Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China

.Media Commercialization and Authoritarian Rule in China, by Daniela Stockmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xxii + 334 pp. US$95.00 (hardcover), US$76.00 (eBook).This book is essential reading for scholars interested in the rapid development of China's media industry and its implications for China and authoritarian regimes around the world. Using a mixed-method approach that combines extensive fieldwork and interviews with an impressive quantitative analysis, the book wades confidently into ongoing debates about the nature and consequences of China's increasingly commercialized media.Previous scholarship has established the basic outline of China's media commercialization and press control. We know that China's press is heavily censored, and the general mechanisms of this censorship are well established. We know that, since the Chinese Party-state eased off direct media funding in the 1990s and 2000s, media outlets increasingly rely directly on market mechanisms, mainly advertisements and subscription fees. Stockmann breaks no new ground in briefly rehearsing this story, but provides a good overview of these critical developments.Stockmann's key innovation is to examine the direct consequences of China's newly vibrant media market on the attitudes and beliefs of Chinese media audiences. In other words, how does a competitive market-based press coexist with an authoritarian political system? The answer is both counter-intuitive and simple. The book's "core finding", Stockmann writes, "is that the commercialized look of branding of marketized media induces readers to perceive media sources as more credible" (p. 5) than they find direct state media like the Peoples Daily to be.Stockmann has presented this argument-that a commercialized press actually helps strengthen authoritarian rule-elsewhere in article form, but here she gathers diverse evidence masterfully to drive the point home. Content analysis data indicate that minimal differences exist in the actual news content between "marketized" and "state" newspapers; branding differences, by contrast, are vast. On most issues, the book argues, there is little tension between market and audience demands on the one hand and the demands of official censors on the other. "Only when it comes to negative news do media practitioners experience tension between market demands and the goals of the state" (p. 98). In other words, on most issues there is little need for direct state control of the press, as even a marketized press delivers the message which the Party-state wants to send-and delivers it more convincingly than does official propaganda.This argument is based around an examination of two key areas: China's relationship with the United States, and labor law. Both are chosen as semi-sensitive areas where the Party-state provides clear guidance but also leaves a lot of room for individual journalists to maneuver. In the case of China's labor law, authorities have made a concerted effort in recent years to highlight the law's success and to encourage disgruntled workers to use the law rather than extrajudicial mechanisms to redress grievances. …