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1
A Study of Beijing‘s Competitive Advantage
as an Emergent Media Capital
Angela Lin Huang
Bachelor of Law / Master of Law
A dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Creative Industries Faculty,
Queensland University of Technology
2012
i
Keywords
Media capital
Media industries
Media market
Media cluster
Media policy
China
Beijing
Institution
ii
Abstract
The development of creative industries has been connected to urban
development since the end of the 20th
century. However, the causality of why
creative industries always cluster and develop in certain cities hasn‘t been
adequately demonstrated, especially as to how various resources grow, interact
and nurture the creative capacity of the locality. Therefore it is vital to observe
how the local institutional environment nurtures creative industries and how
creative industries consequently change the environment in order to better
address the connection between creative industries and localities.
In Beijing, the relocation of CCTV, BTV and Phoenix to Chaoyang District
raises the possibility of a new era for Chinese media, one in which the
stodginess of propaganda content will give way to exciting new forms and
genres. The mixing of media companies in an open commercial environment
(away from the political power district of Xicheng) holds the promise of more
freedom of expression and, ultimately, to a ‗media capital‘ (Curtin, 2003). These
are the dreams of many media practitioners in Beijing. But just how realistic are
their expectations?
This study adopts the concept of ‗media capital‘ to demonstrate how participants,
including state-media organisations, private media companies and international
media conglomerates, are seeking out space and networks to survive in Beijing.
Drawing on policy analysis, interviews and case studies, this study illustrates
how different agents meet, confront and adapt in Beijing. This study identifies
factors responsible for the media industries clustering in China, and argues that
Beijing is very likely to be the next Chinese media capital, after enough
accumulation and development, although as a lower tier version compared to
other media capitals in the world. This study contributes to Curtin‘s ‗media
capital‘ concept, develops his interpretation on the relationship of media
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industries and the government, and suggests that the influence over the
government of media companies and professionals should be acknowledged.
Therefore, empirically, this study assists media practitioners in understanding
how the Chinese government perceives media industries and, consequently, how
media industries are operated in China. The study also reveals that despite the
government‘s aspirations, China‘s media industries are still greatly constrained
by institutional obstacles. Hence Beijing really needs to speed up its pace on the
path of media reform, abandon the old mindset and create more room for
creativity. Policy-makers in China should keep in mind that the only choice left
to them is to further the reform.
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Table of Contents
KEYWORDS ................................................................................................................................. I
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................. II
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................... IV
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................... VII
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................... VIII
ABBREVIATIONS....................................................................................................................... X
AUTHORSHIP ........................................................................................................................... XI
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................... XII
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1
1.1 MEDIA CAPITAL ...................................................................................................................... 2
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ........................................................................................................... 8
1.3 RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE ....................................................................................................... 9
1.4 RESEARCH APPROACH AND METHODS .................................................................................. 11
1.4.1 Document analysis ....................................................................................................... 14
1.4.2 Semi-structured interviews ........................................................................................... 16
1.4.3 Case study .................................................................................................................... 17
1.5 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN ........................................................................................................ 19
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW: GLOBALISATION AND REGIONALISATION 21
2.1 GLOBAL MEDIA PRODUCTION: DISPERSAL AND CONCENTRATION ......................................... 22
2.2 MEDIA CAPITAL .................................................................................................................... 24
2.2.1 The cultural turn in economic geography .................................................................... 25
2.2.2 Three operating principles ........................................................................................... 28
2.2.3 The creative field .......................................................................................................... 35
2.3 CRITICISMS OF MEDIA CAPITAL ............................................................................................ 41
2.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS: WHERE IS CHINA‘S MEDIA CAPITAL? ............................................. 43
CHAPTER 3 BACKGROUND: HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF BEIJING AS A MEDIA
CENTRE ...................................................................................................................................... 45
3.1 MEDIA SECTOR REFORM IN CHINA ....................................................................................... 47
3.1.1 Nation building (1978-1991) ....................................................................................... 48
3.1.2 Cultural security (1992-2002) ..................................................................................... 56
3.1.3 Soft power (2002-present) ............................................................................................ 66
3.1.4 The implication of media reform .................................................................................. 67
3.2 MEDIA REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT IN CHINA..................................................................... 73
3.3 THE GEOGRAPHY OF MEDIA INDUSTRIES............................................................................... 77
3.3.1 Beijing .......................................................................................................................... 77
3.3.2 Shanghai ...................................................................................................................... 80
3.3.3 Guangdong Province ................................................................................................... 81
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3.3.4 Hunan Province ........................................................................................................... 81
3.3.5 Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province..................................................................... 82
3.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS: THE PROSPECTS OF INNOVATION .................................................... 83
CHAPTER 4 REFRAMING MEDIA INDUSTRIES’ EXPANSION IN CHINA .................. 85
4.1 MEDIA COMPANIES ............................................................................................................... 85
4.1.1 State-owned media groups ........................................................................................... 85
4.1.2 Private media companies ............................................................................................. 88
4.1.3 Foreign media groups in China ................................................................................... 90
4.1.4 Implications ................................................................................................................. 91
4.2 NEW CHARACTERISTICS ........................................................................................................ 92
4.2.1 Competition. ................................................................................................................. 92
4.2.2 Changing attitudes ....................................................................................................... 93
4.2.3 Development of ICTs. ................................................................................................... 94
4.3 MEDIA INDUSTRIES DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................................... 95
4.3.1 The TV industry ............................................................................................................ 96
4.3.2 The film industry ........................................................................................................ 101
4.5 SOFT POWER AND INTERNATIONALISATION......................................................................... 106
4.5.1 Media export .............................................................................................................. 106
4.5.2 International capital .................................................................................................. 112
4.5.3 Co-production ............................................................................................................ 115
CHAPTER 5 BEIJING: THREE PRINCIPLES OF MEDIA CAPITAL ............................ 117
5.1 CURTIN 1: FORCES OF BEIJING‘S ACCUMULATION .............................................................. 118
5.1.1 TV industry: forces of accumulation .......................................................................... 118
5.1.2 Film industry: forces of accumulation ....................................................................... 120
5.1.3 Different routes, same destination.............................................................................. 127
5.2 CURTIN 2: TRAJECTORIES OF BEIJING‘S CREATIVE MIGRATION ........................................... 128
5.2.1 Education institutions ................................................................................................ 130
5.2.2 Career opportunities .................................................................................................. 132
5.2.3 Initiated by the capital status ..................................................................................... 133
5.2.4 The mutual learning effect in media migration .......................................................... 135
5.3 CURTIN 3: BEIJING‘S SOCIO-CULTURAL VARIATION ............................................................ 139
5.3.1 Schizophrenic Beijing ................................................................................................ 139
5.3.2 Struggling international conglomerates .................................................................... 143
5.3.3 Confident domestic players ........................................................................................ 145
5.3.4 Regulatory backflips .................................................................................................. 150
5.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS ..................................................................................................... 154
CHAPTER 6: THE CBD INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY CLUSTER IN BEIJING
..................................................................................................................................................... 157
6.1 THE CBD INTERNATIONAL MEDIA INDUSTRY CLUSTER ..................................................... 157
6.1.1 The Central Business District in Beijing .................................................................... 158
6.1.2 The formation of CBD International Media Cluster .................................................. 161
6.1.3 The CBD International Media Cluster and the capital city ....................................... 167
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6.2 TENSIONS ........................................................................................................................... 170
6.2.1 Small and medium companies .................................................................................... 171
6.2.2 The content of media products ................................................................................... 176
6.2.3 CCTV’s influence ....................................................................................................... 182
6.3 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................... 186
CHAPTER 7 BEIJING’S COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES AS AN EMERGENT MEDIA
CAPITAL ................................................................................................................................... 190
7.1 PREDICTABILITY, CONTROL AND CONVERGENCE ................................................................ 191
7.2 ISSUES ARISING .................................................................................................................. 197
7.3 BEIJING AS A MEDIA CAPITAL IN THE GREAT CHINESE MEDIA MARKET ............................... 202
7.3.1 Adaptive informal institutions .................................................................................... 206
7.3.2 Continuous adaption and convergence of the media regulatory system .................... 210
7.3.3 The generational transition of power in Chinese film directors ................................ 214
7.3.4 Audiences and other issues in the Mainland TV market ............................................ 217
7.4 BEIJING‘S ADVANTAGES AND CHALLENGES ........................................................................ 219
CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 223
8.1 POSITIONING BEIJING IN CHINESE MEDIA INDUSTRIES........................................................ 223
8.2 REVISITING CURTIN‘S MEDIA CAPITAL ............................................................................... 231
8.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY ............................................................................................ 233
8.3.1 Implication for theory ................................................................................................ 234
8.3.2 Implication for policy ................................................................................................. 235
8.3.3 Implication for practice ............................................................................................. 236
8.4 LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY .............................................................................................. 236
8.5 DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY ...................................................................................... 237
APPENDIX I: LIST OF INTERVIEWEES ............................................................................ 238
APPENDIX II SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW ........ 241
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 245
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List of Figures
Figure 1 The full path of media reform in China (compiled by the author) ........ 71
Figure 2 The annual overall output value of China‘s media industries
(2004-2010) (Cui, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) .......................... 95
Figure 3 Growth of radio and TV revenue 2005-2009 (SARFT, 2010c)............. 96
Figure 4 Structure of Radio and TV revenue in 2009 (SARFT, 2010c) .............. 97
Figure 5 Annual TV advertising (1990-2008) (adopted from Cui, 2010)............ 97
Figure 6 TV drama amount and sales (2005-2010) (SARFT, 2010c).................. 99
Figure 7 Broadcasting and viewing proportion of TV drama (2006-2009) (Cui,
2010) .................................................................................................................. 100
Figure 8 Income of China‘s film industry (2004-2010) (Cui, 2011) ................. 101
Figure 9 Film amount and urban box office (2001-2010) (Cui, 2011) .............. 102
Figure 10 Structure of China's box office (2004-2010) ..................................... 104
Figure 11 International income of China's film industry (2004-2010) (Cui, 2011)107
Figure 12 The international market of Chinese films in 2009 (H. Li & Wan,
2010) .................................................................................................................. 108
Figure 13: Ten biggest film distribution companies in China ........................... 125
Figure 14 Beijing CBD east-extension map (adopted from the website of CBD
administrative committee) .................................................................................. 161
Figure 15 CCTV's old building vs. the new building (compiled by the author
from pictures at: www.cctv.com) ....................................................................... 164
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List of Tables
Table 1 The gross income of TV sector in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong,
2006-2008 (Source: The Yearbook of Chinese Radio and Television 2007, 2008,
2009) ...................................................................................................................... 5
Table 2 Chinese film studios‘ co-production with Hong Kong in the first half
year of 1993 ("Film Information Express," 1993) ............................................... 64
Table 3 Comparison of shiye and qiye (adopted from Donald & Keane, 2002) . 72
Table 4 Major national media policies in China .................................................. 75
Table 5 Major private TV drama production companies in Beijing .................... 78
Table 6 Box office of the top ten domestic films and the top ten imported films
in major Chinese cities 2010 (January to September) (SARFT, 2010a) ............ 102
Table 7 Chinese Kungfu films exported overseas (2005, 2006, and 2008) (Yan
& Li, 2010) ......................................................................................................... 109
Table 8 Amount of exported Chinese films to major overseas market (2008,
2009) (Yan & Li, 2010) ..................................................................................... 109
Table 9 Import and export of China's TV programs in 2008 (SARFT, 2009) ... 109
Table 10 China's major cinema chains in 2002 (adopted from Rong Tang &
Shao, 2005, pp. 284-285) ................................................................................... 121
Table 11 China‘s top ten cinema chains in 2010 (data source: SARFT) ........... 124
Table 12 Media clusters in Beijing .................................................................... 158
Table 13 Location of major private media companies in Beijing (distance
calculated based on Google Map) ...................................................................... 182
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x
Abbreviations
BFA Beijing Film Academy
BGCTV Beijing Gehua Cable TV Networks
BTV Beijing TV
CAD the Central Academy of Drama
CCCCP The Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party
CCFC China Co-production Film Corporation
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CCTV China Central Television
CETV China Education Television
CFGC China Film Group Corporation
CTPC China‘s TV Production Centre
CUC Communication University of China
HSTV Hunan Satellite TV
MoC Ministry of Culture China Central Television
NBSC National Bureau of Statistics of China
NDRC National Development and Reform Committee of China
SARFT State Administration of Radio, Film and Television
SMG Shanghai Media Group
WTO World Trade Organization
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Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet
requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To
the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously
published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signature:
Date: 31 May 2012
QUT Verified Signature
xii
Acknowledgements
It would be impossible for me to complete this thesis without the enormous help
and support that I have received from many individuals in these four years. First
of all, I would like to express my biggest gratitude and thanks to my wonderful
supervisors, Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham, Professor Michael
Keane and Professor Terry Flew. Stuart‘s critical queries have compelled me
through my PhD adventure in a very challenging way and finally I could see
more. Whenever I encountered problems, big or small, Michael told me: ‗Don‘t
worry, I will help you.‘ And he always did what he said. Terry has kindly
included me in the work of ARC funded project Creative Suburbia, by which I
was fortunate to get valuable opportunities of conferences and publications. You
guys make an unparalleled team!
Many thanks must go to my interviewees and friends in Beijing. A thousand
thanks go to Yang Li, who not only has contributed her time and insightful
opinions to my field work in Beijing but also generously introduced many of her
friends to me; and to Yao Min, who introduced me two of her important
business partner and my interviews with them have helped me develop a clearer
research direction. Without your continuous support, I would not have come so
far. Special thanks go to Shen Jiao and her husband, Xiao Zhaojun. They always
kindly let me to stay with them in their small cosy apartment and fed me with
their beautiful cooking every time when I was back in Beijing.
I was so lucky to have many friends in Brisbane who have accompanied me
during my PhD journey. They are Linda Watterson, Bonnie Rui Liu, Wen Wen,
Yaxing Zhang, Henry Siling Li, Weihong Zhang, Mimi Yihsin Tsai, Ivy Lau,
Vicki Chihsuan Chiu, Wei Song, Ying Zhou, Judy Tan, Falk Hartig, Mark Ryan,
Thomas Petzold, Tripta Chandola, Barbara Gligorijevic, Emma Felton, Ct Suria,
xiii
Yong Guo, Juncheng Dai and many others whose name are not mentioned here.
I may have been alone from time to time, but I was never lonely because of you.
I would like to thank lovely staff from CIF and CCI – Kate Simmonds, Colleen
Cook, Sue Carson, Cheryl Stock, Sharon Kolar, Jenny Mayes and Aislinn
McConnell, who have been very patient and supportive from the first beginning
till the very end. Your smile has meant so much to me. I must thank the China
Scholarship Council and the education officer from the Consulate General of the
PRC in Brisbane that sponsored and assisted selflessly my study and living in
Australia.
Finally I want to express my deepest love and gratitude to my Mum, Hao
Yuping, my Dad, Huang Jianjun, and my husband, Liu Liyong. I always knew
that I was surrounded by your love and support though we were parted by the
ocean.
1
Chapter 1 Introduction
When I set out on my PhD journey I decided to look at the phenomenon of
clustering. Over the past two decades clusters have become central to economic
development in China; the past several years have seen a wave of cultural and
creative clusters, such as art zones, reconverted factories, film, TV and
animation parks. All cities seem to have similar cluster plans. My interest was
Beijing.
However, much confusion exists about clusters. What constitutes a cluster? How
do they work? At the same time as the cluster fever broke there was a similar
focus on the bigger picture: the nation and the city. How could China be a media
power like the US? How could it stop the wave of imports from Korea? People
spoke about creative cities, world cities, knowledge cities, cities of design and
cities of culture. What kind of city was Beijing? It was the capital of course; it
was trying to be many things at once.
In the course of my early research I came across the concept of ‗media capital‘
(Curtin 2003). This seemed to be a new way of viewing Beijing‘s development,
by bringing the cluster idea together with the city. The media capital concept,
which I will outline below, is based on a high degree of media concentration and
successful media products, especially exports. In effect, media capital is another
form of clustering. Michael Curtin, the US scholar who coined this idea,
believes that Beijing could not be a media capital because it was a media control
centre. I wanted to test this claim.
2
1.1 Media capital
Curtin, together with many other scholars (for instance see Tunstall 2007),
believes that nowadays the global media system is no longer a one-way flow of
(mainly) US programming to other places of the world. Rather, according to
Curtin, the increasing volume and velocity of multi-directional media flows is
emanating from media capitals on the periphery of the world media system, such
as Cairo, Bombay, Hong Kong and, more recently, Miami. Curtin maintains that
media capitals are places where new mass culture forms containing local
specificity are generated and exported while media resources and talent come
together, interact and exchange.
Instead of depicting global media as an extension of Hollywood, the global
media system is de-territorialised and clustered in specific regions where there
are particular attractive resources for international investment. The capacity of
these emergent media capitals is improving as they become hubs for a range of
media flows, which bring resources and new knowledge. Hence media capital is
a dynamic concept, as capital status can be won and lost at different
development stages. Media capital is a relational concept. Geographically, a
media capital must be envisioned in ‗a terrain over which it holds sway and a
constellation of related nodes of cultural endeavour‘ (Curtin, 2007, p. 285). A
media capital must be a geographic centre within a field of interconnected
locales (Curtin, 2010a). A media capital must be able to constantly absorb
resources beyond boundaries, produce distinctive prototypes to its competitors,
and extend circulation as far as possible (Curtin, 2007, p. 287). Managerial and
productive operations of media enterprises are concentrated in a certain location
despite the technological, political, and trade liberalisation that spreads their
markets and products transnationally. Gradually, with the concentration of
resources, reputation, and talent, the city becomes a flux of complex forces and
3
flows from near and far. At the same time, media enterprises are driven by
market forces searching persistently for socio-cultural variations that bring new
market opportunities and stimulate distinctive production. Consequently, they
can produce new exportable cultural forms and circulate products at multiple
geographical locales through flexible and far-reaching distribution operations
that interface effectively with local nodes of exhibition and marketing.
As a result, capital in Curtin‘s context has two meanings: a centre of activity
(geographical) and a concentration of resources, reputation and talent
(economic). Michael Curtin illustrates the temporal dynamism and spatial
complexity of the global media from three aspects:
(a) Logic of accumulation. In this principle, Curtin explains the centripetal
tendencies of production and centrifugal tendencies of distribution through an
economic geography perspective: driven by the pursuit of profit and assisted by
the development of ICTs and other technologies, modern enterprises are able to
operate across borders of states and regions to reduce production costs, extend
the market and increase speed of distribution.
(b) Trajectories of migration. Creativity is a core resource for media industries
and comes from pools of labour that continually acquire new prototypes
motivated by aesthetic innovation and market considerations. With
accumulation of resources, media talent is attracted to the new production
centres because of the growth in work opportunities. The creative migration
stimulated by job opportunities enhances the attractiveness of the region to other
media workers, which in turn drives the growth and expansion of media
industries in the region.
4
(c) Forces of socio-cultural variation. Media products adapted to local
traditions, resources and preferences are more easily accepted by audiences in
particular geo-linguistic regions due to cultural proximity (Straubhaar 1991).
Moreover, national and local institutions, such as ideology, policies and
institutions intervene and complicate the production, distribution and migration.
The question of why Beijing wants to be a media capital and how it might
become a media capital need to be contextualised in recent history. The thesis
argues that Chinese media is at an important crossroads, trying to commercialise
and trying to become stronger in media production exports. In the past decade
there has been a concerted attempt to utilise clustering and regional media
groups as a development strategy. This has obvious limits, which I will discuss
in Chapter 6. However, one of the key driving forces behind media development
in China is the Chinese ‗going out‘ strategy, which has been taken up in media
under the slogan ‗soft power‘ (ruan shili). For Beijing to be a media capital it
therefore has to be a producer of soft power. In this thesis I describe China‘s
media as progressing through three identifiable periods (1) nation-building (2)
cultural security and (3) soft power. It is the last of these that links directly to
media capital.
Beijing is the media centre of China. The Chinese media industry has made
rapid development in recent years, but it is by no means a balanced development.
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong Province are the three most prominent ‗media
hotspots‘, or what Chinese scholars term ‗media highlands‘ (chuanmei gaodi)
(Tan & Wang, 2009). The evidence I provide in this thesis shows that Beijing
prevails amongst these competing hotspots. Yu Guoming has evaluated media
development in Chinese cities taking into account five aspects: production,
profit, consumption, advertising and environment. Beijing tops his list (Yu,
2010). In the TV sector, according to The Yearbook of Chinese Radio and
5
Television 2007, 2008 and 2009, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong Province
accounted for more than half of the national TV market of China, and Beijing
again assumes the leading position (see Table 1).
With respect to the film industry, according to SARFT, the total box office
surpassed RMB ten billion in 2010 (SARFT, 2011a) and domestic films were
among the top ten best-selling films of 2010. After Shock (tangshan da dizhen),
Let the bullets fly (rang zidan fei), If you are the one 2 (feicheng wurao 2),
Detective Dee and the mystery of the phantom flame (di renjie zhi tongtian
and Ip man 2 (ye wen 2) (www.sina.com.cn, 2011) are produced or co-produced
by domestic film companies located in Beijing, such as Huayi Brother Film
Company and China Film Group. In addition, both China Film Group and
Huaxia Film Distribution Company, the only two companies authorised to
import and distribute foreign films, are located in Beijing.
Table 1 The gross income of TV sector in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong,
2006-2008 (Source: The Yearbook of Chinese Radio and Television 2007, 2008, 2009)
2006 2007 2008
Sales of
TV shows
(million
RMB)
Sales of
TV drama
(million
RMB)
Sales of
TV shows
(million
RMB)
Sales of
TV drama
(million
RMB)
Sales of
TV shows
(million
RMB)
Sales of
TV drama
(million
RMB)
Beijing 502.48 395.86 710.63 438.35 1019.61 809.24
Shanghai 163.62 132.55 230.27 188.09 325.34 133.81
Guangdong 181.48 127.16 209.75 151.87 189.98 139.47
National 2079.44 1499.67 2368.85 1519.67 2420.66 1642.53
Beijing not only prevails in mainland China, but is also attracting media
personnel and investment from around the world, especially among the
pan-Chinese community. Directors, producers, actors and investors from
6
Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have moved to find
work and make deals in Beijing (see G. Chen, 2004). Desmond Hui (2003) has
observed that Hong Kong is experiencing an inevitable ‗brain drain‘. More
multinational corporations moved their Asian-Pacific headquarters to Beijing
and Shanghai after China‘s accession to the WTO. The small local market has
severely hindered further development of Hong Kong‘s TV and film industry. It
is becoming imperative for Hong Kong producers to seek collaborations in
mainland China. The Hong Kong film producer Wu Siyuan believes Beijing is
China‘s film centre and therefore releasing a film in Beijing is more effective
(cited in Y. Zhang, 2009).
In addition to attracting media resources, Beijing has all the stakeholders in
China‘s media industries and therefore provides a representative case study for
close analysis of how media industries operate in China:
Beijing is the national decision centre of the media industries. Being the
capital of China, it is the locus of government departments related to the
media industry, including the State Administration of Radio, Film and
Television (SARFT), Ministry of culture (MoC), Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology (MIIT) and the General Administration of Press
and Publication (GAPP).
Beijing has the greatest concentrations of domestic media organisations in
China. Beijing serves as the major node of Chinese media industries‘
networks and nearly all the national media enterprises are in Beijing, as it is
the cultural and political centre of China. The two most important
state-owned national media companies, CCTV (which is the biggest TV
group in China and covers one third of the national TV market) and China
Film Group Corporation (CFGC, which accounts for over 50% of the
7
Chinese film market) are both located in Beijing. Furthermore, most
competitive private media companies, such as Enlight Media (guangxian
chuanmei), H.Y. Brother (huayi xiongdi), Poly bona (baoli bona), Orange
Sky (chengtian jiahe) and Galloping Horse Film & TV Production (xiaoma
benteng) are in Beijing.
Beijing has a high proportion of creative talent. It is acclaimed as the
cultural centre of China. Large numbers of cultural workers have migrated
to Beijing. Most renowned Chinese directors, producers, actors and
screenwriters are attracted by the symbiosis of a unique local landscape,
ancient civilisation and modern pop culture. Many settle down in Beijing.
Recently, many entertainers from Hong Kong, Taiwan and even Singapore
have taken up residence in Beijing. In early 2009, the Hong Kong film
director Chen Kexin (Peter Chan) opened his film studio in Beijing. Ma
Chucheng (Jingle Ma), Liu Zhenwei (Jeffery Lau), Chen Jiashang (Gordon
Chan), Wu Yusen (John Woo) and Er Dongsheng (Derek Yee) all followed,
and signed up with media companies in Beijing.
Beijing is the headquarters for most international media companies. In 1995,
Viacom set up its representative office in Beijing and launched its
collaboration with CCTV on entertainment programs and children‘s shows.
In 1999, News Corporation set up a representative office in Beijing. Japan‘s
Fuji TV started to cooperate with CCTV; broadcasting news produced by
CCTV on its news website is a part of their collaboration. At the present
moment, international media companies are only allowed to co-produce TV
and film. So they often establish covert and ‗under the radar‘ joint ventures
with Chinese media organisations and state-owned TV stations, most of
which are located in Beijing.
8
1.2 Research questions
According to Curtin, a media capital exports media product. Though Beijing is
the media centre of China, the question still remains: is Beijing a media capital?
In most cases, so far, Beijing has not even been considered. In order to address
literature gaps related to media capital, I take Beijing, the political capital of
China, as a case study. Therefore the primary research question is:
What are the possibilities of Beijing becoming a media capital?
In order to address the primary research question, five subsidiary research
questions are proposed:
(1) How do media industries operate in Beijing?
(2) Is Curtin‘s media capital framework able to be directly applied to China? In
which way should the media capital notion be revised when it is applied to
China?
(3) What factors differentiate Beijing from other known media capitals?
(4) Is there a push for Beijing to be an international media capital? If yes, where
does it come from? If not, what is holding it back?
(5) What are the strengths and weaknesses of Beijing as a media capital?
