Media transparency in China : a critique of the party-state rhetoric and market discourses.

Abstract

The arguments and analysis of this thesis surround the issue of the illusion of media transparency in China. It argues that the gap between the official transparency rhetoric and the censor-ship reality has demonstrated the discrepancy between what the Party is and what it claims itself to be. Media transparency, which is proclaimed to be something that should be aimed at by the Chinese government and the media, and which includes but goes beyond the issue of press freedom, is defined as a multi-faceted concept, but has been undermined by the consensus reached between the Party-state and the media on political and market control. Subsequently, the subjectivity of the disenfranchised groups has been diminished in the public sphere, their image distorted, and their voices muzzled. The thesis aims to show that the logic of political control and market has been suppressing the voices of the broad masses of people in China. This thesis argues this suppression is rooted in the disjuncture of political representation of both the party-state and the media. Hence, this thesis proposes that explanation for the transparency illusion can be drawn from Wang Hui’s daibiaoxing duanlie [disjuncture of representation] argument, showing how this disjuncture has resulted in the irrelevance of the reform and boom of the media to the expansion of public sphere. To substantiate this point, this thesis explores the problems of media transparency in four aspects. Firstly, censorship’s justification problem is analysed to reveal the contradictory Party principle of journalism. Secondly, exploitative management, ethical confusion and denial of the professionals’ rights are examined to identify the causal connection between media malpractice and the consensus of political and market control. Thirdly, the trajectory of marketization and conglomeration is discussed to demythologize the prediction of press freedom on market forces. Fourthly, media activism is examined to show how transparency illusion posits its market discourses on misinterpretation of the past and the present. This thesis concludes that the disjuncture of the Party-state and the media from their political representation of the public has resulted in the media transparency illusion.