Communication in China Political Economy, Power, and Conflict

The stakes for control over the means of communication in China have never been so high as the country struggles with breathtaking social change. This authoritative book analyzes the key dimensions of the transformation in China's communication system since the early 1990s and examines the highly fluid and potentially explosive dynamics of communication, power, and social contestation during China's rapid rise as a global power. Yuezhi Zhao begins with an analysis of the party-state's reconfiguration of political, economic, and ideological power in the Chinese communication system. She then explores the processes and social implications of domestic and foreign capital formation in the communication industry. Drawing on media and Internet debates on fundamental political, economic, and social issues in contemporary China, the book concludes with a nuanced depiction of the pitched and uneven battles for access and control among different social forces. Locating developments in Chinese communication within the nexus of state, market, and society, the author analyzes how the legacies of socialism continue to cast a long shadow. The book not only provides a multifaceted and interdisciplinary portrait of contemporary Chinese communication, but also explores profound questions regarding the nature of the state, the dynamics of class formation, and the trajectory of China's epochal social transformation.

Yuezhi Zhao is associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University