9
1.3 Research significance
The research has significance for several reasons. The upsurge of interest in
cultural and creative industries in the past decade has heightened place
competition among Chinese cities (Keane, 2007a, 2011; Liu, Huang, & Zhang,
2008; Zhang, 2008). Shanghai is striving to be a business centre; Beijing, as the
political capital, aspires to be a global city through the enhancement of its media
assets. Media industry, the most vibrant of creative industries, is worthy of close
observation. According to Anke Redl and Rowan Simons, ‗the development of
the media, the most political and commercial of modern industries, provides a
unique insight into the reality of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the
challenges facing China as it emerges as a major world economy and cultural
force‘ (Redl & Simons, 2002, p. 18). Prior studies have demonstrated that local
business networks are both the key driver of industrial agglomeration (Curtin,
2005; Keane, 2006; Porter, 1998; Scott, 2006b) and one of the defining
characteristics of Chinese social, political and communicative organisation
(Shoesmith & Wang, 2002). But existing Western studies of China‘s media do
not deeply investigate the local network of Chinese media industries, nor do
they tend to link cultural studies with geographic deployment. Instead, the focus
appears to be on ‗propaganda‘ or ‗ideology‘, deployed as concepts to critique
Chinese media as technologies of power (Donald & Keane, 2002). As a result,
there is a lack of analysis of the development trajectories arising from the
changing political-economic, institutional and social dynamics of Chinese media
industries.
In relation to Chinese media industry studies, several principles should be borne
in mind: the foremost principle of media regulation in East Asia remains
national sovereignty (Goldsmith, 2003); Chinese media industry is still in the
process of transition in terms of control (Keane, 2006, p. 837); and, most
10
importantly, the context of the media industries in China is one where the
government not only supervises the media but also intervenes in shaping
competition and collaboration between media companies of various scales and
ownership forms for its own national development priorities. By contrast,
Curtin‘s argument is generally based on the observation of the Western free
market model (e.g. Hong Kong and Hollywood). As Michael Keane argues, the
theoretical issue of how media and communication studies ought to connect with
non-Western contexts is urgently needed, because the current Western
theoretical frameworks are incapable of engaging with the field outside the
Western enclaves where it is predominantly practised (Keane, 2006, p. 837).
Therefore, the media capital concept, although it starts from analysing the
historical evolution process of local networks and provides a rational way to
elaborate the ceaselessly changing media industry, needs certain modifications
when it is applied to Beijing, since it has never been adopted in order to study
any part of mainland China.
Based on the above, ‗the tensions, contradictions, compliance, and partial
resolution between the state and the market [in China] harbour great possibilities
for theory building and testing‘ (Ma, 2000, p. 32) whereas a discourse on the
local and the interior of Chinese media industry is still apparently missing both
in Western and Eastern hemispheres. Given the complexity of local networks of
Chinese media industry, an inside-out and bottom-up approach to the Chinese
media industry through the approach of media capital is crucial and vital.
This project will, therefore, be based on the city of Beijing, and will focus on the
geographic redeployment of media industry in Beijing caused by the relocation
of CCTV. It will investigate the changes to the Chinese media industry, such as
infrastructure, business environment, governmental policies and development
features generated by this redeployment. It will investigate the ways in which
11
the network of Chinese media industry relationships are operating in order to
identify major factors influencing the clustering process of China‘s media
industry, thus informing understandings of geographic locations and Chinese
media industry development.
Such an empirical approach enables us to examine the possibilities of Beijing
becoming an international media capital, while also adjusting Michael Curtin‘s
media capitals model into a framework that can be utilised to understand
Chinese media industry from the perspective of cultural and economic
geography. It is anticipated that the research program in this thesis will have
both practical and theoretical applications, and will make an important
contribution to both the Chinese media industry and the research literature.
1.4 Research approach and methods
This research investigates commercial TV and film industries, and excludes
sectors such as news and documentary. This parallels Curtin‘s analysis, which
mainly focuses on the commercial entertainment sector. In the Chinese context,
it is also highly relevant that such sectors as news and documentaries remain
very much as media institutions (shiye). They are heavily regulated, which
leaves little room for competition. This research also excludes new media
services (such as SNS and IPTV), as research on new media requires different
research methods, models, perspectives and approaches (Williams, Rice, &
Rogers, 1988).
Resolving Beijing‘s media capital status presented me with a complicated set of
problems. It would be simple to adopt the approach that Beijing could not be a
media capital because of the state‘s socialist ideology and the legacy of
12
excessive government control and censorship, in line with Curtin‘s media capital
model and his observations on Beijing (Curtin, 2010a, 2011). However, political
power that is heavily concentrated in Beijing enables the clustering of media
industries and provides access for companies to negotiate with the government
and even to change the government‘s approach, which will be discussed in
Chapter 7. Hence it is necessary to identify difficulties in applying Curtin‘s
media capital notion directly in Beijing.
In order to investigate how Beijing might qualify as a media capital I needed to
get inside the system, to talk with a range of players or stakeholders. I made use
of qualitative methods, primarily semi-structured interviews. While my research
interest was specific, at the same time there was a need for flexibility and a
degree of open-endedness in the interviews in order to further explore points
made by interviewees, where their unique characteristics or circumstances make
it necessary or useful (Weerakkody, 2009, p. 167). I used document analysis and
case study to complement my interviews in the first and third phases of this
research. A qualitative way of thinking was adopted, as this project studies
‗meaning‘ (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, p. 8), namely: how to understand
China‘s media industries clustering and export through Curtin‘s media capital
perspective, and to identify what variables and vectors, and to what extent, we
needed to revise the media capital idea when applying it to China.
The focus of this research is to come up with a more holistic image of China‘s
media industries, one which produces descriptive, interpretive and
culturally-situated knowledge by interplaying Curtin‘s media capital idea with
data collected during my field work in Beijing. According to Stake (2010),
qualitative research relies on human perceptions and understanding. Therefore,
the outcomes of qualitative research are representations and presentations of
salient findings from the analytical synthesis of data, such as new insights and
13
understandings of social complexity, the evaluation of a policy‘s influence, and
a critique of existing social orders (Saldana, Leavy, & Beretvas, 2011, p. 4). In
terms of media and communication studies, Hollifield and Coffey (2006)
observed that qualitative research has been widely used in media and
communication studies, especially by scholars at the crossroads of media
economics and policies, as qualitative research takes nuances and contexts into
account when analysing data, discussing results and forming arguments.
On the other hand, this research is related to geography, as it discusses the
relationships between media industries and the environment in Beijing to
explore how the trajectory of media industries is altered by Beijing‘s physical
and social cultural landscape and how the city‘s landscape develops and changes
along with the development of media industries. Nowadays, qualitative research
is commonly used in geography to address various issues of culture, society,
economy and places (Hay, 2010). Qualitative research is able to help
geographers understand and explain the social and cultural differences through
the perspective of participants in the place. This is more difficult in quantitative
research.
This research uses a range of methods, including document analysis, interviews
and case study analysis, in order to gather useful and usable data to answer the
research questions proposed in this chapter.
According to Al James (2006), research questions should be derived from ‗a
simultaneous revisionist cycling‘ between academic debates, government
documents and evident socio-economic issues; and case study, interview and
social-based qualitative analysis should be adopted to seek the answer to
research questions. Hence this study is designed as follows:
14
I conducted document analysis on relative statistics, policies and other types of
government discourses to discover the status quo of media industry clustering in
Beijing and to identify the rationale of Chinese media industries‘ accumulation
strategies by combining the result with government policies. Informed by the
results of the interviews, I undertook a case study of the change of geographic
deployment of the media industry in Beijing caused by the relocation of CCTV
in order to propose and test answers to research questions.
1.4.1 Document analysis
The first phase of this project is to discover the current situation and
characteristics of development regarding media industry agglomeration in
Beijing. But due to the insufficiency and the inconsistency of authoritative
statistical data in China, statistics are only utilised to provide a broad depiction.
Relevant data can be retrieved from Beijing Statistical Information Net1, Beijing
Cultural and Creative Net2, eBeijing
3, the website of the State Administration of
Radio Film and Television, the website of General Administration of Customs
of China, the website of Beijing Customs and the website of State
Administration of Foreign Exchange. I looked at the Yearbook of Chinese Radio
and Television to examine major events and statistical data regarding radio and
1 Beijing Statistical Information Net is the only dedicated website of Beijing Statistics
Bureau to disclose statistic data. For more information, please see: www.bjstats.gov.cn
2 Beijing Cultural and Creative Net is the only dedicated website of Beijing Cultural and
Creative Promotion Center to release information concerning creative industries in Beijing.
For more information please see: www.bjci.gov.cn
3 eBeijing is the Official Website of the Beijing Municipal Government, please look at:
www.beijing.gov.cn
15
TV sectors, and several series of Blue Books, including the Report on
Development of China’s Radio, Film and Television, the official statistics report
published annually by SARFT, the Report on Development of China’s Media
Industry, the Report on Development of China’s Cultural Industry. By exploring
these data sources, I was able to analyse the development trend of China‘s media
industries and identify the scale and function of Beijing‘s media industries.
Moreover, I conducted a document analysis on relevant government policies to
reveal the major themes that the Chinese government is pursuing. Most
government policies are listed on the websites of the Ministry of Culture, the
State Administration of Radio Film and Television, China‘s General
Administration of Press and Publication, and China‘s General Administration of
Customs.
However, it is necessary to make a connection between the language used in
policies and that of the ‗real world‘, between policy-makers who produce
documents and the audience for whom the documents were intended, if we are
to understand their essential elements. Such policy documents, when read
without contextual background, do not reflect the real situation (Prior, 2011).
Faced with difficult access to government officials, in this phase I used other
document sources, such as political speeches and official commentaries, as
complementary components in the system of government actions and discourses.
This type of governmental discourse that I drew on included: Chinese senior
leaders‘ speeches on Chinese core leadership, which normally can be found at
the www.xinhua.com; articles in party newspapers, including The People’s
Daily (renmin ribao), Enlightenment Daily (guangming ribao) and The
Economic Daily (jingji ribao).
16
1.4.2 Semi-structured interviews
The second research method that I employed as a means of collecting data and
evidence was semi-structured interviews. Weerakkody (2009, p. 166) points out
that in media research, interviews allow researchers to collect information from
interviewees when the phenomenon under study cannot be directly observed or
measured. Moreover, in studies of geography, interviews are often used when
investigating complex behaviours and motivations and in understanding how
meanings differ among different groups of people (Dunn, 2010).
Interviews involved ‗active asking and listening‘ (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006, p.
119) on the ‗theme of mutual interest‘ (Marshall & Rossman, 2011, p. 142), as
these are useful for finding out about people‘s experiences, the way they do
things, their motivations, their attitudes, their knowledge, the way in which they
interpret things or the meaning they attach to things (McGivern, 2003).
It is still widely believed that because of government control, the Chinese media
industry is hamstrung and, accordingly, Beijing will not develop into a media
capital. My hypothesis is that a unique economic-political system is actually
forming in China. In making this claim, I am drawing on remarks that the
Chinese media environment is not like a ‗birdcage‘ (Ma, 2000, p. 28); that is,
the government is not indifferent to the vibrancy of the bird, namely media
industries. Chinese media companies have never stopped searching for a means
to achieve longer sustainability and they have coped with what Ma (2000) called
‗structural coexistence‘ and overt conflicts with government in their own ways.
They have found ways of negotiating with government. Beijing is the best place
to see these deliberative processes in action.
17
In order to comprehensively understand the tension between the government and
the media industry itself, my interviewees included four categories:
managers/directors in Chinese media organisations; media workers; foreign
media personnel; and media scholars. Informed by my document analysis, I
interviewed people from these groupings in order to further identify causal
relationships and patterns of interaction, as well as to access the myriad cultural
assumptions, competing possibilities, trade-offs, historical contingencies and
multiple motives that underpin corporate decisions and non-decisions that are
rendered invisible in survey data (James, 2006, p. 297). For the information of
interviewees, please refer to the list of interviewees in Appendix 1.
1.4.3 Case study
A case study typically examines a group of people, an organisation, an event, a
process, an issue or even a campaign (Gerring, 2007; Weerakkody, 2009).
Multiple realities or diverse perspectives of information are linked up into a
coherent framework. More importantly, a typical case is an exercise in
theory-building and is the most information-rich and fruitful way for junior
scholars to invest their limited resources (James, 2006, p. 294).
For this reason, in the third phase of this project, I conducted a case study on the
most significant media cluster in Beijing, the Beijing CBD International Media
Industry Cluster, around the CCTV new building at the heart of CBD in
Chaoyang District. This is a significant development as China attempts to
up-scale its innovative productivity through new forms of creative organisation
and management (Keane, 2007a). I looked not only at the cluster itself but also
at the migration trend of media industries from the west of Beijing to the CBD
in the east of the city. The purpose of conducting a case study was to show
18
cause-and-effect relationships between government ambitions, local networks
and industrial development.
The Beijing CBD International Media Industry Cluster started forming in 2004
and was officially recognised by the Beijing municipal government in 2008. It is
located around the CCTV new building (which recently finished construction) at
the heart of the CBD in the eastern part of Beijing. Over 80% of overseas news
agencies and 167 international media organisations are located in this cluster,
including CNN, VOA, BBC, Viacom, Timer Warner, Disney as well as
significant Chinese media such as CCTV, Beijing TV and Phoenix TV.
According to statistics, over 1700 cultural and media organisations were situated
in the CBD by September 2010. A Chaoyang District government‘s report
claimed that on average one media company per day has moved into the CBD
since 2006 (The Propaganda Department of Chaoyang District Government,
"Ten years of CBD," 2010). The Beijing CBD International Media Industry
Cluster is the epitome of the clustering process of the media industry in China,
and it includes most of China‘s media companies.
CCTV conceived a plan of moving to the core area of CBD in 2004, and the
construction of the new building began shortly after. This decision arguably
represents a strategic change, from party organ towards an international media
enterprise. Moreover, production companies, broadcasting institutions,
advertising companies, training organisations, and performance agencies, which
used to be in the west of Beijing and close to the current location of CCTV,
began moving to CBD soon after this news was released. The reason for the
change of media landscape is that a business relation with CCTV is a symbol of
strength; a shorter geographical distance to CCTV enhances opportunities for
entering into a contract with CCTV. Media companies collaborating with CCTV
can benefit from economic profit and from reputational effects. Later on, Beijing
19
TV (the local TV station of Beijing) and Phoenix TV (the most popular overseas
TV station based in Hong Kong) moved to the CBD. A huge conglomeration of
media business and media workers has formed since.
In this case study, I collected first-hand data by site visit and combined it with
data collected during the document analysis and interviews in the first and
second phases. I analysed relationships between major institutional factors, such
as media companies, TV stations, administrative sector of clusters, local
governments and independent creative forces to probe into the causality and
implication of the clustering process.
1.5 Chapter breakdown
The remainder of this thesis is organised as follows:
Chapter 2 explores theories related to media capital and clusters to interpret
three principles (logic of accumulation, trajectories of creative migration and
forces of social-cultural variation) and to investigate how they act on each other
in order to describe the research context. Then the literature gaps are identified
and corresponding research questions are proposed.
Chapter 3 begins with a historical review on media reform in China so as to
generalise characteristics of Chinese media industries and to understand the role
of various stakeholders in China‘s media sector. Following this, the chapter
investigates the implications the characteristics of Chinese media industries with
regard to the understanding of media capital.
20
Chapter 4 shows the larger picture of competition in the TV and film industries
in China, the relationships between different types of organisations, the
regulatory environment and the export of China‘s media industries informed by
Chapters 2 and 3.
Chapter 5 focuses on how the three principles of media capital play out in
Beijing in the soft power era. This chapter investigates media production and
export in Beijing and how the intersection of people and social-cultural variables
influences development. In conclusion, I discuss the consequence of the three
principles for media industries in Beijing.
Chapter 6 is a case study on the media cluster around CCTV‘s new building in
the CBD of Beijing in order to investigate the change of the geographical
deployment of media companies and workers. The relocation of CCTV allows
us to take a close look at the relationship between the government, industry and
location; it demonstrates tensions emanating from the process of agglomeration.
Chapter 7 discusses how different factors interact in Beijing and the kind of
ecology that such interaction takes on with regard to media industries; it
analyses issues arising from previous chapters and identifies possibilities and
difficulties for Beijing to become a media capital.
Chapter 8, the concluding chapter, summarises findings in order to answer the
research question of this thesis.
21
Chapter 2 Literature review: Globalisation and
regionalisation
It is often argued that globalisation is engulfing every corner of this earth. For
the boosters of globalisation, it seems that the world is becoming flat, as fast
developing communication technologies and global transportation have
diminished the need for the collocation of management, labour and consumption
(Freeman, 2000); consequently, the impact of geographic location on site
selection has been reduced (Friedman, 2006). However, Dickens maintains that
within the geo-economic map of globalisation we can not only find dispersal but
also economic concentration tendencies that give rise to the agglomeration of
economic activities in localised geographical clusters (Dicken, 2007, p. 21).
This is a core factor in the cultural and creative industries: it is argued that
‗while the distribution and marketing of cultural products spans globally, the
development and production – but not always the reproduction – of them is
highly clustered in a few major cities, such as London, Los Angeles, Paris,
Tokyo, Moscow, Mumbai and so on‘ (Lorenzen & Frederiksen, 2008, p. 155).
In this chapter, I explore the relationship between globalisation, regional identity
and media capital. The first section looks at the bidirectional development trend
of global media production. Though Hollywood still holds its advantageous
position as the global media production centre, the importance of places other
than Hollywood is growing rapidly. Media products are produced in Hong Kong,
Tokyo, Cairo and Mumbai and are spread trans-regionally. These
newly-emerging media centres outside the US demonstrate how satellite
technologies and ICTs enable media companies to transmit technology,
knowledge and products over boundaries. Furthermore, the emergence of new
22
media centres shows that location of production can be a unique component for
competitive media products.
In this context, it is important to note increasing regionalisation in the global
media market while acknowledging that Hollywood still dominates media
industries globally. Following this opening discussion I examine the media
capital notion and its three operating principles: logic of accumulation,
trajectories of creative migration and forces of social-cultural variation. As the
key concept, media capital provides a perspective and an approach, which
combines a range of theories including political economy, urban studies,
economic geography and policy studies, for understanding the development
orbit and driving dynamics of media clusters. This leads into a discussion of
how to win and keep the status of media capital, a question that will be
discussed throughout the following chapters. I introduce theories to illustrate
that the key is to combine agglomerated production systems with the geographic
milieu so as to facilitate accumulation, to accommodate innovation and to
reinforce the cultural identity of the location. Finally in this chapter I offer some
critical perspectives on applying ‗media capital‘ directly in China.
2.1 Global media production: dispersal and concentration
In media industries, globalisation has frequently been used as a synonym for
Westernisation or Americanisation (Giddens, 2002): this reflects the fact that the
best known global movies and TV industry products are produced out of
Hollywood (Miller, Govil, McMurria, & Maxwell, 2001). But the wide
application of satellite technologies and ICTs has enabled flows of capital,
technology, knowledge and people, and has generated a strong multi-directional
tendency. In addition, it has been observed that contemporary media products
23
frequently contain interchangeable elements (Keane & Moran, 2004), although
it is also argued that media conglomerates still keep a firm hand on the
generation and ownership of intellectual property (Miller, et al., 2001).
Therefore, media companies are capable of flexibly choosing suitable
production locations for different purposes. Most scenes from Lord of the Rings
were shot in New Zealand; the CGI of The Matrix was mainly generated in
Australia. Moreover, media companies such as TimeWarner, Disney, News
Corporation and Sony, have stretched out their antennae globally by various
means, including offshore production, joint ventures, production deals and
diagonal mergers. Global media production networks are formed as a result.
Nonetheless, globalisation should not be understood simply as
de-territorialisation (Storper, 1997). The emergence of a range of different
media centres, especially those outside the US, shows a reverse trend to the
simple global dispersal of production. This indicates agglomerations of
knowledge, practitioners, and technology in certain areas. It has been argued that
the global impact of American media is declining and the preference for local
cultural content is still strong despite cultural convergence and globalisation
(Tunstall, 2008). The dispersion of production stems mainly from the general
belief that it is possible to standardise production processes due to the
globalisation of trade, the spread of ideas and access to technologies.
At the same time, a shift from mass production and consumption to ‗flexible
specialization‘ and smaller niche markets (Amin, 1994; Harvey, 1989; Lash &
Urry, 1987, 1994; Lipietz, 1992; O'Connor, 2007; Scott, 1988) validates that
location of production can be a unique component for competitive media
products (Scott, 2006a, p. 10), since culture is interwoven with the lived
experience of consumers (S. Hall, 1986, p. 39), as well as the symbolic content
of media products being highly valued (Harvey, 1989; Lash & Urry, 1994). It is
24
difficult for a program which meets the tastes and concerns of one audience to
have the same merit in a different context (Bielby & Harrington, 2002); as a
result, there is at least the potential for a more polycentric global media
production system and this tendency is even more obvious in the TV sector than
in film. Thus, as Joseph Straubhaar (Straubhaar, 1991, 2010) contends, we see
the increasing interdependence of the global media market, one that bears a
strong regional flavour.
Outsourcing production in the wake of globalisation has in fact generated a
transfer of knowledge or control (Flew, 2007; Storper, 1997), which further
enables the formation of ‗complex‘ international flows of programs and a
‗multilayered‘ global media system (Cunningham & Jacka, 1996a; Sparks,
2007). Other than Hollywood in the USA, cities that used to be deemed as the
periphery are becoming major centres of cultural production for both local and
global markets (Goldsmith, Ward, & O'Regan, 2010; Lorenzen, Scott, & Vang,
2008). TV Globo in Brazil and Televisa in Mexico are not only major national
TV producers but are also major soap opera exporters in the Latin American TV
market. Japan, Korea and Hong Kong have established themselves as major
media producers for pan-Asian markets (Curtin, 2003; Flew, 2007). In terms of
the number of films, India remains the world‘s leading film producer, but
Nigeria is closing the gap after overtaking the United States for second place
(UIS, 2009). Consequently, a polycentric and polycultural global system is
forming (Anheier & Isar, 2008).
2.2 Media capital
In 2003, Michael Curtin provided a perspective through which we can
understand the spatial dynamics of media industry agglomeration, by proposing
25
the concept of ‗media capital‘ (Curtin, 2003). According to Curtin, media
capitals are ‗centres of media activity that have specific logics of their own; sites
of mediation; locations where complex forces and flows interact; meeting places
where local specificity arises out of migration, interaction and exchange; places
where things come together and, consequently, where the generation and
circulation of new mass culture forms become possible‘ (Curtin, 2003, pp.
203-205). Media capital is also a dynamic concept, since although it
acknowledges dominance it is also observed that capital status can be won and
lost, and the term itself has two subtle meanings: capital as a centre of activity
(geographical) and capital as a concentration of resources, reputation and talent
(economic).
As media capital is a key concept informing this study, I investigate its
relationship to a range of other forces, including political economy, urban
studies, cultural economic geography and policy studies, in order to lay out a
theoretical framework for understanding the development orbit and driving
dynamics of media clusters.
2.2.1 The cultural turn in economic geography
Curtin states that media capital is a relational concept. A city‘s status as a media
capital is embodied in its geographical, historical, cultural or industrial relations
with other cities. The point here is to establish that media capital provides an
interpretation of the global media production system through a perspective that
Flew (2009) terms ‗cultural economic geography‘. This approach explains the
distinctive relations between space, knowledge and place. We need to critically
review this approach in order to better examine Curtin‘s media capital idea.
26
Economic geography recognises that the central element of economic life is the
place-specific and clustered nature of many economic activities (Dicken, 2007;
Soja, 2010). Cities and city regions are involved in networks that transcend
national boundaries. Therefore place is a kind of node, or point, where relations
and connections meet across space; the interaction of relations and connections
reshapes the economic landscape of the place (Massey, 1995). However, with
the rise of a global cultural economy, cultural goods are no longer largely the
possession of the upper middle class. In the cultural, or creative, economy,
culture becomes a serial of products that can be sold and purchased in the
market. Place acquires a unique identity and becomes a site for generating
distinct bodies of knowledge. Hence, in media industries, the global media
production system is developing into a ‗polycentric‘ system that embodies a
tendency of increasing diversity in global media industry as the development of
niche markets (Scott, 2005, pp. 167-168) and their distinctive place-based look,
feel and meaning are embedded into their outputs (Lorenzen, et al., 2008, p.
590). All of these propositions signify the ‗cultural turn‘ in economic geography,
which proposes that ‗economic categories are themselves discursively as well as
materially constructed, practised and performed at different spatial scales‘ (c.f.
Flew, 2009; James, Martin, & Sunley, 2007).
Being a complex nexus of diverse disciplinary perspectives rather than a
coherent school, cultural economic geography emphasises the mutual
constitution and fundamental inseparability of the economic sphere and the
cultural sphere (James, 2006). James (2006) holds that, on the one hand, cultural
economic geography is a direct response to the shift towards a post-industrial,
knowledge-based, global capitalist economy in which social relations are of
apparent importance to economic success/failure; and, on the other hand, it
challenges structurally determinist accounts of economic change that have
previously dominated the field, and argues that the economy determines culture
27
in a predefined hierarchy of epistemic significance. In other words, we need to
locate and contextualize the economic within cultural, social and political
relations (Massey, 1995).
Gertler (2003a) outlines three themes relevant to culture‘s implications for
economic geography. Firstly, the increasing significance of niche markets push
firms to shift away from standardised production to customised production: this
requires more flexible production processes and labour divisions, both inside
and between companies; the specialised offerings of external inputs and
suppliers lowers risks and encourages productivity. Secondly, production
processes as well as the process of innovating becomes more and more
socialised, hence the shared social attributes embedded in regional cultures
facilitate knowledge exchange, inter-firm learning and trust bonds. Thirdly,
economic prosperity is increasingly path-dependent as it is conditioned by
historical patterns that are embodied in material objects, the experiences of
individuals and social structures, and increasing returns to scale that result in the
self-reinforcing of economic change, so it is necessary to understand the
historical social, economic and cultural paths taken by production regions.
Thus, the economic geography approach informs the following discussion on
media capital in the following aspects: (1) in which way the tendencies of media
production towards ‗flexible specialization‘ has influenced the formation of
media capital; (2) how the local social attributes, or the ‗untraded
interdependencies‘ (Storper, 1997), facilitate the further growth of media capital;
(3) how habitus and convention alter the development of media capital.
28
2.2.2 Three operating principles
According to Curtin there are three principles of media capital: (1) logic of
accumulation; (2) trajectories of creative migration; and (3) forces of
social-cultural variation.
