Abstract
This chapter looks at how the Chinese state manages political communication internally and externally in the postsocialist era. After a historicized explication of the ideological spectrum in contemporary China, I draw on Wang Hui’s notion of “depoliticized politics” to look at how the CCP is trying to circumvent some of the fundamental ideological contradictions with a pragmatic and often technocratic approach. With examples from political communication targeting both domestic and international audience, I substantiate the argument with empirical analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
Yang is a veteran journalist of the Xinhua News Agency who, after his retirement, published a controversial historical account of the 1959–1961 Great Famine in China. Entitled Tombstone, the book is widely acclaimed outside China for offering courageous criticism of the Great Leap Forward that led to the famine. Yet many historians have also contested the book’s report of the death toll in the famine, a figure of great political significance, saying that Yang hyped the number to make his point.
- 2.
See Yang Jisheng, “my two open letters.” 16/07/2015. Retrieved from http://www.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2015/07/201507160051.shtml
- 3.
Zhao refused to order the military to crush the student demonstration. For more details of Zhao’s position during the 1989 student movement , see Calhoun (1997).
- 4.
Start of the civil war between the CCP and the Kuomintang-led government.
- 5.
Start of the Great Famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward.
- 6.
Start of the Cultural Revolution.
- 7.
End of the Cultural Revolution.
- 8.
See analysis of public opinion on Deng Xiangchao’s insulting of Mao (邓相超辱毛事件的舆情及分析). 03/02/2017. Retrieved from http://www.wyzxwk.com/Article/yulun/2017/02/376449.html
- 9.
- 10.
The Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee on June 27, 1981, released a document that specifically repudiated the “theory of continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat” that was one of Mao’s principal theses justifying the Cultural Revolution.
- 11.
- 12.
The nine-year-old girl, Lin Maoke, who performed the Ode to the Motherland turned out to be syncing the voice of another girl, Yang Peiyi, who was considered a better singer but not pretty enough.
- 13.
The site has now changed its domain name to www.m4.cn and is now called April Media (四月网).
- 14.
It was first reported by the South China Morning Post that the Chinese government was to allocate 45 billion RMB for this purpose. But SCMP cited no sources and there was no other report, either in English or in Chinese, to corroborate this, even though the number was later widely cited by other international media outlets to make a point about the aggressiveness of the Chinese media’s “going out” campaign.
- 15.
Based on face-to-face interviews. Both are senior figures who have worked in state media for many years and both asked not to be named.
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Meng, B. (2018). The Chinese State: Moving Left? Moving Right? or Depoliticized?. In: The Politics of Chinese Media. China in Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46214-5_2
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