward orientation of the ethnic Chinese press is a political one.

• Motherland governments try to use Chinese newspapers published in the United States to build an overseas base of political support to enhance their legitimacy.

• This consideration was particularly important as hostility persisted over the decades between the mainland government and the Taiwan government.

• Both sides vied to win over the loyalty of overseas Chinese, not only for domestic consumption but also for the purpose of mobilizing political resources abroad to influence the international diplomatic arena.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• A number of Chinese newspapers in the United States have become willing partners to motherland governments for. two reasons:

• First, certain Chinese journalists in the United. States have a partisan inclination and personal connections with either the CCP or the GMD.

• Second, running Chinese newspapers in the United States is financially risky because of the limited advertising market from the Chinese business community

• Tough competition among rival newspapers, especially from the World Journal, has raised operating costs while forcing down the rates of ad charges.

• As a result, securing financial. backing from a motherland government or the business-industrial elite within its ruling circles appears to be the only recourse to maintain the operation of a large-scale daily.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The outward function of the ethnic Chinese press has a third dimension, having to do with the tradition of the Chinese intelligentsia's patriotic aspirations.

• Being wary of political repression at home, reform-minded intellectuals have since the late nineteenth century sought to influence China's sociopolitical changes from abroad.

• Apart from the partisan newspapers mentioned above, the past decades have witnessed cases where independent-minded Chinese journalists in the United States have used their professional careers to further the causes of sociopolitical progress and human rights in mainland China and Taiwan

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The inward function of the Chinese press in the United States is to serve as a cultural link between the ethnic Chinese and U.S. society and to promote a sense of minority solidarity within the ethnic Chinese and Asian American communities.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• This part of the contents of the Chinese press can be divided into two categories:

• First, coverage of the larger U.S. society is necessitated by the fact that large numbers of ethnic Chinese, especially among new immigrants and non-immigrants, lack adequate proficiency in English and an intellectual habit of reading English newspapers.

• As their dual identity requires them to be kept informed about events, situations, and trends in the United States, the Chinese press is a convenient means of mass communication to meet that need.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The second category concerns coverage of ethnic Chinese communities themselves. This is important because mainstream. English media take little interest in covering Chinatowns and other ethnic Chinese communities except for crimes, violence, and other events—mostly negative—considered to have great news value.

• In this connection, ethnic Chinese communities are comparable to a Third World society, in that the U.S. media treat both with a good-news-is-no-news mentality.

• If Third World leadership has a good reason to complain about their national image being distorted by Western media, as communication research has revealed, so does its counterpart in U.S. Chinatowns.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• When a group of Chinese American journalists started an English tabloid in New York called the Asian Times in 1988, part of its purpose was said to "remedy the longstanding neglect of Asian American communities by the mainstream media."

• It did not survive

• The ethnic Chinese press has found itself in a situation in which, contrary to the hypothesis of some journalism theories, private ownership of the press does not preclude governmental interference and manipulation of the editorial policy, even though the press operates in a democratic society with full freedom of speech.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

Media and Democracy in China.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• If media as a bridge or a divide, and in my region I think the media serves both functions - Kathy Hwang

• In mainland China, we still have a media that is completely state-owned and state-controlled, and so in terms of politics the media is viewed as an instrument of propaganda still.

• But something interesting happened in 2003.

• The government decided that it is no longer going to subsidize all the media that it has been subsidizing until now.

• Newspapers, magazines, even television stations--with the exception of the central television station, which is huge--have to become self-supporting and independent.

• Nevertheless, they are still subject to the same censorship policies.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• It is a little window of opportunity, because people have to sell their products now.

• It means you have to create something that the audience wants to buy, because there is choice out there.

• In the past, subscriptions to things like People's Daily and the official newspapers were free; they landed automatically on everyone's desk in the morning.

• But this has changed as of 2003.

• So there is a little more openness, and this is really creating a window of opportunity for foreign media; but still I have to say it is a small window.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Something else happened

• SARS

• Reporters from Hong Kong first reported the disease and it became international news.

• They were told by the govt. that ‘we are not to talk about it’.

• But since Hong Kong has a Free Press, the news was broken.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• There is a cultural conflict between Chinese in Beijing and Chinese in Hong Kong.

• There has never been real democracy in Hong Kong, under the British government or now under the Communist leadership in Beijing. But that window of opportunity is something that people are very eager to take advantage of.

• So there are certain parties and movements now beginning in Hong Kong, and the media is their main voice.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• A lot of foreign correspondents in Asia actually are Westerners who are writing for the Western press.

• A lot of them are "parachuting" in, someone who comes in, covers the story and goes out without knowing much about the background.

• The Western perspective on China is either of an evil empire with great militaristic ambitions that quashes human rights or of a great open market with lots of people who want to buy Western products, and with a cheap labor market.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The Chinese Press 1970-80

• 80% Space for Govt. Propoganda - for so-called positive reporting, or reporting favorable to the regime's image

• Journalists, including those long affiliated with the Communist Party, began to urge reform of state press policies.

• They demanded that each news organization be granted "adequate decision-making power," that the Communist Party "keep interference to a minimum" and that the multiple functions of the media and the "opinions of editors and readers" be institutionalized

• Throughout this period, journalists strove to show that they chose to support the general direction of the changes in Chinese society, and that they were not acting out of loyalty to certain pro-reform power factions.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The number of publicly circulated newspapers grew to more than 1,600 in 1988 from only 200 ten years earlier

• The state, besieged by a severe economic crisis, had shifted its priorities from pure ideology to development. This change forced the regime to take on more diverse operations as the division of functions between ideological and economic bureaucracies became more distinct

• The second structural change of the press in the 1980s involved the emergence of a media market.

• The third change was in the personnel structure of the press. The media expanded due to the need to employ the millions of rehabilitated intellectuals who had been victims of persecution and labor re-education, a Chinese version of the Soviet Gulag. Chinese universities also produced more than 5,000 graduates of journalism between 1984 and 1989.

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Then – Tiananmen Square massacre happened

• Thousands of journalists were victims of persecution, ranging from forced submission of self-criticism and re-indoctrination to imprisonment or exile

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• The Chinese media still have much to achieve in at least several areas. First, they must struggle for autonomy.

• The Shanghai Legal News case reflects a theme in the debate over the role of media in China. This attempt by a news organization to establish legal status could open the door for legal equality with the Communist Party and would mark a break from the long-standing relationship between the state and the press.  

• The development of a market economy is an important step toward the financial autonomy of the media. As state financing shrinks, and the size of the media increases, more outlets have sought greater advertising revenues.

• Technologies have also allowed the media to elude the regime's remaining media controls. 

The Chinese Press

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

• Second, the Chinese media must continue to sponsor press debates, an important way to foster the growth of democracy.  

• Third, the press must also make the political process more open to guarantee the citizens' right to know.

• It would be interesting to know how much power the National People's Congress will assume as the old generation of leaders leaves the scene.

• Finally, the press must support initiatives in political and economic reforms, on the central, local and individual levels.