Logic of accumulation
Stimulated by the pursuit of profit and assisted by the development of ICTs and
other technologies, modern enterprises are able to operate across borders of
states and regions to reduce costs on production and increase the speed of
distribution. The logic of accumulation explains the centripetal tendencies of
production and centrifugal tendencies of distribution through the economic
geography perspective. Geographer David Harvey points out that companies
make the most of productive capacity and realise the greatest possible return by
concentrating productive resources on the one hand and through the extension of
markets on account of the demand for enhancing efficiencies on the other
(Harvey, 2005). Transportation and communications technologies, referred to as
‗time-space shrinking technologies‘ by Peter Dicken (2007), overcome natural
and political borders and transmit tangibles and intangibles internationally,
including materials, products, ideas, images, knowledge and even people.
However this generates uneven development and, accordingly, the New
International Division of Labour (NIDL). MNCs (Multinational Corporations),
the major players in the global economy, subcontract to developing countries for
low-wage labour and tax incentives while leaving the more technical and skilled
aspects of production in the home country (see Flew, 2008; Fröbel, Heinrichs, &
Kreye, 1980).
29
Toby Miller and colleagues (Miller, et al., 2001) have applied this insight into
the media industries in order to illustrate Hollywood‘s domination over the
global media production system. Miller coined the term ‗New International
Division of Cultural Labour‘ (NICL). Scholars argue that Hollywood majors
distribute production activities (‗activities of the hand‘) to developing countries
where labour is cheaper in order to both reduce cost and ‗discipline‘ US cultural
workers. To some extent, countries competing for this ‗footloose‘ international
capital are unwilling to impose new taxes or new policies of constraint to avoid
possible reduction in investment, due to its high mobility. On the other hand,
they further centralise the generation and ownership of intellectual property
(‗activities of the mind‘) as the basis for ongoing revenue streams (Miller, et al.,
2001). Miller et al. thus contend that Hollywood sustains and even reinforces its
hegemony over global media markets and that the global market indeed serves
the hegemony of Global Hollywood in undercutting national film policies (ibid,
p. 52). Though the media industries are seemingly open and dispersed,
Hollywood‘s power and logic of domination is achieved via its huge globalising
network of subcontracted firms, as well as recycling its copyright and products
in different national markets (Miller, 2011).
Curtin also indicates that redeploying the creative resources and reshaping its
terrain of operations are critical for media companies to win market share and
increase profitability. In terms of contemporary media industries, Curtin
contends that capitalism develops ‗a disposition towards surveillance and
adaptation‘, which realises efficiencies by centralised productive resources and
the durative enhancement of delivery systems, rather than just a mode of
accumulation (Curtin, 2007, p. 11). Examples, such as Hollywood cinema, the
Indian commercial film industry and even the Hong Kong film industry during
the post-World War II era, demonstrate this principle well (Curtin, 2008). As
public goods, film distribution is different from other forms of industrialised
30
manufacturing (Hesmondhalgh, 2002; Kepley, 1990). Each film, as a
commodity, can still be provided to potential customers after being accessed by
existing customers. As technology develops, it gets cheaper and easier to
reproduce and circulate a film print. Therefore, for screen industries, their
concern is to disseminate their feature films as widely as possible, and in doing
so ensure access to theatres in far-flung locales.
‗Flexible specialisation‘ encourages the global hegemony of Hollywood by
allowing subcontracting. However ‗flexible specialization‘ can also lead to a
transfer of knowledge or ‗control‘ (Flew, 2007, p. 95) and a mutual shift
between local and global production systems during the process of economic
globalisation (Maxwell & Miller, 2005). Facts also have proved that
accumulation is not only central to Hollywood, the globally renowned media
capital (Scott, 2005), but also explicit in the emergence of those new media
capital which have distributed their media products transnationally (Curtin, 2007;
Flew, 2009; Tunstall, 2008), such as Mumbai, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro and Hong
Kong. In order to explain this, Michael Curtin maintains that creative migration
and social-cultural variation, coming along with the economic accumulation, act
on the formation of media capital ‗without privileging one among them‘ (Curtin,
2009, p. 117) while acknowledging that resources and assets can be distributed
across multiple locations due to the rapid improvements in transport and
communication, global standardising of consumer tastes and production
processes.
In spite of depicting global media merely as an extension of Hollywood, media
capital discerns that the process of globalisation is driven by a dual force that is
not only composed of de-territorialisation, but also clustering at specific regions
where there are particular attractive resources for international investment. For
production centres that are alternatives to Hollywood, their capacity improves as
31
they become hubs for various media flows, which brings more resources and
new knowledge.
Trajectories of creative migration
Creativity is a core resource for media industries. They require pools of labour
that are self-consciously motivated by aesthetic innovation as well as market
considerations in order to continually acquire new prototypes. Michael Curtin
argues that in terms of media capital, managing creative talent involves offering
attractive compensation and favourable working conditions and, more
importantly, it requires the maintenance of a reservoir of specialised labour,
which is the cause of congregation of media companies in particular cities
(Curtin, 2007). How is it then that certain cities attract and sustain creative
migration, and what urban infrastructures accommodate creative personnel?
According to Peter Hall, creativity is the marriage of art and technology (P. Hall,
1998, 2000). But he also points out that housing the creative industries does not
necessarily equal to being a creative city (Hall, 2000). Creative industries create
a new urban image that is more attractive to mobile capital and creative talents.
Factories and warehouses used to be the magnet pulling workers to industry
clusters. However, in the age of creative industries, in replacing old factories
and warehouses, culture creates a new urban image, making the city more
attractive to mobile capital and mobile professional workers (P. Hall, 2000, p.
640).
Richard Florida associates creative personnel, or what he terms the creative class,
with the ‗experience‘ (Florida, 2005, p. 134). Based on his interviews, Florida
claims that experiences with high-quality, also explained as active participatory
recreation, reflect and reinforce the identity of a creative class. A creative city,
32
therefore, should be able to provide creative workers with creative lifestyle and
consumption, such as affordable spaces, artists, and various nightlife (c.f. Tay,
2005; Ward, 2002). Characteristics of creative cities should lie not only in the
vibrancy of the arts and the cultural sector, but also in the ability for generating
employment opportunities and output in the service and culture industries
(Sassen, 1995). In other words, the key to a creative city is in having the creative
industries rooted and embedded in the city. Behind bars, lofts, studios and
galleries is a production system generating jobs and opportunities for creative
labour, and policies for re-organising urban space for social and economic
innovation, which, in turn, improves the quality of urban development.
The emergence of a cluster might be accidental, but its evolutionary spiral
follows a familiar trajectory. With the accumulation of resources, media talent is
attracted to the new production centres to take advantage of the growing work
opportunities. In effect, employment opportunities act like a magnet on creative
workers: the chance of finding a job is relatively higher when close to a large
pool of employment opportunities. Due to the frequent changes in content
output (i.e. audience demand for novelty) constant transactions emerge among
contractors, subcontractors and creative talents; the agglomeration of creative
labour is encouraged and sustained in order to stimulate novelty (Christopherson
& Storper, 1989). For directors and managers, the proximity to local
subcontractors and talent allows them to supervise and make changes as
frequently as they need. This is desirable for media companies since their central
condition of existence is rapid product innovation (Collins, Garnham, &
Locksley, 1988).
Agglomeration of talent feeds the media industry, which requires pools of
labour that are self-motivated to continually seek out new prototypes. Therefore
media talents ‗have a major impact on the value creation or destruction in a
33
[media] company‘ (Aris & Bughin, 2005, p. 375). What follows from this are
mutual learning effects, which can enhance product quality and promote
innovation through informal and formal means. Aside from lower costs, learning
is generated by agglomerating interrelated producers and talents (Scott, 2000b).
Thus, geographical aggregation is not only the centralisation of the workforce
but, more importantly, it evolves into ‗active hubs of social reproduction in
which crucial cultural competencies are maintained and circulated‘ (Scott, 2000a,
p. 33). The creative milieu, which is defined as ‗a shared space and tradition in
which people can learn, compare, compete and collaborate and through which
ideas can be proposed, developed, disseminated and rejected‘ requires a certain
amount of trust and openness (Leadbeater & Oakley, 1999, p. 31).
Economically, the creative milieu provides ‗an essential framework for high
levels of information generation and interchange and for frequent
experimentation by individual firms in regard to industrial processes and
products‘ (Scott, 2006b, p. 7). Culturally, it not only provides creative talent
with a space for inspiration but also attracts talented people to communicate and
exchange information and knowledge (Gertler, 2004). Their identity as a
‗creative class‘ is constantly reflected and reinforced by participatory recreation
(Florida, 2005, p. 134). Thus, ‗a growth spiral‘ is formed. Creative migration is
stimulated by job opportunities, which enhances the attraction of the region to
other media workers, which in turn drives the growth and expansion of the
region (Curtin, 2007).
Forces of social-cultural variation
However, media capitals rarely emerge strictly as a response to market forces.
Curtin says that political stability and expressive freedom are central to the rise
34
of Hong Kong (Curtin, 2007; Flew, 2009). Therefore the third principle, forces
of social-cultural variation, is necessary for media capital, according to Curtin.
Firstly, cultural proximity allows appropriation and adaptation of media content
according to local traditions, resources and preferences (Ang, 1996). Ang argues
that cultural globalisation is non-linear and fractured in the ‗particular
appropriation and adaptation of such standardized rules and conventions within
local contexts and according to local traditions, resources and preferences‘ (ibid
p. 154). Research has also shown how local media industries in regions outside
Hollywood successfully dominate local markets and export within geo-linguistic
regions. Often this occurs through imitating US generic models and adapting
them to local tastes (Sinclair, Jacka, & Cunningham, 1996). Latin American
telenovelas, with audiences in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds,
Hong Kong-produced ‗Canto-pop‘ and action/martial arts films in
Chinese-speaking markets, and Australian serial dramas or ‗soaps‘ in
English-speaking markets are relevant examples of media programs popular in
particular geo-linguistic markets (c.f. Cunningham & Jacka, 1996b; Flew, 2007;
Lull, 1991; Straubhaar, 1991; Zha, 1995). The reason is that in the audience‘s
pursuit of cultural proximity, which contains not only the language but also the
music, costume, humour etc., they will seek the pleasure of recognising their
own culture in TV programs (Sinclair, et al., 1996, p. 14).
Moreover, intervening factors, such as national and local institutions, modify
and complicate the centripetal tendency of production, the centrifugal tendency
of distribution and the migration of creative labour. National differences in state
ideology, the nature of political institutions and the nature of economic
institutions continue to weigh heavily, ahead of convergence in the institutional
and policy environment (Doremus, Keller, Pauly, & Reich, 1998). Transnational
corporations (TNCs) are not ‗placeless‘ since nation-state institutions greatly
35
impact on the corporate operating and TNCs remain living in the local
‗ecosystem‘ (c.f. Dicken, 2003; Gertler, 2003b). By making policies,
government can either create a market-driven system out of an intangible public
resource or compel industry around the world to adapt to its commercial models.
Recognising the urgent necessity of media policy, Curtin argues that
policy-makers should focus on the supply side of the equation and intervene
selectively to enhance the productivity of particular media centres and
institutions by providing infrastructural, educational and financial resources that
might stimulate further growth, because new media capitals can‘t be produced
without foundations. On the other hand, policy-makers should support and
subsidise media institutions in providing resources for local, national and
alternative cultures, on the basis of market dynamics and talent migrations.
Policy-makers also should emphasise public cultural infrastructure, such as
libraries and public parks, in order to foster civic identity, enhance social
civilisation, enhance property value and provide spaces for public discourse
(Curtin, 2008).
2.2.3 The creative field
Based on the three principles Curtin has identified, media capitals serve as hubs
in different flows of ideas, money, resources, people, culture and technology.
But since the status as a media capital can be won and lost, how to win and keep
that status is a question for cities that are either already media capitals or are
striving to develop into media capitals. Allen Scott (1999) argues that in the
domain of cultural industry an agglomerated production system is combined
with its immediate geographic milieu, and this combination is greatly
encouraged by the increasing returns effects, aside from inter-firm transacting
36
and local labour market processes. Hence Scott suggests that particular places
are dynamically integrated into the system of production, and these products, in
turn, define and redefine their places of origin, so that an open-ended
relationship will be formed, which can result in continual shifts or a mutually
reinforcing stability.
The formation of creative milieu facilitates accumulation
As far as the media industries are concerned, as a kind of commodity, media
content has three distinctive characteristics: (1) high level of risk due to
uncertain tastes of consumers; (2) ‗immaterial or intangible forms‘ (Collins, et
al., 1988); and (3) ongoing demand for originality and novelty. Since the
chances of failure are fairly high in cultural markets (Hesmondhalgh, 2002), the
central condition of existence of a media industry is rapid product innovation
(Collins, et al., 1988). Therefore, media is generally dominated by the private
sector, especially large-scale worldwide corporate organisations that can afford
the huge investment and risks. Legal contracts are a significant means of
managing risk (Williamson, 1975, 1985). Ultimately, a range of media
companies are bound together by contracts and tend to cluster in certain cities.
The potential for media capital is thus formed.
In clusters, collective intelligence, which exists at every level of experience,
arises from the interaction of enough individual elements to facilitate ongoing
self-organisation (Cooke & Lazzeretti, 2008, p. 3). Philip Cooke proposes that
the key driver of creative work is the combination of knowledge activity itself
and ‗massive complexity from its characteristic dialectic‘ (Cooke, 2006). This
combination seeks an environment accommodating ‗social interaction,
recognition and consideration from peers‘ (Cooke & Lazzeretti, 2008, p. 4).
Only when such an environment is fostered to provide ‗transaction spaces‘ and
37
‗translation zones‘ for creative workers, can implicit knowledge be articulated
together with explicit knowledge to engender cross-industry practices. This
environment is called creative field by Allen Scott, who refers to structures
within industrial agglomerations encouraging learning and innovation effects or
a set of interrelationships that stimulate and channel individual expressions of
creativity (Scott, 2006a, 2006b). Scott describes the creative field as ‗any system
of social relationships that shapes or influences human ingenuity and
inventiveness and that is the site of concomitant innovations‘ (Scott, 2006b, p.
3). In a creative field, place, community and the media industries are closely
interconnected.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have grown rapidly to become an
extremely significant part of overall employment in the creative industries
(O'Brien & Feist, 1995, 1997; O'Connor, 2007; Pratt, 1997). In this sense,
as the notions of aesthetic reflexivity and a more intuitive
engagement with the eddies and tugs of cultural currents came
into play as a central part of business operations, creative workers
were no longer to be characterized as crushed by the wheels of a
corporate sector whose values they resisted as best they could but
possessed the means of operate most effectively (O'Connor, 2007,
p. 31).
Allen Scott makes a similar analysis. At first he divides capitalist production
into vertically and horizontally integrated corporate models (Scott, 1986). Then,
in his detailed investigation on Hollywood, Scott describes the relationship of
SMEs and the media production system in the following way:
38
[T]he production system was significantly reconstituted as a
congeries of many small and medium-sized firms linked together
in shifting coalitions by flexible production networks. The majors,
for their part, took on a variety of new roles, one of the more
important of which was to provide central coordinating services to
the vertically disintegrated networks proliferating around them.
(Scott, 2005, p. 5)
Because both the efficiency of the production system and creativity are
enhanced by the networking of SMEs in a particular area, the creative field
emerges in its definitive form, which indicates that a creative field is the
extension of the ‗learning region‘ (Cooke & Morgan, 1998; Storper, 1996) in the
area of creative industries. Based on the above, it can be demonstrated that it is
in the creative field that creativity and innovation in the modern cultural
economy takes root. In the guise of ‗sets of industrial activities and related
social phenomena forming geographically-differentiated webs of interaction
giving rise to diverse entrepreneurial and innovative outcomes‘ (Scott, 2006b, p.
3), a creative field integrates different individuals‘ talents and abilities to assume
an interdependent character directed to economic ends.
Creative field accommodates innovation while attracting creative
personnel.
An intrinsic element of creative field is that both the field on the one side and its
effects on entrepreneurship and innovation on the other are reflexively
intertwined with one another (Scott, 2006b, p. 3). One significance of the
creative field is that the concept provides a dimension to better understand the
relationships of different individuals who work in various forms of clusters and
the patterns of the interaction that produces entrepreneurial opportunities,
39
especially the dynamics that accelerate their contribution to regional innovation
as agglomeration intensifies. Therefore, innovation in the creative field is driven
by the dual dynamic force of knowledge flow and culture, understood in terms
of sensibility or creative orientation.
Innovation is fundamentally a learning process, involving doing, using,
observing and sharing (Dicken, 2007, p. 98). A result of innovation dynamics is
the accumulation and development of relevant knowledge, both tacit and explicit,
and media industries are certainly no exception in this respect. The individual
worker, the firm, specialised institutions and other typical active sites of
knowledge-accumulation in the creative field are able to amplify their power to
generate new knowledge when they are interrelated. As discussed in the last
section, a great deal of relevant study (Cumbers, Mackinnon, & Chapman, 2003;
Porter, 2000) indicates that inter-firm flows of knowledge are an important
stimuli of innovation, and locational proximity is critical for knowledge
transmission.
Place functions as a guarantee of products (Molotch, 1996), to some extent near
the accumulated symbolic value of the fashion designer‘s label (Bourdieu &
Delsaut, 1975). Therefore cultural differentiation exerts a significant influence
on the function of the creative field in a very tangible way. So the other
innovation dynamics are culture and sensibility. As the important component of
cultural industries, media industries greatly value prototypes. Thus media
industries are highly uncertain and risky due to the constantly changing taste of
customers. In order to lower risks, vertical and horizontal disintegration (Caves,
2000; Scott, 2002; Scott, 2005, 2006a; Storper & Christopherson, 1987) are
pervasive in media industries, such as subcontracting, which, in turn, leads to
intensive transactions between masses of independent producers. Interactions
between individuals produced in transactions, combined with other mechanisms,
40
give birth to distinctive cultural communities in particular places, where workers
not only develop technical skills but also share sensibilities and attitudes to
enhance their creative capacities.
Creative field reinforces cultural identity by fostering the creative milieu
along with urban renewal.
As Justin O‘Connor contends, ‗cultural industries have to be understood as
embedded cultural and business activities; and they have to coordinate tensions
of culture and economics and personal and professional life which mainstream
business theory hardly explains‘ (O'Connor, 2007, p. 38). As a result, cultural
production systems strongly relate to the cities where they are located (O'Connor,
2007). Scott further develops the argument, proposing that cities are
‗collectivities of human activity and interest that continually create streams of
public goods that sustain the workings of the creative field‘ and the symbolic
meaning of cultural products has been woven into the ‗physical and social fabric‘
of cities where a high portion of the labour force is engaged in cultural industry
(c.f. Scott, 2001, p. 13; 2004; 2006b, p. 14).
In a creative economy where creativity dominates economic development,
cultural activities power economic growth and culture/creativity turns into the
magic device that creates a new urban image, making the city more attractive to
both mobile capital and mobile professional workers (P. Hall, 1999, 2000).
Although the ‗most superficial manifestations of a creative environment‘
(Leadbeater & Oakley, 1999, p. 31) are workshops, restaurants and bars, in a
broader sense, the quintessence of creative cities is about ‗how local urban
spaces can be reimagined, rejuvenated and re-purposed within a competitive
global framework‘ (Tay, 2005, p. 220). While reimagining, rejuvenating and
41
reconstructing the local urban spaces, a creative milieu is shaped in the creative
field of the city.
The creative field is, therefore, the institutions and infrastructures embedded in
media capital, both tangible and intangible, that support media industries
through their contributions to the culture and ‗brand‘ of a place. By expounding
the self-reinforcing association between place and product, while the creative
field is forming in clusters, and is nurturing clusters in turn, localisation and
urbanisation meet in the innovative milieu that is central to the creative field and
others‘ work in creative industries (Cunningham, 2006; Keane, 2007a; Wu,
2005).
2.3 Criticisms of media capital
Korean scholar Woongjae Ryoo has argued that media theories developed by
Western scholars are usually derived from the experiences of Western countries
and, therefore, can be problematic when applied to non-Western circumstances.
In particular, they tend to neglect serious consideration of the particular state,
capital and media relationships that have evolved in Asian countries, especially
those Asian countries where government performs a far more active and
assertive role of taking on the challenges of globalisation (Ryoo, 2008, p. 887).
As a result, there are two literature gaps lying in the existing theories:
In China‘s case, media studies encounter a special type of political-economic
reality in which the state is both an actor and a regulator of the market; it
complies with the market in managing transnational capital but retains complete
political control (Ma, 2000). In fact, the Chinese government and the media
market are not external to each other and ‗[t]he state consolidates its power by
42
promoting a consumer culture that fosters and satisfies social desire‘ (Ma, 2000,
p. 28). However, none of the abovementioned theories have taken this
recognition into account; they take for granted capitalistic democracy as a
default backdrop for media dynamics (Downing, 1996).
In Curtin‘s recent work, he asserts that ‗national political capitals tend not to
emerge as media capitals, largely because modern governments seem incapable
of resisting the temptation to tamper with independent media institutions‘
(Curtin, 2010b, p. 266). But this conclusion is somewhat hasty since most of the
current media capitals have benefitted from state policy: a case in point is Seoul.
Curtin‘s media capital‘s framework primarily covers the entertainment sector in
the screen industry, notably the commercial TV and film industries, which are
strongly supported by Asian governments. China has announced a raft of
favourable policies for creative industries. The influence of government policies,
both negative and positive, needs to be explored in greater depth.
Curtin structures his media capital concept partly around the argument that
media products are distinctive prototypes, rather than redundant batches of
products with interchangeable parts, and that each product is unique (Bordwell,
Staiger, & Thompson, 1985). However, this view has been challenged by Moran
and Keane (2004), who argue that contemporary media products contain
interchangeable elements. Although the global industry tries to maintain the
distinctiveness (the prototype) of each media product and media conglomerates
still keep a firm hand on the generation and ownership of intellectual property
(Miller, et al., 2001), the process of copying formats and interchanging elements
is more and more evident. Therefore there may be other possible factors or
principles modifying and varying the developmental path of media capital.
43
2.4 Concluding remarks: where is China’s media capital?
In this chapter I have illustrated the bidirectional development of global media
production, the media capital notion itself and its three operating principles:
logic of accumulation, trajectories of creative migration and forces of
social-cultural variation. I have also discussed how to win and keep the status of
media capital and have identified that combining the agglomerated production
system with the geographic milieu is crucial for the competition of media capital
status in terms of clustering enterprises, attracting personnel and enhancing the
place‘s environment.
The application of media capital to China is problematic unless some revision is
made on the basis of political and social context. Firstly, the concept as it stands
oversimplifies the role of government in mainland China. Studies have shown
that media industries benefit from a close access to the government in Asian
countries. Secondly, the question of uniqueness and IP is confounded by
practices of formatting. Places that once were on the periphery win bigger
market share and grow into satellite media capitals in their geo-linguistic regions
by copycatting and localising successful formats. This has occurred in the case
of Hunan Media Group in southern China.
Nowadays, mainland China is striving to compete in the media sector with Hong
Kong, Taiwan and Korea. In Curtin‘s model, Hong Kong is still best positioned
as the media capital of China despite gradually losing its lustre after 1997. Hong
Kong is moving to the mainland to seek new markets, as I have already noted. In
Taiwan, media industries have made considerable progress, but these too are
increasingly eyeing the mainland (Chua 2012). Meanwhile, place competition is
becoming more severe in mainland China. Historically, Beijing is the national
media centre. Nevertheless, media industries in Shanghai, Guangdong Province,
44
Hunan Province, Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province are growing fast and
are catching up to Beijing.
Is Beijing going to be the next Chinese media capital that can attract media
enterprises and personnel and export media products across China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan and other countries? If yes, where is the driving force and what
modifications do we need to make to the original notion of media capital?
Before attempting to answer these questions, I will first, in the next chapter,
consider the historical background of media industries in China.
45
Chapter 3 Background: historical context of Beijing as a
media centre
China‘s status in the global media market is rising not only because of its huge
potential market and its contribution to the diversity of contemporary media
expression, for instance the global recognition accorded fifth generation film
directors, but also because of its recent attempts to turn around its cultural
export deficit and promote soft power. However, different discourses on
Chinese media industries are produced in and outside of China: the enthusiasm
of media reform in China vs. the international impression of creative potential
held back by excessive regulation; the national ambition of media
commercialisation vs. the underdeveloped performance of Chinese media
industries globally; the national campaign of enhancing China‘s soft power
internationally through media internationalisation vs. the deteriorating
international image of China.
In this chapter I review the history of media industries in China. This is
important if we are to apply the media capital concept to what Lee describes as a
‗unity of contradictions‘ (2009). I elaborate on historical background and review
media reform progress in China through three stages. Following this, I present
the media regulatory environment in China and the current geographic
distribution of media industries. Finally, I offer some reflections on Beijing‘s
national media ‗centre‘ status.
Media has strong interconnections with politics and economics. Political
economists argue that ‗property ownership, economic control and class power
[are] inextricably tied together‘ (Murdock & Golding, 1977, p. 28). Media has
an increasingly large economic significance in capitalist economies being
46
among ‗the first and foremost industrial and commercial organizations which
produce and distribute commodities‘ (Golding & Murdock, 1973, pp. 205-206).
The range and content of cultural products can be explained by situating them
within the nexus of the material interests which frame their creation and
distribution (Murdock & Golding, 1977).
As discussed in Chapter 2, one of the keys to developing and sustaining media
industries is innovation: media capital from this perspective requires suitable
institutions. This has been termed ‗a workable platform‘ by John McMillan. He
identifies five elements: ‗information flows smoothly; property rights are
protected; people can be trusted to live up to their promises; side effects on third
parties are curtailed; and competition is fostered‘ (McMillan, 2002, pp. ix-x).
However, as Joseph Chan has argued, media is a double-edged sword in China:
it is about maintaining ideological control on the one hand and embracing
marketisation on the other (Chan, 1993, 2003).
Ever since the founding of the People‘s Republic of China, media has been an
important propaganda tool. It was strictly controlled by government to
consolidate socialist ideology. Hence in China ‗information‘ must be censored
before it is released to the public. The monopoly status of state-owned media
institutions for most of the four decades after ‗liberation‘ led to a difficult
market environment for private media companies when they were finally given
air to breathe; the CCP‘s voice has to be embodied in media content. From the
1990s, the Chinese government has been encouraging the transition from
government-funded cultural institutions (shiye) to industries (chanye/qiye); a
rapid process of commercialisation has taken place in the Chinese media sector.
