Abstract
Over the last 25 years China has maintained a high level of domestic political legitimacy through developing a strong ideological framework that links socioeconomic progress to the ruling party's monopoly over political power. The continuing control of the domestic media has been an essential part of this process as it is the tool through which the ideological framework is propagated and thus links the party and the people. It is clear that following the turbulence of 1 989, China placed a new focus on the maintenance of political legitimacy, with a key plank of this strategy being its comprehensive system of media control. Allowing the development of an open media would enable the establishment of an alternative lens through which to view the party's achievements, which would reduce the effectiveness of the party's ideological framework, and therefore place pressure on the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) strategy of legitimation as normative justifications would no longer be captured by the government. This paper examines the central position of the media in China's post- Tiananmen legitimation strategy by reviewing a case study on News Corporation's (News Corp's) repeated failure to gain entry into the Chinese market. This failure can arguably be attributed to the high quality propaganda model that has been developed and continuously refined by the CCP to strengthen the media's role in regime legitimation; and the perceived threat posed to this model by the entrance of a powerful foreign company.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 371-398 |
Journal | International Journal of China Studies |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Cultural Studies
- Sociology and Political Science
- Political Science and International Relations