From ‘Leading the Masses’ to ‘Serving the Consumers’? Newspaper Reporting in Contemporary Urban China

This paper examines and evaluates the content of news items reported in a sample of daily newspapers in China's biggest cities. Using three ‘Western’ media sources, an inventory of news items directly or indirectly related to the ‘downside’ of the economic reforms was generated. A simultaneous analysis of mainland newspapers finds that many of the same themes were reported, although the coverage tends to be thinner and less detailed. Some China scholars have suggested that the Party/state is losing control of the communications system in contemporary China, and the results of this study support such arguments; city-level newspapers are now publishing what is most interesting to their consumers and likely to win them a larger share of the market. The regime still manages the dissemination of sensitive political information, but the parallel dictates of commercialization result in the disorderly and unpredictable circulation of communications messages. Mainland newspapers still steer clear of stories considered too politically ‘sensitive’, but the margins of acceptability have been expanded to include news items that only a few years ago would have been excised. The state maintains control over what is included in the daily news as well as what is excluded, although it is unclear to what extent publishing decisions result from a process of state cooptation and self-censorship, as opposed to specific directives from Beijing.