This dual nature of Chinese media industries complicates and deepens the
specificity of Chinese media studies.
47
3.1 Media sector reform in China
As an old Chinese saying goes, history is the mirror in which one can foresee
one‘s rise and fall (yishi weijian, keyi zhi xingti). For that reason it is necessary
look back at media reform history in China before digging into ongoing
developments. Chinese media wasn‘t industrialised until the late 20th century.
Before 1978, being fully under the government‘s control, China‘s media sector
was strongly associated with the socialist planned economy. At that time, media
was the government mouthpiece rather than an industry; there were no media
firms in China at all, only government-owned media institutions (shiye).
Moreover, media was not a neutral observer but a function of government, a
soldier in the national army. Its mouthpiece function was embodied not only in
the management system in which the CCP played the core role, and where it had
no commercial function at all, but also in the media content that took political
propaganda as its only orientation (Xinling Chen, 2009). Direct government
funding was the only legal revenue resource for media organisations; and all of
the inputs, revenue, employee benefits and equipment were under the
administration of the government. Therefore the only concern of media players
at that time – state-owned TV stations and film studios – was ‗political
correctness‘ (ibid, p. 45). As a result, the priority of media was given to political
propaganda as a non-profit public service institution sponsored by the nation (X.
Liu, 2007).
It has been over thirty years since China started its media industry reform in
1978. Up to the present, the reform has experienced three phases, and is still
going. These three phases are now discussed in more detail.
48
3.1.1 Nation building (1978-1991)
The first phase is the nation building period from 1978 to 1991. During this
period, in order to build a strong nation, China started to recognise the economic
properties of media in order to reduce the government‘s financial burden.
Shortly after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of
CCP, eight newspapers in Beijing, including the People‘s Daily (renmin ribao),
requested a pilot reform according to ‗institution grouping, enterprise
management‘ (shiye danwei, qiyehua guanli). The Ministry of Finance approved
the request in 1978. In January 1979, Shanghai TV broadcast the first
commercial advertisement, heralding the beginning of modern screen industries
in China. CCTV (China Central Television), one of the pilot units, set up the
China Television Service Company and produced China‘s first international
co-production, which was co-invested with Japan. The official endorsement was
given when the Propaganda Department of Central Committee of CCP issued
the ‗Notice on Publishing Commercial Advertisements of Foreign Goods‘ (B.
Cao, 1999). At the National Radio and TV Planning Conference in February
1980, the economic value of media was recognised by the central government
for the first time (Zhao, 2004).
Since then, the Chinese government has gradually, and sometimes reluctantly,
loosened its hold over the media sector in order to facilitate competition and
accelerate economic development. Only the central government and the
provincial governments were allowed to set up television stations. In 1983, the
‗four-tier system‘ (siji ban) policy was issued at the 11th National Broadcast
Conference to improve the ‗Two-level‘ status so that city and county
governments were able to build up local TV stations and broadcast local news
and programs in addition to the National central station (CCTV) and provincial
stations. The ‗decentralization of administration‘ (Keane, 2007a) resulted in
49
local governments entering the media field. This conference pointed out that
media reform should explore all possible sources of revenue and raise the
economic efficiency of the broadcasting sector. Advertising became the largest
revenue source of China‘s media sector. In 1983 the total income from
advertising was 120 million RMB in newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. By
1992 the TV sector alone had received over 2 billion RMB from advertising
(Xie, 2007).
However, the media system did not change a great deal, as at the time media
only sought to broaden finance sources to cover the shortage of government
funding. As the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin said, ‗the leadership has
to be in the hand of Marxists‘ (Jiang, 1989). This backward-looking
management system hampered the function of market law and severely
restricted media development. For instance, the positive influence of
commercialisation in the TV sector was not reflected in the film sector. In 1979,
the number of audiences for films was 27.9 billion, although only 50 films was
produced (Huang, 2007). However, by the end of 1980s, the number had
dropped to 16.8 billion, despite more films being available in cinemas (Rong
Tang & Shao, 2005). The reason is that during this period the governing
authority of film was the State Film Bureau of China‘s Ministry of Culture
(MoC), which was not placed under the State General Administration for Radio,
Film and Television (SARFT) until 1986. National distribution could only be
carried out by the China Film Group; local distribution was managed by the
local branch of MoC and could not determine the screening arrangements.
Under the planned economy framework, distribution was disconnected from the
production. Consequently the distribution sector suffered heavy losses and had
to shift their focus to other business, which resulted in the serious financial
difficulties of film studios (Gao, 2008).
50
TV in Beijing (1978-1991)
Beijing has been the centre of the TV industry since the late 1950s. China‘s first
TV station, Beijing TV, was set up in 1958. Beijing TV was renamed China
Central Television (CCTV) in 1978. CCTV has played a significant role in
China‘s TV industry development. Its competition and relationship with
provincial TV stations has changed over the three stages of media reform. Hence
the logic of the TV industry development in Beijing has also evolved as a
consequence of the dynamics generated by changing competition.
For a long time, film was the most important content on TV screens in China.
Before 1979, CCTV was only on air for 2-2.5 hours every day, and during the
broadcasting time it played one film of around 1.5-2 hours and filled the rest of
time with TV news and some studio programs. Meanwhile, the provincial TV
stations‘ task was to relay CCTV to local audiences. At that time, there was
hardly any TV content production in China. However, after the Cultural
Revolution, CCTV, for the first time in China, produced eight TV dramas and
evoked a positive response from audience across the country. Feeling threatened
by the booming TV industry, the film sector refused to provide any new film to
any TV station. This caused a serious shortage of available content to TV
stations, especially CCTV. The National Broadcasting Authority (the
predecessor of SARFT)‘s call for longer air time aggravated the content
shortage to some extent.
In order to solve the content famine, the first National TV Program Meeting was
held in Beijing in August 1979. In this meeting the National Broadcasting
Authority advocated that all TV stations produce TV dramas, and announced
that China would import film and TV dramas from overseas. Under the pressure
of audience and the government, CCTV reached out in 1979. Ten TV dramas
and one American TV drama were purchased from Hong Kong. The American
51
TV drama was ‗The Man from Atlantis‘, which unfolded a whole new world
before Chinese audience‘s eyes.
Inspired by audience‘s fondness for TV dramas, in 1981 the famous Chinese
dramatist, Jin Shan, suggested to the Propaganda Department of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of China that they ‗rouse the mass to make
TV dramas‘ (fadong qunzhong lai gao dianshiju) (Guo, 2008, p. 194). By ‗the
mass‘ he meant including as much as possible professionals and organisations
from other sectors, such as theatre and film, in TV drama production, instead of
only TV stations. Once approved by the central government, many film studios
and theatrical groups established a TV drama office and started the production
of TV dramas. The Beijing TV Art Centre, China‘s first TV production studio,
and regarded as China‘s DreamWorks of quality TV dramas, was set up in
September 1982.
Later, in 1983, China‘s TV Production Centre (CTPC) was established by
merging several TV drama production centres into CCTV‘s TV drama
department. These two centres have made a significant contribution to China‘s
TV industry by developing new genres, commercialising operations and
exporting programs. The Beijing TV Art centre produced China‘s first
full-length TV drama series, Four Generations under One Roof (sishi tongtang);
China‘s first full-length indoor TV drama series, Expectation (kewang),
symbolises the shift of TV drama from elite culture to pop culture; China‘s first
TV comedy, Stories from the Editorial Board (bianjibu de gushi), set a
precedent for product placement; and A Native of Beijing in New York
(beijingren zai niuyue) was China‘s first TV drama produced on a bank‘s
mortgage loan (Zhu, Keane and Bai 2008).
52
CTPC adapted the four masterpieces of Chinese literature and produced A
Dream of Red Mansions (hong lou meng), The Journey to the West (xi you ji),
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (san guo yan yi) and Water Margin (shui hu).
These four TV drama series were sold to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea,
Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore (Keane 2008). Furthermore, CTPC started a
surge of building shooting bases in China. During the preparation for shooting
of A Dream in Red Mansions, CTPC built the Grand View Garden (da guan
yuan) for the use of shooting scenes. This has now developed into a tourist
attraction in Beijing. CTPC also built several large-scale shooting bases in
Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province, Nanhai City, Guangdong Province, and Wuxi
City and Jiangsu Province.
During the nation-building stage, the ‗four-tier system‘ (siji ban) policy
established provincial TV stations and city TV stations as strong players,
generating some innovation. For instance, Shanghai TV station enhanced its
appeal to audiences in the southeast coastal region by exchanging programs with
other TV stations. However, according to policies at that time, all TV stations
were obliged to provide TV programs to CCTV and to relay CCTV programs.
Also, since CCTV was the only TV station covering the whole country, local
TV stations were willing to associate with CCTV in order to promote their
programs on a nationwide scale. In addition, due to uneven economic
development and diversified cultural and aesthetic criteria in different regions,
CCTV functioned as the balance point in the four-tier system. It represented
most of the Chinese audience and couldn‘t be replaced or challenged by any
local TV station (Guo, 2008, p. 208). CCTV was the biggest and most valuable
broadcasting platform in China for any product. As TV stations were allowed to
increase revenue by commercial advertising, the central government allowed
investors and production organisations to rent air time from CCTV to broadcast
their programs, but denied their requests to establish more stations or channels.
53
CCTV adjusted its second channel, CCTV-2, in order accommodate this new
demand. CCTV contracted three TV columns on agriculture, technology and
demographic education to three production centres controlled by government
branches. Moreover, CCTV-2 started accepting sponsorship advertising in its
daily economic news program and split the revenue with local TV stations, as
long as they agreed to relay CCTV-2. In this way, CCTV enhanced its bond
with local TV stations and accelerated its commercialisation at the same time.
During this nation-building stage, TV industry‘s accumulation in Beijing
benefited from two factors. The first one was the CCTV factor. The hegemony
of CCTV in the national market was unchallenged. The government‘s support
for CCTV strengthened its production capacity regarding personnel, equipment,
technology and network, which, in turn, enhanced Beijing‘s advantage in media
resources and built up its reputation as the national TV centre.
Another important factor is Beijing‘s status as the national cultural and artistic
centre. The content of TV programs has long been dominated by elite culture.
For example, the most popular topics of TV drama are history and literature.
The cultural talent base in Beijing – professors, writers and dramatists – were a
significant advantage for Beijing‘s TV production. In order to preserve its elite
culture and to resist ‗spiritual pollution‘ the Chinese government stressed
television‘s propaganda function. Since there was no profound change in the
media system in this stage, the development of the TV industry in Beijing, or
even in the whole of China, is hard to correlate with Curtin‘s accumulation
based on marketisation and industrialisation (Curtin, 2007). In China there was
competition in neither the TV market nor free TV market forces that could
mobilize trans-regionally. However, the development of the TV industry in
Beijing at this stage laid a solid basis for the accumulation of TV industries in
Beijing.
54
Film in Beijing (1978-1991)
Shanghai, not Beijing, is the birthplace of the Chinese film industry. China‘s
first feature film was shot there in the 1920s. At that time, Shanghai was the
most important settlement for Western colonial powers and enjoyed a creative
environment. Famous writers and artists, including directors, actors and
actresses, as well as educated middle-class people, came to Shanghai.
Furthermore, as the earliest foreign trading port in mainland China, Shanghai
had convenient access to film technology, equipment and creative concepts from
outside China. Later, due to war, many film-makers moved to Hong Kong and
contributed to its film industry.
From 1949, the film practitioners who stayed in China were faced with a new
system, a different environment and new aesthetic standards promoted by the
political regime. As the political centre shifted north to Beijing, Shanghai lost its
standing as China‘s film centre. Film production was evenly scattered in several
areas and a structure of ‗four big studios and three small studios‘ (sida sanxiao)
was formed. The four big film studios were August First Film Studio (bayi
dianying zhipian chang) of the People‘s Liberation Army in Beijing, the
Changchun Film Studio in Jilin Province, the Shanghai Film Studio and the
Beijing Film Studio; the three small film studios were Pearl River Film Studio in
Guangdong Province, Xi‘an Film Studio in Shaanxi Province and Emei Film
Studio in Sichuan Province.
After the Cultural Revolution, the film market revived and, consequently,
China‘s film industry saw an upsurge of production. However, audiences were
soon diverted to television, as well as other burgeoning entertainment activities,
and the film industry began to deteriorate. Facing this predicament, the Chinese
55
government deepened commercialisation reforms in an effort to reverse the
declining trend. Film studios were categorised as enterprises in 1984 and were
made responsible for profits and losses.
Several areas were allowed to adopt floating fares in 19854. Beijing was one
such area. Since then, a viable environment has developed. The Beijing
municipal government subsequently adopted two measures to develop the film
market. The first was to stimulate initiatives in distribution and screening.
Cinemas in Beijing were able to take bigger profit share as long as they fulfilled
the target quota of screening. Motivated by this flexible profit-splitting system,
cinemas in Beijing began to renovate and reequip to attract more audiences.
Some cinemas even took on innovative promotion methods, such as exclusive
premiers ahead of the release date, showing movies late at night, and giving
prizes for watching (Rong Tang & Shao, 2005, p. 216). Even now, Beijing
remains China‘s biggest regional film market. The second measure was that
distribution companies at district and county levels in Beijing were permitted to
choose films, purchase film copies and make their own management decisions.
Although there was no systematic change within the film system during the
nation-building stage, Beijing steadily grew into an important hub for film
co-production with Hong Kong, mainly due to the political and cultural
background. The Chinese government was seeking ways to increase the
communication between the mainland and Hong Kong. Left-wing film
practitioners in Hong Kong needed support to compete with the more dominant
‗right-wing‘ film production forces. The China Co-production Film Corporation
4 Film ticket price was set by the central government in China before 1985. But since then
these areas have been able to adjust the ticket price, to a certain extent, according to local
consumption levels.
56
(CCFC) was founded in Beijing in 1979, and by 1991 had co-produced 185
films. In 1982, four left-wing film companies in Hong Kong merged into
Sil-Metropole Organization (yindu jigou) and accepted investment from Beijing.
Burning of the Imperial Palace (huoshao yuanmingyuan), co-produced in 1983
by CCFC and the New Kwun Lun Film Production Company Ltd. (xin kunlun)
was widely hailed both in mainland China and Hong Kong.
Another important factor facilitating the film industry‘s growth in Beijing
during the nation-building stage was the cultural and educational advantages of
Beijing. According to Tom Wang, CEO of Beidong Media, while the Cultural
Revolution from 1966 to 1976 destroyed cultural and artistic institutions across
the country, cultural resources were comparatively better preserved in Beijing
(Interview with Tom Wang, 2009). During the nation-building stage, Beijing
was the centre of new ideas. Exposed to new culture, art forms and concepts, the
fifth generation of directors graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. The
success they earned internationally served to establish Beijing prestige within
China‘s film industry.
3.1.2 Cultural security (1992-2002)
The second phase, the period of cultural security, spans from 1992 to 2002. The
important point to note here is that this period witnessed the release of many
media units and organisations from state funding. The objective was to make
these units more competitive and more profitable. However, the liberalisation of
domestic media coincided with the inevitable threat posed by global media.
Because of this, the term ‗national cultural security‘ was evoked by the end of
the 1990s.
57
Driven by the profits from commercial advertising, the Chinese media sector
was proactively involved in market operations, especially after Deng Xiaoping
made his Southern Tour Speeches about the socialist commodity economy in
1992. The Chinese advertising market increased by 93.42% in 1992 and 97.57%
in 1993, the largest annual increase in history (X. Wang, 2003). Balancing the
dual functions of propaganda and industry meant that economic interests of
media units were released from direct political supervision; the industrial
function of media was further consolidated in several documents. In 1992, radio,
film and TV were officially categorised as a tertiary industry in a document
called ‗The decision on accelerating the development of the tertiary industry‘
(SCoC, 1992).
This was the first time that both the film and television sectors were recognised
as industries in an official document. In 1998, the Chinese central government
announced, during the first meeting of the Ninth National People‘s Congress,
that financial support to most media institutions would be reduced by one third.
Media entities were consequently forced to become independent of government
financing within three years. Driven by the growing advertising market, the total
income of media industries in 2003 rose to 51.4 billion RMB; advertising
revenue was 28 billion RMB and government funding was only 7.6 billion RMB
(SARFT, 2004).
Realising the commercial potential of media markets, media entities such as TV
stations requested more reform. However, most institutional innovation was
officially recognised by the government only after it had succeeded in practice
or, as media professor at Fudan University, Li Liangrong argues, ‗bottom-up‘
reform was carried out during that time (Li, 2004). These types of innovations
started on a regional level where local governments had a strong desire to
advance economic development, and were very much lured by the media
58
industry‘s economic power. For instance, Guangzhou TV Station in southern
Guangdong province initiated a plan to outsource program production: the
station invested in only a few TV programs and dramas, and most production
activity was subcontracted to individuals.
Economic interest was not the Chinese government‘s only concern at that time.
Seeing foreign media companies lured by the opening up policy, the central
government started to worry about ‗cultural security‘. Therefore, even though
there were few systematic changes in reform, the central government began to
redeploy media resources across the nation; provincial governments were
encouraged to build up media conglomerates in order to prepare for the coming
WTO accession. These media conglomerates are regarded as institutional groups
managed in an enterprise way. In other words, these are government-managed
‗national champions‘ capable of competing with the likes of News Corporation
and Time Warner. During this period, China‘s biggest film company, the China
Film Group Corporation, was established in Beijing in 1999. As all of these
reorganisations were undertaken under government order, and private capital
was still prohibited from investing in the media sector, government remained the
important decision-maker for the development of the media industry, and for
decisions pertaining to content innovation.
TV industry in Beijing (1992-2002)
Entering into the cultural security stage, TV advertising became the most
important income stream for TV stations. CCTV‘s advantage in advertising was
strong despite the fact that more provincial TV stations were allowed to
broadcast nationally via satellite.
59
Along with the deepening commercialisation of media industries, CCTV set up
its business development office in 1992 and carried out producer contracting
systems in 1993. CCTV‘s daily news editorial program, Oriental Horizon
(dongfang shikong), was the first TV program to contract out to producers. The
producer contracting system endowed producers of Oriental Horizon more
freedom regarding program planning, personnel recruitment, fundraising,
expenditure, filming and marketing, all of which used to be managed and
coordinated by CCTV. Producers of Oriental Horizon borrowed RMB 200,000
from CCTV as start-up capital for program production; CCTV also allocated
five minutes of advertising time for each broadcast. One month after its premier,
the 5-minute advertising time had become hot and the producers recouped
enough income to pay the RMB 200,000 back to CCTV. The advertising rate for
the program grew tenfold, from RMB 2,500 per second to RMB 30,000, over
ten years. CCTV also adjusted its personnel system in order to match the
producer contracting system. Staff in the Oriental Horizon production team
(most of them were not CCTV‘s permanent personnel) were allowed to enjoy
the same welfare and salary as the full-time CCTV staff, or even better. In 1994,
CCTV signed the formal employment contract with all the practitioners hired by
its several TV columns, which created a new employment system in China‘s
media industries.
Starting with the producer contracting system, outsourcing from CCTV and
BTV (Beijing TV) gave birth to private TV production companies. However, no
private film and TV production companies were allowed by the government
until 1997; private TV production companies ran their business under cover of
advertising companies prior to that time. They traded for advertising time by
producing programs for TV stations, and gained profit by selling advertising
time. Feng Gang, an ex-journalist and director at CCTV, left and founded Jiashi
Advertising Cultural Development Company in Beijing in November 1994,
60
which is regarded as China‘s first private TV production company. Later on,
more staff from CCTV, BTV and other state-owned media organisations left
their jobs in the state-owned system and established their own production
companies in Beijing, inspired by the business opportunity, especially after
private media production companies were finally acknowledged by the
government in 1997.
Beijing rapidly became the most concentrated area of private TV production
companies, especially the influential private production companies. For example,
Cheerland Entertainment Organization (qixinran chuanbo jigou), which
produced several successful TV programs for CCTV, such as Lucky 52 (xingyun
52), was established in 1997 by Yuan Mei, an ex-director at CCTV; Enlight
Media (guangxian chuanmei), which produced the Chinese Entertainment
Report (Zhongguo yule baodao) and sold this to BTV and many other provincial
TV stations, was founded in 1998 by Wang Changtian, an ex-producer at BTV;
the Yinhan Communication Company, which contracted BTV‘s lifestyle
channel, was established in 1999 by Xia Jun and Wang Jianping, two
ex-producers from CCTV. The reason for the intensive emergence of private TV
companies in Beijing is that during this period CCTV was the biggest
advertising broadcasting platform covering the whole country. Private TV
companies targeted CCTV as the most valuable partner, due to their profit
model of trading for advertising time by outsourcing production for TV stations.
Advertising time on CCTV, the only national TV station, could be sold for a
better price. The other reason is that the high density of TV stations in Beijing
generated the biggest demand for TV programs. In addition to CCTV, BTV and
CETV (China Educational Television) were also located in Beijing. Furthermore,
most local television stations have offices in Beijing because they need to keep
in close contact with Ministry of Radio, Film and Television (the predecessor of
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SARFT). As a result there were more business opportunities in Beijing for
private production companies.
TV drama production used to be understood as a propaganda tool conducted by
state-owned institutions under the instruction of the state ideology (Guo, 2008, p.
268). However, the TV drama Expectation (kewang) made by Beijing TV Art
Centre was screened on CCTV in 1990 and introduced popular culture (tongsu
wenhua) in China‘s TV dramas. The emergence of popular culture engendered
TV drama‘s potential for commercialisation. Since then, more TV drama
transactions have been conducted in Beijing. Beginning with Stories from the
Editorial Board (bianjibu de gushi), produced by the Beijing TV Art Centre, TV
drama production organisations started to make a profit through product
placement and attached advertisement (Zhu, Keane and Bai 2008). TV dramas
were sold to TV stations at very low prices, or were even provided for free at
that time.
The central government‘s response to the rising popular culture also sent a
positive message. In 1991, the Standing Committee Member of the CCCCP
Political Bureau, Li Ruihuan, praised the success of Expectation and noted that a
TV drama is meant to please the audience first, and then to educate (Zhao, 1994).
The Ministry of Radio, Film and Television (the predecessor of SARFT)
required CCTV to adhere to the principle of ‗giving priority and better price to
TV dramas with high quality‘ (youzhi youjia youbo). Later on, encouraged by
the central government‘s enthusiasm, TV drama production organisations started
making bigger investments in production, which greatly stimulated the TV
drama market. Beijing Cultural and Artistic Audio-Visual Press spent 2 million
RMB on producing No Question, I Love You (ai ni mei shangliang) and Beijing
TV Art Centre borrowed 1.5 million USD from the Bank of China to shoot A
Native of Beijing in New York (Beijingren zai niuyue). The bigger investment
62
forced these production organisations to make full use of the commercial
operation to cover costs and make profit. Then No Question, I Love You (ai ni
mei shangliang) was sold to CCTV for RMB3.5 million and the Beijing TV Art
Centre was able to cover costs by trading A Native of Beijing in New York
(beijingren zai niuyue) with CCTV‘s prime time advertising (Keane 2002; Zeng
2008).
Although provincial TV stations began to expand their coverage to the whole
nation via satellite, none have been able to challenge CCTV‘s dominance in the
national market, due to its size and first mover advantage. Private TV
production companies gained most profit by producing advertisements. CCTV
was a more ideal choice. Furthermore, Beijing, as the most economically
advanced city in China, along with Shanghai, has many client resources for
advertising. In addition, as illustrated above, most founders of private TV
production companies used to work in CCTV or BTV. Hence it was easier for
them to start their business in Beijing by maintaining a connection with CCTV
or BTV and to secure enough outsourcing tasks.
Unlike TV stations and production organisations in places outside of Beijing,
CCTV, BTV and other state-owned TV production organisations in Beijing
tended to wait for the central government‘s approval before conducting systemic
reform. However, despite this conservatism, they were able to achieve results
once they began to commercialise by exploiting the advantages that they had
accumulated, namely: talent, equipment, technology and funding. CCTV, as the
TV regimen directly under the central government, was well protected by
national media policies and was assisted in competition with other TV stations.
Therefore, the state-owned TV force also grew stronger in Beijing.
63
Film industry in Beijing (1992-2002)
China‘s film industry dropped to its lowest ebb by 1992. SARFT subsequently
commissioned the China Film Group to establish a film trading market in
Beijing in April 1993 and to hold two to three film trade fairs in order to activate
the film market. The China Film Group was also allowed to import ten foreign
movies annually in 1994. Since then, Beijing has established its film trading
centre with the assistance of government policies. The Chinese government
made a decision to intensify reform and liberalise controls over the film industry.
SARFT organised a meeting in Beijing and lobbied enterprises that used to be
involved in the film industry to increase their investment on film industry.
State-owned film studios were encouraged to be more involved in the
commercialised market competition.
The Beijing Film Studio stands out. Since 1992, it started raising private capital
for film production and splitting revenue with investors. It absorbed nearly
RMB 200 million and produced 30 films in 1995, which set a new record for
China‘s film industry. It set up its own audiovisual publishing company, theme
parks based on its shooting base and animation production companies. More
importantly, it attached great importance to co-productions with Hong Kong. It
won more co-production opportunities than other film studios by offering better
conditions and, therefore, gained better economic effects. Beijing Film Studio‘s
openness to co-producing films with Hong Kong, especially popular films (yule
pian), helped it to reap fat financial returns, which accelerated its later
development. Through co-production with Hong Kong film companies it was
also able to enhance collaboration capacities and to build a stable relation with
Hong Kong regarding channel, resources and personnel. This in turn created
new opportunities for media collaboration between mainland China and Hong
Kong.
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Table 2 Chinese film studios’ co-production with Hong Kong in the first half year of
1993 ("Film Information Express," 1993)
No. Film Studio Total yield Amount of co-produced films
1 Beijing Film Studio 18 13
2 Changchun Film Studio 15 1
3 Shanghai Film Studio 8 4
4 Emei Film Studio 8 2
5 Xi‘an Film Studio 7 4
6 Xiaoxiang Film Studio 7 1
Reflecting on the development opportunities in this stage, it is clear that the
Beijing municipal government saw proactive ways to participate in the film
industry; it enacted promotion policies and strategies to accelerate film industry
development. In 1996, the Beijing Municipal Film Company, the China Film
Company, and 12 cinemas in Beijing jointly established the Beijing New Film
Association Company Ltd. (xinyinglian yingye), which soon became a
significant player in China‘s film market.
