Triple play, OTT TV, and the Chinese logic of “select commercialization”

This article unravels the evolution of the Chinese OTT TV and triple-network convergence in the larger context of global media and communication policy. The balancing act between market innovation and content gatekeeping has led State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the regulator of the broadcast sector, to subjugate the relevant players of OTT TV and triple play to “select commercialization,” a logic that inevitably led to convoluted policy configurations. The authors pursue a market power analysis that lays bare the competing and/or collaborative relationships between multiple actors in China’s online TV value chain, that is, cable broadcasters, telecom operators, Internet companies, OTT licensees, and smart TV makers. The article ends with a proposition that the future of the Chinese online TV industry is increasingly organized as an ecosystem economy.

Researching the History of Chinese Logic

During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the progressive intellectuals, who were confronted with the all-embracing crisis of Chinese society, yearned to find the new truth within the Western ideas on the one hand, and the works of the classical Chinese philosophy of the pre-Qin era on the other. These social and historical circumstances started the research into the history of Chinese logic. In the process of these investigations, it soon became clear that more appropriate methodologies were needed to explore Chinese logic, as those used for researching Western logic were not suitable for the task. The revival and modernization of such methods took place in the latter half of the 20th century, and one of the most important figures in these processes was Professor Wen Gongyi, who was hence one of the pioneers of modern research into the history of Chinese logic. Therefore, the present article also offers a short presentation of his biography and his contributions to the development of the research into traditional Chinese logic.

TWO SYLLOGISMS IN THE MOZI: CHINESE LOGIC AND LANGUAGE

This article examines two syllogistic arguments contrasted in an ancient Chinese book, the Mozi, which expounds doctrines of the Mohist school of philosophers. While the arguments seem to have the same form, one of them (the one-horse argument) is valid but the other (the two-horse argument) is not. To explain this difference, the article uses English plural constructions to formulate the arguments. Then it shows that the one-horse argument is valid because it has a valid argument form, the plural cousin of a standard form of valid categorical syllogisms (Plural Barbara), and argues that the two-horse argument involves equivocal uses of a key predicate (the Chinese counterpart of ‘have four feet’) that has the distributive/nondistributive ambiguity. In doing so, the article discusses linguistic differences between Chinese and English and explains why the logic of plural constructions is applicable to Chinese arguments that involve no plural constructions.