Beijing TV, the Beijing TV Art Centre, the Beijing Municipal Film Company
and the Beijing Cultural and Artistic Audio-Visual Press then co-founded a
joint-stock film company, Beijing Forbidden City Film Company (beijing
zijincheng yingye), which co-established the Beijing Forbidden City Sanlian
Distribution Company Limited with Beijing New Film Association Company
Ltd. This entity covered the complete industrial chain from production to
distribution. The Beijing Forbidden City Film Company has been a pioneer in
China‘s film industry since its establishment. It produced China‘s first New
Year movie (hesui pian) The Dream Factory (jiafang yifang), directed by Feng
Xiaogang, who is a famous film director in mainland China, and conducted a
commercial promotional campaign.
65
The Beijing Forbidden City Film Company‘s success illustrates two key factors
contributing to the film industry in Beijing during this period. The first is
combining entertaining attributes with the main melody of socialism (shehui
zhuyi zhu xuan lv). In the cultural security stage, in order to cope with the
impending competition with foreign film companies, China‘s film industry
experienced a shift from the old stereotyped film format serving state ideology
to a form of mass entertainment more appealing to audiences. For film
companies, surviving in the market competition required playing with popular
culture while keeping in line with the state ideology. As the political centre of
China, Beijing provided companies with the closest possible access to the
government‘s ideological requirements while also enhancing the industry‘s
production quality as the cultural centre of China.
The second factor is government support, which is crucial in the immature
market economy in the cultural security stage of reform. Before 2003, there
were no private film companies. Competition, which would normally be
regulated by the market, was in the hands of government. The Beijing municipal
government proactively accelerated the film industry‘s development, as it has
been passionate to maintain its prestige in film industry and retain its statue as
the cultural and artistic centre of China. It was able to smoothly and efficiently
coordinate the collaboration and marriage of different departments. For example,
the Beijing Forbidden City Film Company was a joint-venture of TV, film and
publishing. It had access to more directors, scriptwriters, actors and production
team members owing to its joint-venture characteristic and the flow of personnel.
The share of resources greatly improved its production capacity. Moreover, the
government‘s tolerant attitude towards the film industry, due to its aspiration for
Beijing as China‘s cultural centre, allowed space for business innovation and
66
format innovation. Accordingly, a film friendly environment was fostered. This
bred a nation-leading film industry in the city.
3.1.3 Soft power (2002-present)
The third phase is best described as the era of soft power. During this period, the
Chinese government accelerated reform of the cultural system in order to
conform to the requirements of World Trade Organization (WTO) membership
while ensuring there were measures to help domestic media industries compete
with foreign media groups (Zhao, 2003). During the cultural security stage, the
Chinese government realised that developing its media industries was a strategy
to cope with globalisation. Entering into the third stage, the Chinese government
is paying more attention to ‗soft power‘. The direction of reform has drifted
between loose and tight control, as regulators balance political concerns with
profit opportunities. At the 16th
National Congress of CCP in 2002 the central
government confirmed the existence of two categories: cultural undertakings or
cultural institutions (wenhua shiye) and cultural industries (wenhua chanye).
Entertainment programs, including TV drama and film, were permitted to be
produced and operated by the private sector.
Media commercialisation deepened in this period. The National Work
Conference of Cultural System Pilot Reform in June 2003 decided to establish
35 pilot units, 9 pilot regions and 8 pilot newspaper presses across China to
experiment in cultural industry development. Domestic capital was encouraged
to invest in performance, TV and film production and to participate into the
shareholding reform of some state-owned culture units (SCoC, 2005). In order
to support cultural trade, China‘s Ministry of Culture reached an agreement with
the Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim) to provide a RMB 20 billion
67
(2.9 billion U.S. dollars) credit line to cultural industries. The ‗Instructional
Advice on the Financial Support for Cultural Export‘ was promulgated by the
Ministry of Commerce of China and other relevant departments in 2009. Based
on the principle of ‗recommended by each department, examined independently
by China Exim‘, the ‗Instructional Advice‘ focused on supporting cultural
enterprises and projects to ‗go out‘.
In order to maintain control over the core functions of the media, the
government announced what it called ‗four unchangeables‘ (sige bubian),
namely: the media remains the mouthpiece of the CCP; the media remains under
the direction of the CCP; media leaders remain responsible to the CCP; and the
media must maintain ‗correct public opinion‘. The most sensitive issue, however,
is foreign investment, which is a good example of government vacillating. In
2004, foreign capital was allowed to co-found radio, film and TV program
production companies that would produce ‗non-journalism‘ programs, but, in
2007, this policy was abolished and foreign capital was limited to co-production
and was completely forbidden from investing in any TV or film company (c.f.
NDRC, 2004, 2007). During this period, it is clear that the government formed
an intention to value economic development and support domestic media
companies, both state-owned and private, by diversifying ownership, liberalising
investment and readjusting structures. At the same time, it persisted in the
control of ideology and it monitored the activities of foreign media companies
by reinforcing censorship and restrictions on license granting.
3.1.4 The implication of media reform
China‘s media reform is a consequence of two forces, one international and the
other domestic in nature. Firstly, WTO accession has pushed the government to
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deepen reforms; secondly, the transition from institution to industry has
accelerated commercialisation.
WTO accession
In December 2001, China finally joined the WTO after thirteen years of
negotiations. The audiovisual services were quarantined from the General
Agreement of Trade in Services (the predecessor of General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade) component of the WTO agreement, except for minor
concessions in content distribution and cinema theatre construction. This result
demonstrated that media production remained highly sensitive, both politically
and culturally, and that China was trying to buy time for domestic media
industries to grow strong enough to compete with foreign media groups (Keane,
2007a).
According to Zhao Yuezhi (2008, p. 138), nationalism in the media industry has
risen throughout mainstream Chinese press and academic literature. This
characterises the impact of WTO accession as the old Chinese fable of ‗wolves
are coming‘. Prior to 2001, Time Warner, Disney and News Corporation were
compared to wolves coming to eat the sheep, referring to Chinese domestic
media organisations. The Chinese government deferred opening up of the media
sector. In the Report on Development of China‘s Cultural Industry 2003, Jiang
Lansheng and Xie Shengwu argued that the way to deal with this situation was
to find out how to connect Chinese media and cultural industries to the global
track; how to effectively absorb foreign capital and expertise; and, most
importantly, how to strengthen the domestic industries‘ global market position
(L. Jiang & Xie, 2003; c.f. Zhao, 2008, pp. 138-139). A sense of cultural crisis
was evident in the late 1990s, but by 2000 a new discourse ‗safeguarding
national cultural security‘ had emerged (Zhao, 2008, p. 177).
69
China‘s entry into the WTO brought changes. According to the principle of
reciprocity, while taking on more obligations and responsibilities, China has
received more rights and benefits, which are of use to ensure China‘s interests
are served in international competition (Liu, 2002). The media market is
expanding as consumer demands are growing. WTO Accession has forced the
hand of government, reforming attitudes and ways of thinking about media
industries. With the opening of media markets, media organisations are exposed
to more intense competition, some of whom are strengthened by participating in
competition (G. Wang, 2005).
Although it remains to be seen whether these optimistic predictions ultimately
occur, the media market in China has indeed changed a lot. Taking the film
industry as an example, the government has been determined to keep film
distribution out of Hollywood‘s control by putting a strict ban on any foreign
involvement in film distribution, regarding it as critical to autonomy, while
allowing the domestic sector to become a stronger competitor (Brent, 2000;
Miller, 2005). Yet, under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
of WTO, China promised to import 40 films per year, with the number
increasing to 50 by 2005, 20 of which would be first-run Hollywood blockbuster
movies. Tariffs on audiovisual imports were reduced, the domestic market was
opened to foreign distributors, and foreign investors were allowed to own up to
a 49% share in companies that build, own, and operate cinemas in China (Zhao,
2008, p. 163). However, in spite of promises to liberalise the quota system of
imported films remains intact; censorship remains tightly in government hands;
and domestic distribution remains strictly controlled by the two state-owned
film distribution companies, China Film and Huaxia Film.
from institution (shiye) to industry (qiye)
70
As mentioned previously, media reform occurs in a circular way; it begins as
bottom-up, often starting from the periphery. Most reform occurs in places other
than Beijing. Media organisations in Guangdong Province, Hunan Province,
Jiangsu Province and Shanghai have been active in media reform and have
experimented with various measures. Once their ‗experiments‘ obtain
preliminary results, the reforms are imitated by other organisations and, in many
cases, they are eventually recognised by the central government. This shows that
the motivation for reform and innovation in China‘s media industries is much
stronger in places outside of Beijing.
The initiation of each wave of media reform does not happen without gaining
the explicit, or implicit, support of the local government. The local government
offers support as long as the economic benefit brought by the reform is tangible.
The manner of supporting media reform varies; it can be procedure facilitation,
administrative assistance or silent consent. The eventual success of the reform
relies on the central government in Beijing. Furthermore, the central government
will exhaust its political power to spread the reform at all levels once it accepts
it. The full path of media reform in China (as shown in Figure 1) is bottom-up at
first and then top-down, which means reform starts from the periphery, outside
of Beijing, but its fate is decided by the core decision-makers in Beijing.
71
The transformation from media institution (shiye) to media enterprise (qiye)
indicated the circular path. This transformation provides a clue to understanding
the government‘s attitude towards media and China‘s media industries‘ driving
forces and restrictive factors. According to Zhang Xiaoming, institutions (shiye
danwei) are part of the public service system, comparable to public service
organisations in other countries. The reform in China‘s cultural sector is a
process of ‗industrialising‘ these institutions, or turning them into companies
(qiye) (X. Zhang, 2006). Donald and Keane (2002) have proposed a table to
Phase 1
Changing the
central
government’s
mind by the
success
Phase 2
The Central
government
Persuading the
local government
by the potential
benefits
Media
organisations
Local government
Implementing the
reform and
benefit media
organisations
Media
organisations
Local government
Pushing the reform
throughout China
by all
administrative
means
Macro
Meso
Micro
The Central
government
Figure 1 The full path of media reform in China (compiled by the author)
72
demonstrate this transformation. Drawing on their work, Table 3 shows the
difference between media institution (shiye) and media company (qiye).
Table 3 Comparison of shiye and qiye (adopted from Donald & Keane, 2002)
Shiye Qiye
Economic
system
Command economy /
Planned economy
State capitalism/authoritarian
liberalism;
Gradual decentralisation of
management
Media
regulation
Engineer state model Architect state model (state
facilitates regulatory guidelines
for investment in infrastructure)
Function of
media
Propaganda/mobilisation
of masses
Informational;
viewer-friendly
Media
characteristic
Mass line; cultural
despotism
Shift to entertainment function;
entrepreneurial self-sufficiency;
internationalisation of content
Zhang Xiaoming maintains that the reform of China‘s cultural system has
resulted in a highly stratified operational system. Media enterprises coexist with
public media institutions (shiye). Neither the state nor the market is external to
each other (J. Wang, 1998).
Institutional bodies, including state ministries and governments at all levels,
play an important role in the management of China‘s media industries (Redl &
Simons, 2002). Eric Kit-wai Ma has observed that in China media
‗commercialization involves highly manipulative relations between political
powers, economic interests, and pay journalism‘ and ‗the articulation of power,
money, and media is much more obvious and direct‘ (Ma, 2000). In China,
media is an important tool for enhancing the state‘s soft power (Hu & Zhang,
2004; Sun, 2010a), and, hence, the development of media industries means far
73
more than marketisation. For China, it is concerned with the destination of
Chinese culture (Xie, 2002); it is seen as the way for a nation to communicate
with the world (Zhu, 2004).
Ideology remains a significant consideration not only for media firms to produce
media products, but also for government to decide whether a TV program or
film can be broadcast. The ‗four unchangeables‘ discourse discussed in the
previous section of this chapter demonstrates that capital investment is restricted
and is under strict surveillance by the government. The state can punish a
rebellious individual or media organisation by direct order once the authority is
infringed (Ma, 2000, p. 26). In doing so, the Chinese government can
successfully cripple the independent power of media industries and tame them,
at least temporarily.
3.2 Media regulatory environment in China
The media regulation system in China includes content censorship, media
ownership, financing and distribution regulation, market access (licensing), and
import and export regulations. The regulatory authorities relevant to media
industries are: the Publicity Department of the CCP Central Committee5,
SARFT, MoC, and GAPP. The Ministry of Commerce and the State
Administration of Taxation are sometimes involved in media industry regulation
with regard to financial support, import and export, and tax reduction.
5 It was translated into The Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee. But the
official translation was changed to The Publicity Department in late 1990s.
74
The Publicity Department of the CCP Central Committee, which directly reports
to Li Changchun, the propaganda chief of CCP, is an internal division of the
CCP in charge of ideology-related work. It has the highest leadership role in the
media regulation system. Although it seems to be a Party organ, it has no
executive power. It determines the development of media industries by taking
direction from the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central
Committee of the CCP. It also controls media outlets and content by conveying
CCP‘s highest instructions to the media on what is and what is not to be said.
The chief editors of China‘s major media outlets must attend the department‘s
central office on a weekly basis to receive instructions on which stories should
be emphasised, downplayed or not reported at all.
SARFT is the executive branch under the State Council in charge of
administration and supervision of state-owned enterprises engaged in the
television, radio and film industries. It directly controls state-owned enterprises
at the national level. It is responsible for censoring materials that might be
objectionable to the Chinese government or to its assessment of cultural
standards. It is the major administrative authority for China‘s media industries
as it has the widest administrative scope covering production and distribution,
content and organisation, platforms and programs, and institutions to companies.
It has local branches at the provincial and city levels, which are responsible to
the local TV and film companies and institutions.
The Ministry of Culture (MoC) is responsible for cultural policy and activities in
China, including managing national museums and monuments; promoting and
protecting the arts (visual, folk, theatrical, musical, dance, architectural, literary,
televisual and cinematographic) domestically and abroad; supervising content
broadcast on the internet; and managing national archives and regional culture
centres. MoC is in charge of approving and facilitating national cultural projects.
75
As the main governmental division responsible for cultural system reform the
MoC works together with SARFT on aspects of media reform.
The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) is the
administrative agency responsible for regulating and distributing news, print and
internet publications in China. It regulates copyrighted products, although it
does not assume direct responsibility for media industries.
Some major national media industries policies are listed in Table 4 below. It is
clear that the Chinese government has endeavoured to promote the reform, to
develop media industries and to facilitate media export. However, in terms of
foreign capital, the government shows different attitudes towards the film and
TV sectors. Foreign capital is completely excluded from reality shows and other
types of light entertainment shows, but can be used to co-produce TV dramas. In
addition to co-producing films, foreign capital is allowed to co-fund film
companies and cinemas. This fits into Tom Wang‘s observation: ‗The Publicity
Department of CCP Central Committee‘s control over films is quite loose.
That‘s why we can see many experimental films in China. However the control
on TV drama is much stricter. Therefore SARFT has different standards for TV
and film. TV is more of the party‘s organ whereas film is more like a type of art.‘
(Interview with Tom Wang, 2009)
Table 4 Major national media policies in China
No. Name Year Major content
1
Some opinions on
deepening cultural system
reform
2006 Promote cultural industries;
Deepen the commercialisation reform
on state-owned media institutions;
Encourage export;
Welcome more investment and
financial support from private sector
and state-owned financial
2 Cultural industries
revitalisation plan 2008
3 Guiding opinions on
financial support for 2009
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cultural industries
revitalisation and
development
organisations.
4
Opinions on the reform of
separating production from
broadcasting
2009
5
Some measurements on
deepening film
development ad reform
2009
6
Guiding opinions on
promoting film industry
development
2010
7 Provisions on film
censorship 1997
Censorship and licensing
8
Administrative provisions
on Radio and TV programs
production and operation
2004
9
Temporary provisions on
business qualification of
film companies
2004
10 Administrative provisions
on TV drama content 2010
11
Temporary provisions on
foreign investment on
cinemas
2003
Sole proprietorship is not allowed for
foreign capital in any sector in media
industries;
Foreign capital can‘t exceed 49% in
joint-venture film companies and
cinemas, with the exception of capital
from Hong Kong, Macau and
Taiwan ;
Foreign capital is completely
prohibited in TV columns production
companies;
Script-writers, producers, directors
and chief actors of any co-produced
film or TV must be staffed with over
1/3 Chinese staff.
12
Administrative provisions
on Chinese-foreign
co-producing films
2004
13
Administrative provisions
on Chinese-foreign
co-producing TV drama
2007
14 Catalogue for guidance of
foreign investment 2007
15 Catalogue for guidance of
cultural products and 2009 Facilitate media products export.
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service export
3.3 The geography of media industries
Media industries are heavily concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai and provinces in
the southeast coastal regions in China (Tan & Wang, 2009). These areas are
referred to as the ‗media high ground‘ (chuanmei gaodi) by Chinese scholars
(ibid, p. 446). In order to evaluate the status quo of the development of media
industries in different areas of China and to estimate development potential, Yu
Guoming of Renmin University came up with a media index to measure
development from the perspective of production, profit, consumption,
advertising and environment. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong Province, Jiangsu
Province and Zhejiang Province are the top five areas (Yu, 2010).
3.3.1 Beijing
Beijing has the highest number of media companies, especially large companies.
It has double the number of large film and TV companies than Shanghai (Liu,
2009). In the TV sector, most provincial TV stations set up offices and
production bases in Beijing, often near CCTV and BTV. In 2010 there were 129
registered TV drama production companies and organisations in China of which
41 were in Beijing, and 1076 TV program production organisations were in
Beijing, accounting for 23% of the total amount across the country (SARFT,
2010b).
Most of the large TV production companies are in Beijing. CCTV is the biggest
state-owned organisation in TV drama production. CITVC and Beijing
Zhongbei TV Art Centre Co., Ltd. are very important state-owned TV
78
production organisations. In 2010, SARFT approved 122 shooting plans
submitted by TV drama production organisations and companies in Beijing,
accounting for 25% of TV drama production nationwide. In the film industry,
nearly all the large private film companies are in Beijing, such as Huayi
Brothers, Poly Bona, Stella Media Group (xingmei chuanmei), Beijing New
Picture Film Co. (xinhuamian yingye), Orange Sky Entertainment Group
(chengtian yule) and Enlight Pictures (guangxian yingye), in addition to two
state-owned film companies, China Film Group and Beijing Forbidden City
Film Co.
Table 5 Major private TV drama production companies in Beijing
No. Name Establishing
Time
1 Hairun Movie & TV Group (hairun yingshi) 1993
2 Pegasus Movie & TV Group (jinyingma yingshi) 1993
3 Yingshi Film & Drama Production Co. 1994
4 Huayi Brothers Media Group 1994
5 Rosat Film & TV Art Co. Ltd. (rongxinda) 1995
6 Beijing Beida Huayi Film & Drama Co.Ltd (Latterly
merged into Media China Corporation Limited) 1996
7 Beijing Xinbaoyuan Movie & TV Investment Ltd Co. 1998
8 Beijing Galloping Horse Film & TV Production (xiaoma
benteng) 1998
9 Ciwen Pictures 1999
10 Beijing Hualu Baina Film & TV Co. Ltd. 2002
Beijing is China‘s primary hub for media transaction and export. The China
Film Group and the Huaxia Film Distribution Co. Ltd., the only two film
79
companies certified by the government to import and distribute foreign films,
are in Beijing. The China Radio, Film & Television International Exposition,
focusing on the exhibition of international film and television programs,
exhibition of technical instruments, high-level forum and the awards ceremony
for national radio, film and television has been jointly hosted by SARFT and the
China Media Group in Beijing every year since 2003. It is the largest film and
TV trading and exhibition event in Asia. In 2010, the exhibition area was 22000
square-meters. It attracted 1,300 exhibitors with 6,758 different programs, and
the trade sum reached 2,429 million RMB6.
Starting in 2011, Beijing launched another annual international media showcase
event, the Beijing International Film Festival, which is sponsored by SARFT
and the Beijing Municipal Government. It aims to provide a platform for
exchange and transactions for domestic and overseas films. In 2011 this event
attracted 334 film institutions and 860 film industry professionals from around
the world, including Twentieth Century Fox, the German Film Institute, the
Tokyo International Film Festival, CJ Entertainment, etc. The total transaction
value reached 2.794 billion RMB and set the highest record in domestic film
festivals and exhibitions. According to the Catalogue of cultural export
enterprises of excellence in China (2009-2010) (MoC, 2009) and the Catalogue
of cultural export projects of excellence in China (2009-2010) (MoC, 2010),
Beijing has an obvious advantage in cultural export. In these two government
documents, there are 59 key radio, film and TV export companies in China and
18 are in Beijing. Moreover, 43 of the 91 key radio, film and TV export national
projects are in Beijing.
6 It was retrieved by author from the news on the China Radio, Film and Television
Programs Net. More information can be found at
http://www.chnpec.com/2010/0829/489.html.
80
3.3.2 Shanghai
As mentioned earlier, Shanghai is the birthplace of the Chinese film industry.
By the 1980s Shanghai had lost its early edge in media industries, particularly in
the TV and film sector. As Tom Wang, CEO of Beidong Media, commented,
there is little chance for Shanghai to get back its old glory (Interview with Tom
Wang, 2009). According to SARFT, there were only 12 TV program production
companies and 378 TV program production companies in Shanghai in 2010
(SARFT, 2010b). In terms of large companies, Shanghai has the Shanghai
Media Group (SMG), the Shanghai Film Group and Chinese Entertainment
Shanghai (shanghai tangren dianying). Compared with Beijing, Shanghai has
fewer film and TV businesses. However, Shanghai illustrates significant
momentum in market reform, as the Chinese cultural critic Mao Shian maintains
(quoted by Cao, 2010). The White Countess (bojue furen), jointly produced by
Merchant Ivory Productions, Sony Pictures Classics and the Shanghai Film
Group in 2005, was the first film in which a Chinese company was able to share
box office takings with foreign companies. The Shanghai Film Group was
China‘s first film enterprise to co-produce a blockbuster film with the world‘s
top film company, Universal Pictures. They co-produced The Mummy: Tomb of
the Dragon Emperor in 2008. Furthermore, Shanghai was also the first place in
China to initiate separation of production from broadcasting in a state-owned
media group. In 2009, the reform plan of Shanghai Media Group (shanghai
wenhuang xinwen chuanmei jituan) was approved by SARFT. In this plan
Shanghai Media Group was renamed to Shanghai Radio and Television Station
and the profitable production sector of the station was peeled off and formed
into the new SMG (shanghai dongfang chuanmei jituan youxian gongsi), the
core business of which is content production and investment. Finally, Shanghai
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is China‘s financial centre. A mature financial environment exists there, and
people in Shanghai are considered to be entrepreneurial and experienced in
capital operation.
3.3.3 Guangdong Province
Guangdong Province has been active in TV drama production since the 1980s.
In 2010, ten TV drama production companies and 751 TV program production
companies were located in Guangdong Province, just next to Beijing (SARFT,
2010b). Guangdong‘s success owes much to its proximity to Hong Kong.
Guangdong Province has produced several series of TV dramas that swept
across China in the 1990s. Guangdong TV produced China‘s first reality TV
show The Great Survival Challenge (shengcun datiaozhan) in 2000, inspired by
a reality show produced by Hong Kong TVB (Keane et al 2007). While more
and more Hong Kong actors and actresses are shifting their emphasis to
mainland China due to the flagging local market. The significance of
Guangdong Province is growing gradually as the convenience of transportation
between Guangdong Province and Hong Kong reduces commuting cost, and, as
the two centres speak Cantonese, there is less of a language difficulty than in
other places.
3.3.4 Hunan Province
The most successful provincial satellite TV channel in China is Hunan Satellite
TV (HSTV), which is owned by Hunan Media Group (hunan guangbo yingshi
jituan). In addition to HSTV, Hunan Media Group has another nine television
channels including Hunan Economic Channel (Hunan Jingshi) and, together
with Qiong Yao (a famous Taiwanese writer), produces many successful
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romantic TV dramas, such as Princess Pearl (huanzhu gege). According to the
Report on Development of China’s Media Industry (2010), Hunan Satellite TV
ranks first in audience, profit, growth potential and branding among all
provincial TV channels in China (Cui, 2010, p. 241). The entertainment-focused
style of Hunan Satellite TV provides its unique brand. Hunan Satellite TV
received 4.58 billion RMB from advertising in 2008 and this makes it the
biggest advertising attractor among all the other provincial TV stations. Hunan
Satellite TV has produced several successful entertainment shows, such as
Happy Camp (kuaile dabenying) and Super Girls (chaoji nvsheng). However,
most of Hunan Media group‘s TV programs and dramas are produced by itself
or are commissioned from companies it owns; the local market is basically
occupied by the Hunan Media Group and the space for other media companies is
quite limited. According to SARFT, Hunan province has the fewest TV
production companies of any major media region in China – only 4 TV drama
companies and 81 TV program companies. Only 12 shooting plans of TV drama
were approved by SARFT in 2010, also the lowest yield among Beijing,
Shanghai, Guangdong and Zhejiang.
3.3.5 Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province
Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces are the two fastest developing media regions.
Thanks to the Hengdian World Studios, the world‘s largest film and television
shooting base by area, media business has grown rapidly in Zhejiang Province.
Zhejiang has a huge pool of available private capital due to its manufacturing
industry. 51 TV dramas of 1,778 episodes were produced in Zhejiang Province
in 2012 and Zhejiang Province is now the second largest TV drama production
centre in China (www.sina.com.cn, 2012). The Zhejiang provincial government
shows great support to the media industries. Tempted by the local tax
83
preferential policies, many media companies have set up new offices in Zhejiang
in order to reduce costs. Similarly, Jiangsu Province has had success with media
industries and has attracted many businesses there due to the Wuxi Movie/TV
Base in Wuxi city. It is estimated that the brand value of Jiangsu Radio and TV
Corporation reached RMB 7.3 billion, only next to CCTV and Phoenix TV, and
higher than all the other provincial media corporations in China
(www.people.com.cn, 2010).
In sum, Beijing has obvious prominence among these media hotspots. However,
that doesn‘t mean that Beijing‘s position won‘t be surpassed. Media business is
greatly enhanced due to technological development, especially when
government keeps loosening controls and local governments continue to make
supportive policies.
3.4 Concluding remarks: the prospects of innovation
China‘s media sector is undergoing the transition from institution (shiye) to
industry (qiye). Tensions between shiye and qiye result from the government‘s
ambiguous, even ambivalent, attitude towards media. The creative industries
fever that has appeared in China has encouraged the government to develop
media industries. However, media is naturally associated with propaganda in
China. As Horner, a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute who pays special
attention to how China's evolving views of its modern historical experience and
its intellectual and cultural traditions influence contemporary developments,
argues, the traditional Chinese way of showing a country‘s greatness prioritises
cultural pride ahead of economic, political, military and diplomatic success,
which are already the necessary requirements for greatness (Horner, 2009, p.
33).
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The Chinese government is reluctant to allow the media market to run its course.
The government endeavours to develop media industries that can transmit and
popularise Chinese culture transnationally while, at the same time, making a
profit. It supports media industries because of the propaganda they can create.
State-owned media organisations are allowed to incorporate with private capital,
and even to co-produce with foreign media companies. Private companies are
widespread in every sector of media industries.
Beijing‘s national media centre status is maintained by the tension between
shiye and qiye. However, its innovative capacity is compromised by the same
tension. Thirty years of media reform have not led to a market that rewards
originality and innovation. The main objective of many Chinese media
companies is to earn quick cash through copying and imitating rather than
inventing and creating. However, innovation is crucial for media companies that
want to survive in the media market. Beijing may not be the best place for
innovation but is a good place for establishing connections.
85
Chapter 4: Reframing media industries’ expansion in
China
In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of media industry
development in Beijing and to evaluate Beijing‘s advantages and disadvantages
as a site for media industries clustering and export, I examine the types of media
enterprises (qiye) in China that have formed as a result of reforms. Following
this, I interpret development trends and the regulatory environment in China.
Finally, I examine China‘s media exports and international collaboration7.
4.1 Media companies
As media reform has deepened in the past decade, pushed by China‘s accession
to WTO in 2001, three types of media companies have emerged: state-owned
media groups, private media companies and foreign players.
4.1.1 State-owned media groups
Jing Wang has written that China‘s accession to the WTO was a major turning
point in media industries:
On the track of ‗strengthening and supersizing (China‘s sectoral economy)‘
(zuoqiang zuoda) so as to combat multinational corporations infiltrating
7 All the data in this chapter is collected at SARFT‘s statistics information website, unless
otherwise noted. More information can be found at :
http://gdtj.chinasarft.gov.cn/index.aspx?ID=2435c168-d7dc-4947-87f9-f02943945300
86
China after China‘s entry into the WTO, the Chinese government pushed
the logic of spatial restructuring beyond translocality to incorporate a
‗networked‘ notion of transboundary coordination (‗boundaries‘ here refers
to both the sectoral and the geographical)‘ (Wang, 2005, p. 16)
Because of the perceived benefits scale economy, the Chinese government has
looked towards ‗conglomerate formation‘ (jituanhua). Chin-Chuan Lee argues
that organising state media conglomerates to stimulate ‗managed competition‘ is
China‘s national response to global challenges (Lee, 2002, p. 10).
Jing Wang believes China‘s media sector is a typical example of how
administrative constraints have produced powerful blockades to local media
attempts at trans-boundary and trans-sectoral business mergers. She contends
that a factor driving Chinese media sector‘s industrialisation and conglomeration
is ‗the percolation of the networked spatial logic through every policy domain‘
(Wang, 2005, pp. 16-17). This argument explains SARFT‘s national call to build
a Chinese cross-industrial and cross-regional media ‗aircraft carrier‘ and
‗combined fleet‘ (Li & Li, 2007). In the Plan of Development of Radio, Film
and Television (2001-2010) released in 2000, one of the development objectives
was to build up several internationally influential, competitive, trans-regional
and trans-industrial media groups during the planned period. These media
groups, formed under government orders, are institutional groups managed in an
enterprise way (shiye jituan, qiyehua guanli). In other words, they are
government-managed ‗national champions‘ designed to be capable of competing
with the likes of News Corporation and Time Warner (Keane, 2007a, p. 101).
Guided by the media group strategy, 19 state-owned institutional TV and film
groups had been set up by 2005 (Chen, 2009). The most significant being the
China Media Group, the only national-level media corporation, which was
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established on 6th
December, 2000. It consists of six national media
organisations, including CCTV, Central People‘s Broadcasting Station, China
Radio International, China Film Group and the other two central media
institutions. With more than 20,000 employees and total fixed assets of 21.4
billion RMB, it is expected by the Chinese government to be a national
champion and to compete with foreign counterparts (Zhao, 2008, p. 100).
However, SARFT stopped approving applications for establishing new
State-owned media groups in December 2004 in order to draw a clear line
between this type of institutional media group and market competitive media
companies (Li & Li, 2007), although institutional media groups and
newly-established media institutions were still allowed to set up subordinate
media companies.
State-owned media groups have three characteristics:
(1) Local protectionism. Most of these groups are under local government orders
and are managed in respective territories. The performance of media groups are
closely related to political achievements of local government officials. In this
way, a regional monopoly is strengthened instead of reduced. However, it makes
it difficult for media groups to develop across a regional boundary without the
assistance of local government and the central government. For instance,
SARFT is the broker for the collaboration between Hunan Satellite TV and
Qinghai TV. The collaboration between Shanghai TV and Ningxia TV wouldn‘t
have been achieved without the approval of the Ningxia government.
(2) Lack of value chain integration. Formed at the behest of local government,
most state-owned media groups were designed to broaden communication
channels. They didn‘t have a clear idea of their target audience, nor did they
have a plan for integrating production and broadcasting. Many have been
88
working to stand out from other state-owned media groups by branding. For
instance, Hunan Satellite TV (HSTV) officially proposed the channel target of
‗nationwide rating, nationwide coverage, national influence and national market‘
and ‘creating the most vigorous TV entertainment brand in China‘ by insisting
on the core concept of ‗Happy China‘. However, a survey shows that most
media group branding strategy does not work as expected (Hu, Li, & Huang,
2011).
(3) Inflexibility. With the convergence of traditional media, internet and
telecommunication, restructuring of the value chain is having an effect (Lin,
2009). The dominance of state-owned media groups that have been assisted by
local government support is now challenged by private media companies that
are more flexible in integrating with new media.
4.1.2 Private media companies
In addition to state-owned media groups, private media companies are an
important emerging force in China. Before private capital was officially
encouraged to directly invest in TV and film production in 2003, 80% of TV
programs and films were produced or co-produced by private companies that
were under the cover of an advertising company in 2002 (Lu, 2005). Ever since
2003, private media companies have greatly accelerated their pace of
development, and most of the best-selling TV programs and films are produced
or invested in by the private sector. China‘s first blockbuster, Hero (yingxiong),
was co-produced by Beijing New Picture Film Company (Beijing xinhuamian
yingye youxian gongsi), a private film production company.
89
Entertainment Live Show (yule xianchang), produced by Enlight Media, a
private media company, has been sold to more than one hundred TV stations
throughout China. According to Zhou Jianqing (2008), compared with
state-owned media groups, private media companies are more innovative, more
flexible and better at marketing and conducting multiple operations.
However they have some weaknesses:
(1) Most private TV production companies are heavily reliant on state-owned
TV stations. Due to the monopolised market, which does not reward originality
and creativity, they have had to compromise when negotiating with TV stations.
Sometimes they have to give up the copyright; sometimes they are even unable
to show their name in the program when broadcasting. The seriously unequal
market also results in vicious competition, which severely prohibits
development, dampens enthusiasm for innovation and lowers the quality of
production.
(2) Private media companies are more vulnerable in the heavily regulated
system. It is harder for them to know broader policy trends and they need to
apply for production licences, whereas the state-owned media groups don‘t need
to, and they are more likely to be targeted and punished by the government as
they often have to break regulations in order to survive in the market. For
example, SARFT asked TV stations all over China to reduce the broadcasting of
criminal TV drama in 2004 at a time when the crime genre was the hottest
selection in the TV drama market. As a result, a lot of private media companies
suffered a great loss.
90
4.1.3 Foreign media groups in China
Even when taking into account the massive amount of piracy in the Chinese
market, it still represents a huge market, and this has brought international
companies to China. Among the different parties in the media production system
in China international media conglomerates are considered to be ‗outsiders‘.
They have entered China‘s media market in various collaborative forms. There
are two major models for foreign media group penetration, according to Tang
Runhua, research fellow in journalism research centre of Xinhua News Agency
(Runhua Tang, 2005).
One model is content collaboration: this can be easily managed, costs less and
gets returns quickly, but generates less profit and has limited growth potential.
The collaboration of Viacom and CCTV is an example. The other model is
co-developing channels, which requires large investments over a long period of
time and is high risk, but has potentially high returns. News Corporation is the
most renowned example of this type, and its retreat from China demonstrates
how high the risk is of this model. Tang Runhua (2005) has identified several
considerations for foreign media companies. The first is paying attention to the
relationship with government. Of course, this really goes without saying, but it
is essential not only for gaining the understanding and support of Chinese
leaders at all levels but also to express friendship to China and be seen to be
doing something for China. For instance, AOL Time Warner distributes the
English Channel of CCTV by cable to New York, Houston and Los Angeles
(Landler, 2001). Also entertainment programs are the ideal choice for a foreign
media group to get into China because they have low sensitivity in terms of
politics and policies and they are easier for local audiences to accept. And
finally it is necessary to consider localisation in product content, distribution
channels and personnel.
91
Foreign media companies face the difficulty of localising in China (Fung, 2006,
2008). Their business ‗know how‘ and experience derive from activities in
pluralist media environments. In China they have to deal with language and
cultural barriers, different managerial cultures, unfamiliar regulatory regimes
and the difficulties of content localisation. A report by David Wolf, CEO of
Wolf Group Asia, criticises the assumption that any Western media product will
be accepted by Chinese consumers. He argues that Chinese audiences want
media content about themselves and that the desire for foreign cultural products
is declining (Nicholson, 2009).
4.1.4 Implications
The three types of media companies acting in China‘s media industries have
different relations with government, which in turn influences the nature of the
media system. The closest to government are state-owned media groups, just
like the government‘s favourite son who is supported and protected; the second
closest to the government are private media companies, like the government‘s
step-son who is seen and protected as a family member when facing trouble, but
still is not very close and will be punished or even abandoned if mistakes are
made; the foreign media groups are certainly the least close to government and
are, to complete the metaphor, like a neighbour living next door who is welcome
when behaving in a way favoured by the family but who will be thrown out of
the house at any sign of contrary behaviour.
92
4.2 new characteristics
Rapid commercialisation has taken place in the Chinese media industry.
According to Report on Development of China‘s Media Industry 2011 (Cui,
2010, 2011), the overall output value of Chinese media industries in 2010
reached about RMB 580.8 billion, increasing by 17.8% from 2009; the total box
office of 2009 climbed to RMB 10.172 billion (63.9% up from 2009) and the
general revenue of the film industry was RMB 15.721 billion. CCTV‘s income
from advertising in prime time of 2010 rose to RMB 12.6 billion.
4.2.1 Competition.
According to statistics, the average daily intake of TV content viewed by
audiences hasn‘t changed much since 1997, although viewing options are
greater. China‘s TV market has entered a new phase of competition on limited
market share (G. Xie, 2005). As a result, CCTV (China Central Television),
which used to be the only television medium broadcast all over China until the
1990s, now has to compete with provincial TV stations, which have completed
their strategic change to national media in ten years and have grown into new
forces challenging the sovereignty of CCTV in the national TV market. Indeed,
when it comes to regional markets and niche markets in China, CCTV does not
necessarily win all the time. For instance, Shanghai‘s TV market is dominated
by the TV channels of SMG (Shanghai Media Group). Hunan Satellite TV and
Anhui TV, two provincial TV stations, have gained wide acceptance in China
for their strengths in entertainment programs and TV dramas. However, the
bigger threat is from outside due to China‘s gradual opening of its media market,
as promised in its entry to WTO. For most Chinese audiences, the most popular
overseas TV station in the Chinese TV market is Phoenix TV, because of its
better reaction to emergencies compared with domestic TV stations. Despite
93
having restrictions on it, Phoenix TV reached 44 million (16%) television
households as early as 1998 (Ji, 2001).
4.2.2 Changing attitudes
Media is still the official organ of the Chinese government and the CCP, but a
subtle change has occurred in the attitude of the Chinese government towards
the media industry. Firstly, media policies are experiencing a shift from
controlling to nurturing. On a visit to People’s Daily in June 2008, Hu Jintao
made an important speech (J. Hu, 2008) that stressed ‗nurturing‘ both
mainstream media and new media to form a clearly positioned, distinctively
featured, perfectly complementary and extensively covering structure of ‗public
opinion‘.
Although it is unrealistic to anticipate a huge change, the Chinese government is
beginning to think differently. Influenced by the concept of soft power (Nye,
2005), the government has advocated the media sector to accomplish its mission
of improving the international image of China alongside its abiding role of
domestic political propaganda. According to the speech of Li Changchun,
member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee during the 50th anniversary
ceremony of CCTV, enhancing China‘s communication capacity domestically
and internationally is of direct consequence to China‘s international influence
and international position, and every media worker should endeavour to ‗let
China‘s voice be heard worldwide‘ (B. Li & Wu, 2008).
In order to achieve these two goals, the Chinese government has endeavoured to
export its media product overseas. For example, the Deputy Minister of China‘s
94
Ministry of Culture, Ouyang Jian, remarked in the beginning of 2009 that China
is going to develop export-oriented cultural enterprises to be more involved in
international competition, and will construct creation and production bases
overseas to produce cultural products according to local consumption habits (J.
Ouyang, 2009).
4.2.3 Development of ICTs.
In late 2008 and early 2009, China accomplished a series of reorganisations of
the telecommunication industry and issued 3 pieces of 3G licenses to the newly
restructured China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom. Additionally,
China‘s first Direct Broadcasting Satellite was successfully launched in June
2008 and subscribers to digital cable television programs had exceeded 40
million householders by the end of 2008. All of these developments of new
ICTs in China imply an inevitable trend of Chinese media industry, which is the
convergence of telecommunication networks, radio and TV networks, and the
internet, a convergence of traditional media industries and new media industries
(Cai & Tang, 2008). Zhang Haitao, the deputy chief of SARFT, said that a
digitalised network of broadcasting will be carried out in three steps: digitalise
the production, then the transmission, and the terminal last (H. Zhang, 2008).
Moreover, an industry standard is under development for the convergence and
unification of telecommunication networks, broadcasting networks and the
internet. (Tencent, 2008). Consequently, the regulatory role of market is
probably growing, and a new shift regarding media polices is likely to come
along with the emerging development, which will bring new features to the
Chinese media industry.
95
4.3 Media industries development
According to National Bureau of Statistics of China, the annual growth rate of
the Chinese economy was 11.2% during the period of the eleventh five-year
plan. By the end of 2010, China had become world‘s second largest economy,
with GDP of USD 5879.1 billion (NBSC, 2011b). The steady and fast growth of
the national economy has provided a solid foundation for the development of
China‘s media industries. After deducting price factors, the per capita disposable
income of urban residents in China rose by 9.7% per year during the period
mentioned above, and the average spending on cultural and entertainment
activities rose by 17.9% per year (NBSC, 2011a). This delivers the message that
there is a huge potential for consumption of media products in China and for
advertising products through the media to Chinese consumers.
As described in Chapter 3, following 30 years of reform, the Chinese
government has been separating media industries (qiye) from media institutions
(shiye). However industries and institutions are still interdependent and mutually
restrained. According to Director of Media Economics and Management
Research Centre at Tsinghua University, Cui Baoguo, the overall output value of
China‘s media industries reached 580.8 billion RMB in 2010, nearly doubling
the overall value of 2004 (Cui, 2005, 2011).
Figure 2 The annual overall output value of China’s media industries (2004-2010) (Cui,
2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)
298.1
320.5
423.656
481.1
422.08
490.796
580.8
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Annual overall output value (billion RMB)
96
4.3.1 The TV industry
China has a huge TV consumption base. There are 18.73 million households
with cable TV subscriptions and 87.98 million households with digital cable TV
subscriptions in China in 2010; TV coverage has extended to 97.6% of the
population of the whole country. Driven by market demand, China‘s TV
industry has developed quickly. China‘s total revenue for radio and TV has
grown at 20% per year during the eleventh five-year plan period and hit 223.8
billion RMB in 2010, according to Zhang Haitao, the Deputy Director of
SARFT (SARFT, 2011b).
Figure 3 Growth of radio and TV revenue 2005-2009 (SARFT, 2010c)
Among the four types of income sources, advertising accounted for 42% of the
total revenue of radio and TV industry in 2009. The main beneficiaries of
advertising are state-owned TV stations, since they are the only broadcasting
platform in China, although some TV production companies are able to occupy
a small share by using such strategies as placing advertisements in their products
in TV dramas. TV advertising profit has been rising since 1990, and in 2008
China‘s total TV advertising was RMB 60.016 billion.
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Government subsidies (100 million RMB)
Cable TV fee (100 million RMB)
Advertising (100 million RMB)
Total Revenue (100 million RMB)
97
Figure 4 Structure of Radio and TV revenue in 2009 (SARFT, 2010c)
Figure 5 Annual TV advertising (1990-2008) (adopted from Cui, 2010)
Currently there are 366 TV stations and 1173 TV channels8 in China, according
to SARFT‘s list of broadcasting institutions. Hence TV broadcasting, production
and trading are driven by the broadcasting needs of TV channels. SARFT‘s data
8 Only national TV stations, provincial TV stations and city TV stations are counted;
whereas county TV stations and education TV stations are excluded. More information can
be retrieved at: www.sarft.gov.cn
22%
13%23%
42% Others
Government subsidies
Cable TV fee
Advertising
5.61 20.5444.76
90.79
135.63168.91
231.03
291.54
404
600.56 609.16
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2007 2008
TV advertisng (100 million RMB)
98
shows that in 2009 about 2.65 million hours of TV programs9 were produced,
4.72 million hours were sold, and around 15.78 million hours were broadcasted.
Most content is purchased and exchanged between TV stations and production
companies. 50.2% of the broadcasting content was obtained by purchasing and
exchanging in 2008. Self-produced content is another important content resource.
The frequent trading and exchanging of TV programs led to a huge increase in
the number of production companies in China. According to SARFT, there were
4,678 TV content production companies in China in 2011, nearly twice the
number of 2007.
Competition is becoming more obvious due to the rapid expansion of TV
channels. Many television stations copy other stations‘ successful formats rather
than create new formats. For example, the popularity of HSTV‘s singing context
show, Super Girl (chaoji nvsheng) in 2005 induced a fever for talent shows
(xuanxiu jiemu). With the success of Jiangsu Satellite TV‘s dating game show, If
you are the One (feicheng wurao), many TV stations, including Dragon
Television, HSTV and Zhejiang Satellite Television, started producing their own
dating shows.
The most important type of content is TV drama and films. Nearly 7 million
hours of TV drama and films were shown on TV in 2009, which amounted to
44.26% of total broadcasting hours in that year. There were 436 TV dramas and
a total of 14,685 episodes produced in 2010. In a report from China Economic
Weekly, the former director of SARFT, Wang Taihua, said that TV drama‘s
9 In this thesis TV program refers to all the TV content for broadcasting, including news,
TV column, TV drama, advertising, and others types
99
contribution to TV stations advertising income was over 50%, and that TV
drama occupied about one third of the audience share (Zhou & Wang, 2011).
However, TV drama production is the most vulnerable sector to government
policy adjustments. For example, crime drama was the most popular genre in
2003, but SARFT started to ‗purify‘ screens in 2004 in line with the CCP‘s
campaign of ideological and moral education of juveniles. TV stations were
banned from broadcasting crime dramas in prime time in 2004, and were
required to reduce the total broadcasting time of crime dramas. According to
Tang Haifei, a producer from China International Television Corporation, the
whole TV drama industry experienced a round of reshuffling in that year, and
many production companies who had invested a lot of capital in producing
crime dramas had to close due to capital turnover difficulties.
Figure 6 TV drama amount and sales (2005-2010) (SARFT, 2010c)
Figure 6 shows that TV drama sales increased significantly in 2009. However
the growth is related to the government‘s preference for cultural and creative
industries. Massive investment has been injected into TV and film production
514500
529502
402
1100
14001500
1600
2100
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
TV drama amount
TV drama sales (million RMB)
100
whereas the amount of senior personnel has not grown much. The famous media
producer, Peng Sanyuan, made this observation on her Weibo (the most popular
Chinese microblogging website, akin to a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook) on
15th
April, 201210
. She commented that the quality of TV production is declining
despite fast growth. As a result, the growth trend of TV content production is
hard to sustain in the long run since nowadays audiences have more choices than
simply passively accepting programs and TV dramas screened on television.
Figure 7 Broadcasting and viewing proportion of TV drama (2006-2009) (Cui, 2010)
The domestic TV market is already saturated. There are 32 satellite TV stations
in China and broadcasting space rises every year. In addition, the expansion of
digital TV has further increased content and channels. However CSM‘s ratings
survey data shows that viewing time has not changed much since 2000.
Therefore the competition between TV stations is about fighting for a bigger
piece of the cake rather than making a bigger cake. TV production companies
have to extend their target market to the internet in order to increase the profit,
10 Peng Sanyuan is a famous TV producer in China. Her Weibo address is:
http://weibo.com/u/2028778307
25.40% 25.00% 24.70%26.10%
34.60% 34.10%32.60%
32.20%
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
2006 2007 2008 2009
Proportion of the total broadcasting time
Proportion of the total viewing time
101
while also maintaining a good connection with TV stations. For instance, Fight
and Love with a Terracotta Warrior (gujin dazhan qinyongqing) was sold to
www.pps.tv, China‘s biggest internet TV provider for RMB 2.7 million RMB.
Most importantly, realising that broadcasting is no longer the only king in the
market, both TV stations and production companies are paying more attention to
innovation in order to enhance content quality and advance brand building to
win a bigger audience share.
4.3.2 The film industry
China is now one of the world‘s three biggest film producing countries, along
with India and the US. The film industry has developed at a high speed. In 2010,
the total income of the film industry was RMB 15.721 billion, 47.4% higher
than 2009; 526 films were produced, six times the amount in 2001; national box
office achieved 10.172 billion RMB, 64% higher than the box office in 2009;
and 87 awards were won in 25 international film festivals.
Figure 8 Income of China’s film industry (2004-2010) (Cui, 2011)
0
4
8
12
16
20
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Domestic box office (billion RMB)
TV rights fee (billion RMB)
Total income (billion RMB)
102
Figure 9 Film amount and urban box office (2001-2010) (Cui, 2011)
Figure 8 shows that among different types of income sources, box office
revenues have grown the fastest, indicating that there is a strong domestic film
consumption base in China. Due to the quota restriction on importing films from
overseas, domestic films have occupied over half of the total box office for
many years. In general, the top ten domestic films performed better at the box
office than the top ten imported films, except for Avatar, which swept across the
globe in 2010, as Table 4 shows. Blockbusters have become the most favoured
type of film production. The investment in seven of the top ten domestic films
exceeded RMB 100 million.
Table 6 Box office of the top ten domestic films and the top ten imported films in
major Chinese cities 2010 (January to September) (SARFT, 2010a)
Domestic films Imported films
Ranking Title
Box
office
(million
RMB)
Ranking Title
Box
office
(million
RMB)
1 After Shock
(tangshan dadizhen) 67.332 1 Avatar 137.870
2 Let the bullets fly 60.365 2 Inception 44.207
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Film amount Urban box office (billion RMB)
103
(rang zidan fei)
3
Detective Dee and
the mystery of the
phantom flame (di
renjie zhi tongtian
diguo)
44.137 3 Alice in
Wonderland 22.640
4 Ip man 2 (ye wen 2) 29.228 4 The
Expendables 21.876
5 If you are the one 2
(feicheng wurao 2) 23.404 5
Harry Potter
and the
Deathly
Hallows: Part 1
20.581
6 Sacrifice (zhaoshi
guer) 19.310 6 Iron Man 2 17.637
7 Little Big Soldier
(dabing xiaojiang) 16.218 7
Clash of the
Titans 17.518
8
Just Call Me
Nobody (daxiao
jianghu)
15.393 8
Prince of
Persia: The
Sands of Time
15.822
9
The Love of the
Hawthorn Tree
(shanzhashu
zhilian)
14.662 9 Resident Evil:
Afterlife 13.795
10 14 Blades (jinyiwei) 14.470 10 Toy Story 3 11.920
Sum 304.159 Sum 323.867
In 2010 the box office for domestic films was RMB 5.734 billion, which was
56.3% of the total box office in China. But this reveals a big issue for China‘s
film industry: it makes films in a high quantity, but many of these are of a low
quality. In 2010 alone, only about 260 domestic films were shown in cinemas,
although 526 films were produced in total (ent.ifeng.com, 2011). Half of the
films were not able to sell to cinemas mainly because of the low quality. In
contrast, only 20 films were imported and shown in China from overseas, but
still, though competing with the 260 domestic films shown in Chinese cinemas,
they managed to gain 43.6% of the box office in 2010.
104
Figure 10 Structure of China's box office (2004-2010)11
Encouraged by rising box office revenues, 313 new cinemas were opened and
1,533 cinema screens were added in 2010. The increase in cinema construction
in China is a promising development for China‘s film industry, a growth that
appeals to the Chinese government, banks and other financial institutions. For
example, half of the investment of After Shock (tangshan da dizhen), the
best-selling Chinese film of 2010 came directly from Tangshan city government
funding. Twenty-four provinces and municipalities have set up special funds for
cultural industries, allocating more than 27 billion RMB by October 2010. Ten
commercial funds for cultural industries of 42.75 billion RMB controlled by
government capital have been established from 2009-2010 (www.ccizone.com,
2011). State-owned banks have started to provide loans for film production.
Huayi Brothers received a loan of 120 million RMB from Industrial and
11 Data used in this figure is collected by author from serial film administration news on
SARFT website. More information can be found at
http://www.sarft.gov.cn/catalogs/gldt/20070831155418550472.html
8.3 11 14.4 18 25.6 35.1 57.34
6.7 9 11.8 15.2 17.8 27 44.38
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Box office income of domestic films (billion RMB) Box office income of imported films (billion RMB)
105
Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in 2009. ICBC also loaned Poly Bona 55
million RMB in the same year. In the ‗Guiding opinions on promoting film
industry development‘ released by the State Council of China in 2010, banks
and financial institutions are encouraged to develop more and newer ways of
investing in the film industry (SCoC, 2010).
Due to the global financial crisis, investors have been more discreet about their
investment in China. The Chinese government‘s promotion and support on
creative industries encourages ‗hot money‘ shifting into the creative industries (J.
Zhang, 2009). In addition to government capital and state-owned commercial
banks, more private investment funds are involved in film production, tempted
by the huge returns in the film industry. Hot money from coal mining and real
estate has flooded into the industry. 140 billion RMB has reportedly been taken
from the mining industry due to government adjustments in Shanxi Province,
China‘s major coal base – the film industry is a favourite area for investors to
put their money (H. Chen, 2010). It‘s said that there are over ten film investment
funds in China based on hot money. Some are Hong Kong based, some are
established by local private investors in mainland China and some are
joint-ventures with foreign capital (S. Zhang, 2011).
According to Li Erwie, the co-founder of Huayingxing Film TV and
Entertainment Fund, in a speech at the Cultural Creative Industries Investment,
Financing and Capital Operation Forum in 2011 in Beijing, these funds operate
in five ways: directly investing in films, which may require involvement in the
actual production itself; investing with a fixed annual rate of return; copyright
repurchase or mortgage; purchasing the complete copyright or regional
copyright; and prioritised paying back (Li, 2011). Even some internet companies
are being attracted to the film industry. Among them are Shanda Interactive
Entertainment Limited, the biggest online game company in China, and Tencent
106
(www.qq.com), the largest IM service provider in China. The stock market is
also another useful way of fundraising. Huayi Brothers listed in the Chinese
share market in 2010, Poly Bona in the NASDAQ, and Orange Days
Entertainment in Hong Kong. CEO of Huayi Brothers, Wang Zhongjun, has said
that China‘s film industry doesn‘t lack funding, but good personnel and films (L.
Yang, 2011).
4.5 Soft power and internationalisation
Influenced by the soft power strategy, the internationalisation of China‘s media
industries includes four aspects: exporting media products overseas; extending
broadcasting channels internationally; international capital operations; and
co-production.
4.5.1 Media export
According to statistics, the export of China‘s TV and film products has been
growing in the past few years. The total export income of China‘s media
industries was 2.1 billion RMB in 2007 and rose to 3.358 billion RMB in 2009.
The average annual growth rate is about 26.5% (H. Li & Wan, 2010). According
to SARFT‘s 2011 report, China‘s TV programs, drama and films have been
exported to more than 100 countries and regions around the world, among which
Southeast Asia is still the most important market for mainland‘s media products
(SARFT, 2011c, p. 133). This report concludes that private media companies are
becoming a significant part of China‘s media exports. Four private companies,
Star Media Limited (sida shidai) in Beijing, Beauty Media (qiaojiaren) in
Beijing, Huayi Brothers Media (huayi xiongdi) in Beijing and Zhongnan
Animation Company (zhongnan katong) in Zhejiang Province, are the most
107
important export enterprises, accounting for 71% of exports among 59 key
media export companies in China. Geographically, Beijing is the most important
hub for China‘s media exports; there are 17 key media export companies in
Beijing, which accounted for more than half of the total media export of China
in 2010 (ibid, p. 134).
Film is the biggest income source compared to other exported media formats,
such as light entertainment shows and TV dramas. In 2010, 47 films were sold
to 61countries and regions. The international income, including box office
overseas and sales, was 3.517 billion RMB in 2010, 26.9% higher than in 2009,
although Figure 11 shows that the growth of China‘s film industry‘s
international income is stable, with international income only accounting for
about 25% of the total income of China‘s film industry. The major international
markets for China‘s film industry are the US, Asia-Pacific and Europe. The
USA is a particularly important market for Chinese films. In 2009, two films
were sold to the USA and the total income, in the USA, was 610 million RMB,
22.1% of the total international income of China‘s film industry in 2009. 15
films were sold to Europe for an income of 406 million RMB. 8 films were sold
to Japan for an income of 761 million RMB. 11 films were sold to Korea for 314
million RMB (Cui, 2011).
Figure 11 International income of China's film industry (2004-2010) (Cui, 2011)
108
Figure 12 The international market of Chinese films in 2009 (Li & Wan, 2010)
Generally, there are two types of exported films: Kungfu films and art films.
Most Kungfu films exported overseas are co-productions with Hong Kong, and
these films account for most of the box office income, as Tables 8 and 9 show.
But according to the law of diminishing returns this unitary type of exported
films is too simple and will ultimately lose audiences, who generally look for
novelty (Yan & Li, 2010). Art films (yishu pian), the other main category, are
normally aired at international film festivals and events. However, few are
shown in commercial cinemas. As Tom Wang, CEO of Beidong Media, who
used to work in Huayi Brothers and now owns his own media and animation
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
1.1
1.651.91 2.02
2.5262.759
3.517
Overseas sales and box office (billion RMB)
USA22.11%
Japan27.58%Korea
11.38%
Europe14.72%
Others24.21%
USA
Japan
Korea
Europe
Others
109
company, said: they are not very helpful for the export of Chinese films since
they have very limited target consumers. (Interview with Tom Wang, 2009)
Table 7 Chinese Kungfu films exported overseas (2005, 2006, and 2008) (Yan & Li,
2010)
Year Amount of Kungfu
films exported
Box office
(billion RMB)
Percentage of the overseas box
office of Chinese films in that year
2005 4 15.7 95.4%
2006 5 9.6 83%
2008 6 16.5 95%
Table 8 Amount of exported Chinese films to major overseas market (2008, 2009) (Yan
& Li, 2010)
Country Amount of exported co-production films Amount of exported films
2008 2009 2008 2009
USA 4 8 2 2
Japan 8 9 6 8
Europe 13 18 9 15
Korea 15 16 11 11
The export scale of China‘s TV programs is small compared with the film
industry, but it is increasing. Traditionally, the main target markets for China‘s
TV programs are Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Europe, the US, Japan
and Korea. More recently, the Middle East and Africa have also become
important export markets. The rise of Arabian and African television markets is
closely related to China‘s international political strategy.
Table 9 Import and export of China's TV programs in 2008 (SARFT, 2009)
Item Europe USA Latin
America Japan Korea Africa Sum
Spending on
importing TV
programs (million
71.52 70.29 5.48 35.78 79.68 N/A 454.21
110
RMB)
Total income on
exporting TV
programs (million
RMB)
15.53 10.11 1.89 13.41 2.09 2.53 124.76
Time length of
imported TV
programs (hour)
6,551 7,463 165 582 2,869 N/A 20,550
Time length of
exported TV
programs (hour)
346 1,464 124 846 410 500 10,300
Amount of
imported TV
dramas
3 10 2 18 34 N/A 122
Amount exported
TV dramas 11 12 1 19 9 13 149
Spending on
importing TV
dramas (million
RMB)
4.52 1.45 3.24 29.01 75.72 N/A 242.93
Total income on
exporting TV
dramas (million
RMB)
14.10 9.12 1.05 12.73 1.40 0.97 75.25
Episodes of
imported TV
dramas
54 20 67 407 1,439 N/A 3,594
Episodes of
exported TV
dramas
239 898 102 801 304 542 6,662
The program genres exported are mostly TV drama and documentary. During
the 49th
MIPTV in Cannes in 2010, the sale value of exhibited Chinese TV
programs was USD 8 million, in which CITVC (China International Television
Corporation) won USD 3.31 million as a sale agent of TV dramas and
documentaries. 199 TV dramas of more 6,700 episodes were sold overseas in
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2010. The revenue from exporting TV dramas was USD 27 million, 35% higher
than 2009. But, as the Director of TV drama Division of SARFT, Li Jingsheng,
points out, ‗China is a big country of TV drama, but not a strong country of TV
drama‘ (Dong & Zheng, 2011). He said that Chinese TV dramas have a small
market share in the world; the major audience is limited to Chinese diasporas.
The price, which used to be USD 25,000 per episode now is only USD 10,000
per episode.
Some entertainment shows are exported overseas, though it is a very small part
of China‘s TV program export. In 2010, the income from entertainment show
exports was USD 2.2 million, accounting for 4% of the total export revenue. I
love the lyrics (wo ai ji geci), an entertainment show produced by ZTV
weishi), was sold to WaTV in Malaysia for USD 1,000 per episode. This show
has been broadcast in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. It is reported that MTV
Asia, covering Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Singapore, showed intent to buy
the show (www.sina.com.cn, 2008).
There are three ties – cultural, economic, and political – which connect China
with its major export markets. Europe and North America have a strong
economic relationship with China; East Asian countries such as Korea and Japan
have inherited Confucian culture from China, while Hong Kong and Taiwan
share the same Chinese cultural and historical traditions; the export to African
and Arabian countries looks more like a quid pro quo due to political interest
between these countries and China.
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4.5.2 International capital
The internationalisation of China‘s media industries is reliant on absorbing
foreign capital. A market survey report by Zero2IPO Research Centre, one of
China‘s most authoritative investment research institutions, shows that China‘s
media and entertainment industry (media & entertainment industry includes
outdoor media, TV and film, advertising, animation and publishing in this report)
had 150 investment deals in 2010, of which 118 disclosed an investment amount,
which totalled USD 1.68 billion (Zhang, 2010). Ni Zhengdong, the CEO of
Zero2IPO Group, expressed the view that foreign venture capital, most notably
IDG Ventures and Sequoia Capital, had been active in China‘s film and TV
industry. TV & film industry is the second largest industry sector for foreign
investment, behind outdoor media. However, according to Ni, foreign
investment is now more cautious in China‘s TV and film industry due to policy
constraints and the uncertain returns from the industry.
As stated previously in this chapter, the Chinese government has a strong
control over foreign investment in media industries, especially TV. Therefore,
instead of investing directly, foreign investors choose to collaborate with local
companies. The most famous example is Rupert Murdoch. He had China‘s
media market in his sights for a long time. His News Corp lost heavily in China
in the early 1990s. Then he bought Star TV, a pan-Asian satellite service
established by Richard Li, the son of Li Kai-xing, Hong Kong‘s biggest tycoon
(Curtin, 2005). After being banned for years, SARFT approved Star TV‘s
limited landing, in China‘s three-star hotels and foreign residential districts in
2003. In return, News Corporation, through its TV network, facilitated the
English International channel of CCTV‘s landing in the UK and France. In 2005,
Star had tried to cooperate with the Qinghai Satellite TV in program production
in order to bypass the policy limitation to make its own programs and deliver
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content across the country. But this loophole was terminated by the Chinese
government.
In 2008 Murdoch sold News Corporation‘s controlling stake of three TV
channels in China – the Mandarin channel Star TV, Star International Channel
and Channel [V] music channels – and Star Chinese film library (Fortune Star)
to the Chinese Culture Industry Investment Fund (CMC), China‘s first private
equity fund in cultural industries, whose main sponsors and investors included
the Shanghai Media Group (SMG) and China Development Bank.
However it is not altogether accurate to say that Murdoch has retreated from
China. Rather he changed his strategy. Murdoch has built partnerships with
Chinese media companies for a long-term collaboration instead of playing solo
in China. In this acquisition, an agreement was reached by News Corp and CMC
to set up a joint venture called Star Chinese Media (xingkong huawen chuanmei)
to operate the three TV channels and the Chinese film library. By selling his
share, Murdoch is more protected and gains more opportunities. Wei Pengju, the
executive dean of Cultural and Creative Research Institute of Central University
of Finance and Economics of China, has commented that international
companies are penetrating China‘s market at a low angle and are scattering
investment in more projects of smaller scale. In doing so, international investors
will have a more promising return on China‘s rapidly expanding cultural market
by making good use of their Chinese partner‘s resources (Zheng, Dong, & Chen,
2011).
Also, due to policy restrictions, foreign investors are gradually shifting to the
safer zone of cinema building, since they are not allowed to invest directly in
TV production companies, nor can they set up their wholly-owned film or TV
companies. However, investing in cinemas is not as simple as it may look.
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Warner Brothers, the first international cinema operator in China, fully withdrew
its business in 2006 as it had to give up its controlling stake in all its co-invested
cinemas after policy changes made in 2005. Liu Zhiguang, who has extensive
experience in marketing major Hollywood blockbusters in China and used to be
fully in charge of marketing Warner Bros in China, explains: ‗Warner Bros is
one of the Fortune 500 companies but by contrast most international investors
hold different attitudes and lay low in earning money (p. ibid).‘ However,
according to Liu, the main problem for international media businesses investing
in China‘s cinemas is the high real estate cost, but, on the other hand,
international businesses are deeply tempted by the prospects for a rapidly
developing film industry in China. They are more concerned with whether or not
they can make money rather than how many cinemas they can open. So far,
investors from Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, France and the USA have
co-established cinemas in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and many other
Chinese cities.
In addition to cinema building, foreign investment favours film production and
distribution. By investing in the production and distribution sectors they can
gain the international copyright easily and operate in the international market.
For example, the China Film Group received investment from New Media Fund,
operated by International Data Corporation (IDG), in 2007. Poly Bona raised
funds from Sequoia Capital, SIG Asia Investment and Matrix Partners.
Furthermore, China‘s media companies list shares on the international stock
market to raise funds across the world. Orange Sky Entertainment Group
(chengtian yule) bought the controlling stake of Golden Harvest Group, a film
company listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in 2007, and made its transition
into a listed company in Hong Kong. Poly Bona landed in New York and started
its IPO on the NASDAQ on 9th
December, 2010.
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4.5.3 Co-production
Nowadays, investing in specific film shooting instead of investing in companies
is the foremost strategy that foreign capital takes when entering China‘s film
industry, according to Yang Jun, the vice director of Cultural Finance Centre of
Cultural Industries Institute, Peking University (Zheng, et al., 2011). There were
34 co-production films in 45 films sold overseas in 2009. Hong Kong has
always been China‘s most important partner in film co-production. Statistics
show that China co-produced over 200 films with Hong Kong, but only about 40
with Taiwan, and around 50 with other countries from 1978 to 1998 (Yin, 2008).
The Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), the first free trade
agreement ever concluded by mainland China and Hong Kong, in 2003, secured
access to the mainland market for Hong Kong‘s film industry. Under CEPA,
Hong Kong film companies are allowed to set up solely-owned film distribution
companies in several pilot cities in mainland China. Most of the highly
successful films are now co-produced by Hong Kong and mainland China.
Yin (2008) has pointed out that CEPA has actually changed the identity of Hong
Kong movies, from overseas films to domestic films. This has allowed Hong
Kong and mainland China co-produced films to enjoy the same treatment as
domestic films on the mainland. Similarly, co-production has taken place in the
TV industry, although it is not as significant as in the film industry. Korea,
Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan have all co-produced TV
dramas with Chinese TV production companies (Zhu, Keane and Bai 2008).
Among these countries and regions, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the most
supported by the Chinese government. In 2006, the government announced that
co-produced TV dramas of Hong Kong and the mainland could be treated as
domestic TV dramas (ent.people.com.cn, 2006). Co-produced TV dramas of
116
Taiwan and the mainland have been accorded the same treatment since 2008
(tw.people.com.cn, 2007).
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Chapter 5 Beijing: three principles of media capital
As Chapter 3 and 4 have shown, Beijing is China‘s most important media centre.
It attracts a huge number of media companies and organisations, ranging from
TV stations production companies and agencies, and the greatest concentration
of TV practitioners. This chapter begins by exploring how Beijing‘s status as
China‘s political and cultural centre endows it with certain advantages in
accumulating media industries, hence the focus is on the first principle of
Curtin‘s media capital idea: the logic of accumulation (Curtin 1). The second
part of the chapter examines trajectories of creative migration (Curtin 2), and the
reasons why creative talent accumulates in Beijing. However, the question this
raises is: how do these people express their creative selves?
Miller et al. have used the term ‗new international division of cultural labour‘
(NICL) to show how Hollywood has brought workforce from around the world
into its own orbit and coined the term describe Hollywood‘s action (Miller, et al.,
2001). At a national rather than global level, Beijing is a place that attracts
people from across China. People interact, transforming and remaking Beijing‘s
socio-cultural diversity (Curtin 3).
The chapter focuses on media companies, activities, and personnel in Beijing,
looks into some areas where creative expression is evident and, in doing so,
investigates how intersections of people and elements of socio-cultural diversity
influence the development of media industries in Beijing; it examines the effects
of people on media industries in Beijing. In doing this, I want to ask the
following questions:
Does Beijing‘s diversity equate to forces of socio-cultural variation as
described by Curtin?
118
Does the creative ethos of Beijing—particularly the tension between
political conformity and the desire to be an international city—translate into
a distinctive form of media capital?
While Beijing‘s audiences like a variety of cultural and media forms, and while
Beijing has high levels of creative talent, its media production output is
characterised by a high degree of conformity or, in other words, a lack of
diversity. This is a paradox of China, and of Beijing as its media capital.
5.1 Curtin 1: Forces of Beijing’s accumulation
5.1.1 TV industry: forces of accumulation
In 2003, Wang Changtian estimated that nearly 80% of China‘s TV production
organisations and companies (including TV drama production companies) were
in Beijing (Ding, 2003). Since then, China‘s TV industry has further
consolidated in Beijing. Advertisers, especially of international brands, value
CCTV as the biggest and best publicity channel for their products, due to its
credibility as the national media outlet and its established strength in the
national market. Hence, CCTV is a precious resource for private companies
whose profit mainly comes from selling advertising time.
Because of China‘s ‗going out‘ media strategy, CCTV is strongly supported by
the central government. Guo Zhenzhi, from Tsinghua University remarks:
‗CCTV has everything which can be achieved by spending money‘ (Guo, 2008,
p. 240). Accordingly, the expansion of CCTV and state-owned TV companies
provides private TV production companies with many outsourcing opportunities.
119
For companies aiming at the national market in particular, CCTV‘s standing as
the industry benchmark facilitates its power over contractors. Lu Jia, the
Chinese co-founder of Beijing Somebody International Media, a
Chinese-Taiwanese joint venture for TV production, said that their experience
with CCTV is appreciated when they seek business opportunities from
provincial TV stations and city TV stations that are outside of Beijing.
(Interview with Lu Jia, 2009) His colleague, Yang Li, added that their views on
program production are more likely to be adopted, as they are treated as the
experts from Beijing working with CCTV. (Interview with Yang Li, 2009)
Private production companies that used to heavily rely on their connection with
TV stations are thrown into the market. They are forced to improve their
production quality, diversify their business scope and enhance their visibility.
They cluster in Beijing. Zhou Hao, the co-founder of Beijing Golden Screen
Culture Communication Co., Ltd. says:
Beijing is the best place for us to do TV business. You can spend less money to
attain better results. For instance, most TV stars live in Beijing. I can easily get in
contact and discuss shooting plan with them ... And the publicity effect is better if
we hold the press conference or the promotion campaign in Beijing.
(Interview with Zhou Han, 2009)
The competition brought about by agglomeration lowers production costs. Li
Yan, a freelance film director indicated that the cost of shooting TV programs or
dramas is comparatively lower in Beijing because ‗you can hire better people
and equipment with lower price here due to the competition‘. (Interview with Li
Yan, 2009)
120
5.1.2 Film industry: forces of accumulation
In 1999, the China Film Company, the Beijing Film Studio, the China
Children‘s Film Studio, the Beijing Film Processing and Recording Technology
Plant, the China Film Equipment Company, the China Film Co-production
Company, the Huayun Film and TV Disk Company Ltd., and the Movie
Satellite Channel merged to form the China Film Group Corporation (CFGC) in
Beijing, ‗the aircraft carrier of China‘s film industry‘. (Jin, 2010) Representing
the biggest investment by the Chinese government in the film industry, CFGC‘s
business approach is comprehensive. It covers the whole film industry chain in
China, from production, shooting base, post-production, promotion and
marketing, cinema chains, and distribution to derivative products. More
importantly, because of the resources and personnel it has obtained through the
merger, CFGC controls the import and export channel for Chinese films; in
addition to producing and co-producing films, it operates the largest cinema
chain in China.
In 2009 CFGC distributed 146 domestic films and 39 imported films in China,
and the national box office for these films hit at four billion RMB, accounting
for 64.45% of the major film market in China. CFGC also holds and participates
in six film circuits in China and occupies nearly half of the country‘s cinema
market. CFGC, as the representative of the Chinese government in the film
industry, also invests in cultivating and recruiting film talent. The CEO of
CFGC, Han Sanping, states that CFGC has the responsibility to recruit young
film directors in order to drive China‘s film industry to prosper in accordance
with the CFGC Young Directors Film Production Plan (Han & Hu, 2008). The
Movie Satellite Channel (dianying pindao), known as CCTV-6, is owned by
CFGC and broadcasts nationally via CCTV‘s satellite. This helps CFGC to
consolidate its dominant position in China‘s film industry. Attracted by CFGC‘s
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powerful influence over China‘s film industry, investment and film companies
keep coming to Beijing and seeking collaboration with CFGC. CFGC‘s
industrial chain also mothers a large number of small and medium size film
companies in support sectors in Beijing.
Another major step taken by the government is building cinema chains as an
effective approach to control market access. The central government announced
at the end of 2001 that production companies and studios were allowed to sell
films directly to cinemas, and trans-provincial operation and collaboration was
encouraged. Since then, cinema chains have been built in each province and
municipality. In 2002, thirty cinema chains were built in 23 provinces and
municipalities. As Table 11 shows, nearly every province had its own cinema
chains. Beijing didn‘t have an obvious advantage at the beginning. But as Table
12 (which is generated based on SARFT‘s statistics) shows, in 2010, three of
China‘s five biggest circuit companies are now in Beijing (Wanda Circuit Co.,
China Film Xingmei Circuit Co. Ltd., and Beijing New Film Association
Company Ltd.). In addition, another three circuit companies in the list of
China‘s top ten cinema chains, Shenzhen China Film Southern New Line
Company Ltd., Sichuan Pacific Circuit Company Ltd., and Liaoning Northern
Circuit Company Ltd. are held or co-invested by film companies in Beijing, by
CFGC and Beijing New Film Association Company in particular. Moreover,
Beijing Wanda Circuit Company Ltd., which has investment from a real estate
company in Dalian, Liaoning Province, has quickly grown into China‘s biggest
cinema chain.
Table 10 China's major cinema chains in 2002 (adopted from Rong Tang & Shao, 2005,
pp. 284-285)
Locality Quantity Name Type Cinemas Screens
Beijing 2 China Film
Xingmei Circuit Trans-provincial 22 41
122
Company Ltd.
(zhongying
xingmei
yuanxian)
Beijing New
Film
Association
Company Ltd.
(xinyinglian
yuanxian)
provincial 57 85
Shanghai 2
Shanghai
United Circuit
(lianhe
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 56 134
Shanghai Ever
Shining Circuit
Company Ltd.
(daguangming
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 15 22
Sichuan
Province 2
Sichuan Pacific
Circuit
Company Ltd.
(taipingyang
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 36 96
Sichuan Emei
Film
Distribution and
Circuit
Company Ltd.
(emei yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 26 82
Hunan
Province 2
Hunan
Xiaoxiang Film
and TV
Communication
Company Ltd.
(xiaoxiang
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 17 28
Hunan
Chuxiang Film
Company Ltd.
Trans-provincial 10 24
123
(chuxiang
yuanxian)
Zhejiang
Province 3
Zhejiang Shidai
Great Circuit
Company Ltd.
(shidai dianying
da yuanxian)
Provincial 66 123
Wenzhou
Yandang Circuit
Company Ltd.
(wenzhou
yandang
yuanxian)
Provincial 20 37
Zhejiang
Xingguang
Circuit
Company Ltd.
(zhejiang
xingguang
yuanxian)
Provincial 22 36
Jiangsu
Province 3
Jiangsu Heyday
Asia Circuit
Company Ltd.
(shengshi
yaxiya
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 29 45
Jiangsu Oriental
Film Company
Ltd. (dongfang
yuanxian)
Provincial 12 33
Jiangsu Yangtze
Circuit
Management
Centre (yangzi
yuanxian)
Provincial 25 41
Guangdong
Province 3
Guangdong
China Film
Southern Circuit
Company Ltd.
(huaying
nanfang
Provincial 69 88
124
yuanxian)
Shenzhen Film
Circuit
Company Ltd.
(shenying
yuanxian)
Provincial 11 15
Guangdong
Pearl River
Circuit
Company Ltd.
(zhujiang
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 28 53
Liaoning
Province 1
Liaoning
Northern Circuit
Company Ltd.
(beifang
yuanxian)
Trans-provincial 45 91
Table 11 China’s top ten cinema chains in 2010 (data source: SARFT)
Ranking Name Locality
Box office
Income (million
RMB)
1 Beijing Wanda Circuit Company Ltd.
(wanda yuanxian) Beijing 1,402.65
2
China Film Xingmei Circuit Company
Ltd.
(zhongying xingmei yuanxian)
Beijing 1,213.27
3 Shanghai United Circuit
(lianhe yuanxian) Shanghai 107128
4
Shenzhen China Film Southern New
Line Company Ltd. (zhongying
nanfang xinganxian)
Guangdong
Province 950.71
5
Beijing New Film Association
Company Ltd.
(xinyinglian yuanxian)
Beijing 79.873
6
Guangzhou Jinyi Pearl River Circuit
Company Ltd.
(jinyi zhujiang yuanxian)
Guangdong
Province 68.883
7
Zhejiang Time Movie World
Company Ltd.
(shidai dianying dashijie)
Zhejiang
Province 42.043
125
8
Guangdong Great Ground Circuit
Company Ltd.
(dadi yuanxian)
Guangdong
Province 37.552
9 Sichuan Pacific Circuit Company Ltd.
(taipingyang yuanxian)
Sichuan
Province 35.982
10
Liaoning Northern Circuit Company
Ltd.
(beifang yuanxian)
Liaoning
Province 32.041
Huayi Brothers, Beijing New Picture Film Co. (xinhuamian yingye), Poly Bona,
and other major private film companies in China have been established in
Beijing. Films produced or co-produced by them show up at the top of the
national box office takings. Of the seven private film distribution companies
certified in 2003 by SARFT to distribute films, four were in Beijing. According
to Gao Ping‘s calculations in relation to China‘s film distribution companies
(Gao, 2008), the distribution sector of China‘s film industry is dominated by
distribution companies in Beijing. As figure 13 demonstrates, among the ten
largest film distribution companies, CFGC and Huaxia Film Distribution
Company, which are the only two state-owned film distribution companies, are
in Beijing. They occupy nearly 60% of the market share. The other eight
companies are privately owned; five of them are based in Beijing, and one is
controlled by Huayi Brothers in Beijing. Many private capital and foreign
companies are attracted to Beijing by its strong power base in terms of
production and distribution. Columbia Pictures chooses Huayi Brothers as its
partner in China. Most Hong Kong directors set up their own studios and live in
Beijing now. Hong Kong director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Chen Kexin) sees Beijing
as the lifeline of China‘s film industry and believes it will become the centre of
Chinese film (Pan, 2008).
Figure 13: Ten biggest film distribution companies in China
126
The primary reason for China‘s film industry clustering in Beijing is its
reputation. When Hong Kong director Andrew Wai-Keung Law (Liu Weiqiang)
is asked why he came to Beijing, he replies: ‗Where else we should go if not
Beijing‘ (L. Zhang, Jian, & Li, 2011). The strong production power of Beijing in
the film industry pulls in more film business; more business opportunities can be
found there. Combined with its strong TV production capacity, Beijing‘s film
industry has more resources than elsewhere in China. In addition, being in
Beijing offers the closest access to the city‘s abundant media outlets. As Guan
Yadi, who used to work for Yu Dong, CEO of Poly Bona, and is now an
independent producer, maintains, Beijing‘s TV stations, CCTV, BTV, Phoenix
TV, Travel Channel (lvyou weishi) and Movie Satellite Channel, and its strong
distribution capacities, help film companies to promote and sell their film across
borders. (Interview with Guan Yadi, 2009) A final, but important reason is
government support. Because of the central government‘s support, CFGC has
been able to expand widely and compete in the national film market quickly.
The Beijing Municipal Government spares no effort to support the film industry.
It provides loans to film companies through the Bank of Beijing.
34.53%
23.89%
18.20%
6.00%
3.99%3.45%
3.17%2.45% 2.16% 2.16%
CFGC (Beijing) Huaxia (Beijing)
Poly Bona (Beijing) Ciwen Film & TV (Beijing)
Xiying Huayi (Xi'an, controlled by Huayi Brother) Shanghai Huayu
Shanghai Dongfang Xingmei Distribution (Beijing)
Xinhua Zhanwang (Beijing) Beijing New Picture
127
5.1.3 Different routes, same destination
As discussed earlier in Chapter 3, Beijing has been the national centre ever since
China began to develop the TV sector in 1958. As the national flagship, CCTV
plays a key role in China‘s TV industry. TV companies are dependent on CCTV
because it offers the widest range of channels in China. However the
competition between provincial TV stations and CCTV intensified as the
government loosened its restrictions and encouraged competition. CCTV
gradually lost its superiority (although it still enjoys certain protection from
SARFT).
Provincial TV stations are also vying for audiences. As the CEO of Enlight
Media, Wang Changtian, observes: ‗It used to be believed that channel was the
king in the TV industry in China (qudao weiwang), but now it is the era of
content (neirong weiwang)‘ (T. Zhang & Xu, 2009). Along with the separation
of production from broadcasting, it now looks as if Beijing‘s advantage, which
has been gained because of CCTV, will be eroded by provincial TV stations and
private TV companies.
China‘s film industry is a different story. It was evenly scattered in several
provinces and cities due to the government‘s equal distribution thinking in the
planned economy. But business hardship engendered the central government‘s
push for reform. Beijing was chosen as the ideal place to develop the film
industry, as the central government was able to supervise while ‗liberalising‘. As
a result, Beijing‘s film industry grew quickly following several adjustments and
mergers organised by the central government. The choice of coming to Beijing
was heavily influenced by these developments: Dalian Wanda Commercial
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Properties Co., Ltd. established Wanda Beijing Wanda Circuit Company Ltd.,
now China‘s most successful cinema company; and Hunan Dianguang Media
Co., Ltd., which belongs to Hunan Media Corporation with Hunan Satellite TV,
invested 47.5 million RMB to establish its own film company in Beijing, TIK
Films, in 2010 (www.cfi.cn, 2010).
Despite different development tendencies presented in the TV and film
industries, they share a common dynamic, which is government. The
government‘s determination and concerns run through the whole process of
accumulation. The Chinese government coordinates the industry resources
throughout the country, regulates the media market competition and directs
industry consolidation in Beijing by making government investment and policies.
However, reform now extends towards welcoming competition, loosening
controls and easing the environment while protecting the national interest.
Under these circumstances, we should consider how long the dynamic of media
industries consolidation in Beijing can be sustained. What are Beijing‘s
‗favourable untraded interdependencies‘ or ‗positive locational externalities‘
(Scott, 2002, p. 166)? I will discuss these questions in Chapter 6 through the
second and the third principles of media capital, trajectories of creative
migration and socio-cultural variation.
5.2 Curtin 2: trajectories of Beijing’s creative migration
As Curtin maintains, during the pre-modern era in liberal democratic societies,
creative migration was driven by patronage relations rather than market force
(Curtin, 2007, p. 14). The same argument can be applied to China, although the
centrality of politics was more obvious. Beijing‘s status as China‘s political
129
centre contributed greatly to the emergence of a media workforce in Beijing.
After 1949, China‘s political centre was again shifted to Beijing. The ‗new
China‘ spirit represented by Beijing appealed to many Chinese artists and
writers. They moved to Beijing to be closely involved in the new Chinese
culture of socialism. Beijing gradually re-established its status as China‘s
cultural centre.
As many authors have shown, from 1950s to the end of the Cultural Revolution,
the cultural sector was deemed as to be just a ‗cog in the wheel‘ of the
propaganda machine; the media was the key player, and media workers were
regarded along with teachers and intellectuals as ‗engineers of the soul‘. In the
1950s the Chinese government moved to establish and strengthen media and
cultural institutions to maintain ideological control over society. Scholars, artists,
and writers were invited and recruited from around the country to build up the
Beijing Film Academy (BFA) and the Central Academy of Drama (CAD),
China‘s two most prestigious institutions specialising in film and performance,
as well as the Beijing Broadcasting Institute (BBI, restructured into
Communication University of China in 2004, CUC). Accordingly, many artists
and writers moved to Beijing to be engaged in film education. Allen Scott has
shown how educational institutions coordinate local social networks and
enhance Hollywood‘s competitive advantage by providing educational and
training opportunities (Scott, 2005, pp. 130-132).
The significance of universities and educational institutions is even more
obvious in Beijing. Firstly, due to the presences of universities, Beijing became
the cradle of the TV and film industry. This in turn formed a strong alumni
network. Before the reforms of the 1980s, the state was responsible for
distributing university graduates to different working units around the country;
that is, students had little or no freedom to choose where they wanted to work.
130
Most of the top graduates from the aforementioned three institutions were
assigned to work in media organisations in Beijing due to the government‘s
agenda of developing the city into the cultural centre. Progressively, the talent
accumulation, generated by education organisations and led by government,
greatly assisted the development of media industries in Beijing.
As the economic reforms changed the social structure, people were increasingly
able to flow freely from job to job, from place to place; the role of the
government employment assignment system receded. Over the past decade
creative human capital has migrated to Beijing for new reasons:
5.2.1 Education institutions
Educational institutions still play a key role. Following decades of development,
BFA, CAD and CUC have reared most media professionals in China. For
example, the fifth generation of directors all graduated from Beijing Film
Academy, and the most internationally recognised Chinese actors and actress,
Gong Li, Jiang Wen, and Zhang Ziyi studied performance at the Central
Academy of Drama. Most staff at CCTV and provincial TV stations graduated
from CUC. Accordingly, many aspirants come to Beijing and attend the entry
interview for these universities because they believe that entry to these
institutions is a precondition for a successful career in the media industries.
Guan Yadi, who used to work in Poly Bona and now is an independent film
producer, recalled:
When I was little, I always wanted to work in the film industry because I
loved film so much. Then I started watching various films and reading any
reports related to film. One thing that struck me was that nearly every great
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director and actor/actress studied at Beijing Film Academy. Therefore I
applied for BFA when I finished high school and was lucky to be accepted.
(Interview with Guan Yadi, 2009)
Xu Gang (Interview with Xu Gang, 2009) and Li Yan (Interview with Li Yan,
2009) concurred with this view and described it as ‗a simple and natural reaction‘
to apply to BFA to pursue their film dream after high school. Employers hire
graduates from BFA, CAD and CUC out of confidence in these institutions‘
quality of education. Wang Qiang, who is a CUC graduate and cofounded his
media, animation and advertising company with his friends in 2007, maintains
that he only recruits graduates from BFA, CUC, and several other reputable
universities in Beijing (Interview with Wang Qiang, 2009). Directors will often
go to these universities when organising production teams for new projects.
Students in these universities are ‗readymade‘ for China‘s films and TV
industries. Another important factor is that directors and producers are bonded
to these universities by their alumni relationships. As the bond connecting most
Chinese media professionals, BFA, CAD and CUC are the most important entry
points for aspirants seeking to enter into media careers. Li Yan quit school very
early and tried several jobs, even playing rock music. Later on, his interest
shifted to media but he didn‘t know how to start. He said:
I didn‘t have any friend working in the media. No one in my family ever
worked in this area before. I didn‘t know how I could find a job in media
industries and who I could go to. Then I thought maybe I should go to BFA
or CAD to learn how to make films and during my study there, find the way
to get myself into the industry, as they have strong alumni networks.
(Interview with Li Yan, 2009)
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5.2.2 Career opportunities
Another reason driving creative migration to Beijing is strong local networks.
Creative industries, by definition, entail highly flexible, open-ended and
project-oriented production systems. Along with the accumulation of media in
Beijing, more and more job opportunities are generated. This means there are
more opportunities for subcontractors and freelance workers, with employment
secured by being close to the largest pool of employment opportunities,
according to economic geographers (Christopherson & Storper, 1989).
According to Wang Qiang, a native of Sichuan Province:
People must come to Beijing because all the media companies, especially
the big ones are in Beijing... what every Chinese media worker really needs
is a chance to realize his or her personal value… but you won‘t be able to
work on one TV program or film if working in a small company…
Wang Qiang started his first company with friends while studying at CUC,
although the company went bankrupt due to financial difficulties. He chose to
stay in Beijing after graduation because of his networks and subsequently
opened his second company with friends in the TV, animation and advertising
business. He believes that being in Beijing, he is exposed to more companies
and organisations that he regards as potential clients. Now his clients include
CCTV, BTV, Heilongjiang TV, KAKU animation channel, CBN (the business
channel of Dragon TV) and China Education TV. He stressed: ‗The biggest
advantage of Beijing is its big market, abundant opportunities and rich client
recourses... Beijing is so big and I am so small…‘ (Interview with Wang Qiang,
2009)
Zhou Hao used to work in a provincial TV station in Shandong Province and
made some contacts in Beijing as his work involved frequent business trips there.
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His talent and work ability were acknowledged by his contacts, and one of them
invited him to Beijing to work on a film. He said:
After I came to Beijing, I fell in love with this job slowly but steadily. My
intention was to help my friend. But it becomes my own business now.‖ He
added: ―The bigger a company is, the more constant its staff turnover is.
However the chief personnel in the production team won‘t change much.
We can‘t just work with someone in the market. We always collaborate
with friends as we trust their capacity and moral qualities.
(Interview with Zhou Hao, 2009)
The issue of opportunities was a common theme in my discussions. Shaun
Chang, a Taiwanese TV producer based in Beijing, recalled that her Taiwanese
friends first established their media companies in Shanghai but had to move to
Beijing later on ‗because they could find no opportunities there‘. (Interview with
Shaun Chang, 2009)
5.2.3 Initiated by the capital status
Aside from the obvious business benefits, Beijing‘s capital status lures people
into its ‗orbit‘. Beijing is the political centre of China and thus the place where
news, especially breaking news, occurs frequently. Therefore, every TV station
has a Beijing office, not only to be close to breaking political news but also to
access entertainment news. Dai Lü from Taiwan‘s Zhongtian TV Station
explained:
As a Taiwanese TV station, we are of course very interested in China‘s
political news. That‘s why I work in Beijing as it‘s the political centre.
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Similarly, we set up our US office in Washington because we want to get
the first hand news about USA. But as I am already in Beijing, I often also
report on local entertainment news report and commercial activities.
(Interview with Dai Lü, 2009)
The capital culture of Beijing has an all-embracing spirit (jianrong bingbao). As
mentioned above, diverse ‗creative cultures‘ exist in Beijing, and this ethos,
while not Western pluralism, is attractive for media workers seeking inspiration
and connections. Wang Binbin, a TV producer at CCTV-2 said: ‗I am from
Jiangsu Province in the southern part of China, but I love the culture represented
by Beijing, which is so different from my hometown. It‘s so dignified and has
grandeur.‘ (Interview with Wang Binbin, 2009)
In addition, Beijing, as the power centre, symbolises the country‘s image, and
this has a strong cultural influence on every Chinese. Numerous cultural events
are held in Beijing every year. According to Ouyang Guozhong, the former
producer of Hunan Satellite TV and CCTV, Chinese audiences are more
interested in Beijing stories because of its dominance in Chinese culture (G.
Ouyang, 2003, p. 8). Zhou Hao believes that Beijing‘s cultural influence is one
important reason why he is based in Beijing. He said: ‗The publicity effect is
much better for any campaign activity.‘ (Interview with Zhou Hao, 2009) In
spite of the advent of popular satellite channels in the late 1990s, CCTV is the
only network that reaches the whole market. CCTV pioneered the concept of
annual contests, such as The National Youth Singer Contest, aimed at
identifying cultural and artistic talent. CCTV‘s Chinese New Year Gala has been
the most watched TV program in China since it began in 1983.
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Yang Li, a TV producer working in Beijing Somebody International Media, was
born in Xinjiang and had her college education in North-western Shaanxi
Province. She recalled:
I think I have a special affinity to Beijing. When I was a little girl, I always
wondered why I lived in Xinjiang instead of Beijing. At that time I watched
CCTV all the time… Children in Beijing were able to perform at the
opening ceremony of the Asian Games but I couldn‘t. They sang and
danced on TV shows but I couldn‘t… Therefore Beijing to me is the centre
of everything… As I watched so many programs about Beijing, I feel
connected to Beijing Though I am not a Beijing native, I always feel so
familiar with the city.
(Interview with Yang Li, 2009)
5.2.4 The mutual learning effect in media migration
As I have described, media human capital is absorbed into Beijing, but the
questions remains: how do people go about learning about media in Beijing?
According to Curtin, modern media production is reliant on mutual learning
effects occurring between people who congregate and co-work in certain locales
as well as the industry‘s ability to maintain its infrastructure for organisational
learning while adapting to quickly changing circumstances (Curtin, 2007, p. 18).
By working and living together, new knowledge is created, and existing
knowledge is transferred and spread among media workers in both tacit and
explicit ways. Therefore, a locally based community of media workers evolves
into an active hub of information exchange and knowledge production.
Accordingly, it is necessary to examine how the mutual learning effects are
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engendered in the local community and how these effects sustain the migration
tendency.
Institutions such as BFA, CUC and CAD are one major type of locus for
knowledge transfer. Students study media knowledge in coursework, but more
importantly, they learn tacit knowledge. BFA, CAD and CUC have very strong
relationships with the media industries. Many professors from these universities
also work in the industry— For instance, Huang Lei, a famous Chinese actor,
also works as a fulltime professor in BFA— so their students can easily and
quickly participate in the industry by means of internship or part-time work.
When Lu Jia was explaining how he started his business, he recalled:
When I was studying in the Beijing Film Academy, my teacher introduced
a temporary work in CCTV to me. Of course CCTV was quite satisfied
with my job as I had good training in school. Since then I gradually built up
a quite stable relation with CCTV and now CCTV is one of my major
clients.
(Interview with Lu Jia, 2009)
Even after graduation, media talents still keep in constant contact with their old
schools to acquire new knowledge. Wang Qiang explained:
CUC still offers me a lot of assistance for my business. I can obtain
information on the latest international trends from my former teachers.
They give me very useful advice and even use their own networks to
facilitate my business.
(Interview with Wang Qiang, 2009)
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However, studying at universities is still a one-way behaviour. Most mutual
learning effects actually happen during everyday work processes. Yang Li
studied finance and accounting and gained all her media knowledge and skills
through practical experience in the media industry. According to her, she
absorbs new knowledge by working with different people from a wide range of
backgrounds, and after working on several jobs in CCTV, BTV and private TV
production companies, she is now a successful producer. ‗Whenever I encounter
any difficulty, I always talk to my old colleagues and learn from their
experience,‘ she says. But she maintains that her career development has been
accelerated as a result of the opportunities and challenges presented by the rapid
growth of the media industries in Beijing. Or, in other words, that the mutual
learning process is accelerated by the rapid expansion of China‘s media
industries. She illustrated her point by using her new job as an example.
I was just a field director, and I thought this job was the same as my old
ones. However, my friend who founded this company told me recently that
he wanted me to be a producer in charge of developing a new program for a
provincial TV station because he was short of personnel due to the rapid
development of his business. I was a bit scared by his offer at first, but had
to adjust myself to the new job as soon as possible. This is a clear example
of being forced by circumstances to learn and adapt.
(Interview with Yang Li, 2009)
Yang Li was introduced to nearly every new job by old friends through
networks developed during previous work. She says that she learns diversified
production concepts and ideas via collaboration with media workers from
different organisations and institutions.
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Likewise, Zhou Hao explained that all his investors and partners were
introduced by friends, and he identified new ideas and opportunities through
them. He believes his social networks are very important to his work, as they
have various resources and knowledge. (Interview with Zhou Hao, 2009) An
expansive network brings in job opportunities as well as learning opportunities,
according to Wang Qiang:
We are good friends in life and competitors in work. I don‘t think they are
contradictory to each other. At least, I am doing pretty well. We help each
other by giving useful suggestions. Moreover, there are plenty of job
opportunities in Beijing, and hence we share information rather than hiding
from each other, because in this big market, there are always some things
that they are good at and something that I am good at. More importantly,
their work inspires me in two ways. On the one hand, I learn new
technology by communicating with them and develop my own production
format inspired by their work; on the other, their development puts
psychological pressure on me, so that I always push myself to do better in
order to catch up with them.
(Interview with Wang Qiang, 2009)
The deepening of media reform has broadened channels for information flow.
More parties are brought into mutual learning processes in Beijing. Yang Li
described her old job in CCTV as ‗a passive way of accepting her boss‘s
instructions‘. She had no chance to express her thoughts to the boss (lingdao).
But now, as a producer in a private TV production company, she is able to talk
to CCTV when she produces programs for them. In this way, CCTV and she
understand each other better and learn from each other. She says that
state-owned TV stations realise that they have to adjust themselves in order to
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deal with the severe competition that accompanies the reform. They need private
companies‘ help to be competitive.
Thus, from the above it is clear that the migration tendency in Beijing is
engendered and sustained by multiple factors. In Beijing, the university
experience is not dominated by pedagogy, as might have been the case two
decades ago. Institutions such as BFA, CAD and CUC are locales where
informal study occurs and information intersects. Outside the university locale,
media workers spread knowledge spontaneously and consciously while they
work and live collectively; accordingly new job opportunities emerge. The
rapidly developing industry and competition are catalysts accelerating the speed
and scale of creative migration. In the mean time, the creative migration drives
the industry‘s accumulation in a given place, thereby enhancing its
attractiveness to potential migrants. Then new media workers come to the place
in search of work and peers. Therefore an open-ended growth spiral is formed in
Beijing, in which the centripetal logic of production is married to the centripetal
trajectories of creative migration, as Curtin argues (2007, p. 18). Moreover,
according to Guan Yadi, for most media workers in China, the city of Beijing
itself is endowed with a symbolic value that makes it ‗just the right place for
media workers to go to‘. (Interview with Guan Yadi, 2009)
5.3 Curtin 3: Beijing’s socio-cultural variation
5.3.1 Schizophrenic Beijing
Senior media executives often say that ‗Media is a people business‘ (Aris &
Bughin, 2005, p. 373). Allen Scott writes that ‗without labour, the production
system is nothing but an empty shell‘ (Scott, 2005, p. 9). In fact, it is not only
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Hollywood‘s production processes that have evolved to maximise its efficiency
and reach and thus its global dominance; its success also depends on its labour
pool and the availability of an immense diversity of skills. This is a similar story
to Silicon Valley‘s. Along with skills, we find a great deal of tolerance for
‗thinking out of the box‘, for incubating new ideas, and for creative
experimentation. While the agglomeration of media industries in Beijing (logics
of accumulation) has attracted a pool of media talent (trajectories of creative
migration), the question remains: does this lead to socio-cultural variation in
media output (forces of socio-cultural variations)? In order to answer this
question we need to look deeper into the roots of Beijing‘s culture.
As discussed in previous chapters, Beijing is the media centre of China. As the
national capital, it has political, cultural and economic power. It has been the
capital since the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century (although China‘s political
centre was moved to Nanjing in Jiangsu Province during the Kuomintang‘s brief
regime in the 20th century). Now Beijing is home to national regulatory
agencies such as SARFT and Ministry of Culture (MoC), which impact on the
culture and audio-visual sectors. As this thesis argues, if you want to know how
the media system functions in China, there is no better place to investigate than
Beijing.
For many outside China, the symbol of Beijing is Tiananmen Square. From one
perspective Beijing is conservative. It is symbolic of China‘s conservative
political ideology; it houses opulent palaces and temples; its huge stone walls
and gates present an image of stability. Paradoxically, Beijing is also the hotbed
of China‘s modern culture. It is symbolic of a rebellious spirit. Historically,
Beijing is the origin of the New Culture Movement (xin wenhua yundong) and
the May Fourth Movement (wusi yundong) in the mid 1910s and early 1920s,
respectively, both of which led a revolt against Confucian culture, calling for the
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creation of a new Chinese culture based on global and western standards,
especially democracy and science.
In modern times, Beijing‘s cultural groups have shown resistance to power.
Beijing‘s so-called rural urban syndicates (chengxiang jiehebu), are groups of
contemporary artists who represent the ‗cynical realism‘ movement, a school
that mocks China‘s political and social realities; in Beijing‘s cafés and bars one
finds independent rock bands expressing their angst about government and
social conditions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Beijing was the centre of the
hooligan literature movement, best represented by Wang Shuo, a writer who
symbolised the people of Beijing‘s suspicion of authority.
Beijing‘s intellectual culture includes a significant part of its so-called elites. As
a privileged stratum, they have long been exposed to the world via media and by
reading literature not accessible to the common people. With personal
experience of the political system and material wealth inherited from their
families, they have had the luxury of making culture, a situation reminiscent of
the period after 1911 leading to the New Culture Movement when court
intellectuals were released from their responsibility. For instance, Wang Shuo
grew up in a military family in Beijing; his work was made into several
successful TV dramas and films in China. According to Tom Wang, CEO of
Beidong Media, compared with Shanghai or Guangzhou, which may have better
performance in economic development, ‗Beijing has inherited an atmosphere of
culture ever since the Ming Dynasty and people living in Beijing want to speak
out instead of earning money‘. (Interview with Tom Wang, 2009) Xu Gang,
deputy director of distribution of August First Film Studio (bayi dianying
zhipian chang) commented: ‗It‘s so different in Beijing. Here even a taxi driver
criticises current political affairs and makes jokes of the central leaders; but in
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Shanghai, people are busy making money and have no time to discuss or even
think about other things.‘ (Interview with Xu Gang, 2009)
The schizophrenic character of Beijing is evident in its population mix and its
tolerance of diversity. Chan Koonchung (Chen Guanzhong), a well-known Hong
Kong writer and the founder of Hong Kong Film Directors‘ Guild, says that
Beijing‘s tolerance attracts and accommodates people from various backgrounds.
Beijing ‗… guards the torch of avant-garde culture unceasingly; generations of
young people come to Beijing to pursue their dream and wait to see the
daybreak‘ (Chen, 2004, p. 55). In terms of its creative industries, Beijing‘s
inclusiveness provides a field for creative talents to ‗muddle along‘ (hun), or, in
other words, to drift between different sectors, between arts and commerce, to
pursue their dream while earning money. In contrast to stereotypes of Beijing as
a closed political city, there are numerous spaces for creative experiments and
scenes, including avant-garde culture, performance artists and literary
movements.
One of my interviewees, Luo Xuan, co-founder of Beijing BMC Co. Ltd., a
company providing animation, digital effect and advertising services for CCTV
and other commercial clients, confirms Chan‘s observation. He said:
Beijing is just like New York, where anyone can find his or her own space.
Shanghai may look more westernized which makes people believe it‘s more
diversified. But on the contrary, you can only be a Shanghai person in
Shanghai; but you can be yourself very comfortably in Beijing because
people here are so used to heterogeneity. That‘s why young Chinese are
more likely to come to Beijing.
(Interview with Luo Xuan, 2009)
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Chen Danqing, a Chinese artist and critic born in Shanghai, who lived in New
York for 18 years before settling in Beijing, also expressed his preference for
Beijing. He said: ‗Today‘s Shanghai is boring… people with restless mind have
moved to Beijing.‘ (Chen, 2008)
Beijing has a large concentration of museums and galleries. Cultural events
ranging from classical music concerts to indie film salons are regularly held in
Beijing. These events not only generate job opportunities for media workers, but
also foster a mixed cultural atmosphere, one that values playfulness and artistry.
The special cultural atmosphere in Beijing in turn nurtures audiences who seek
out fun and meaningful media products.
5.3.2 Struggling international conglomerates
Among the different parties in the media production system in China,
international media conglomerates are the outsiders. Although Beijing has large
clusters of domestic media organisations and is the most attractive site for
foreign media companies, the city remains mysterious to non-local market
players for many reasons, including the difficulty of ‗reading the winds‘ of
media policy and a hybrid culture made up of a conservative historical tradition
and international pop culture. Their business ‗know how‘ and experience derive
from activities in a pluralist media environment. In China, policies can be
initiated and quickly changed by the instructions of central leaders; these people
exert great power on the media industry. The discretion of executive divisions
cannot be ignored either (Curtin, 2005). The main obstacle is censorship, which
can be complicated and bewildering. Under the current regime, the foremost
principle for any international media corporation to survive in China is to show
friendly intentions and nurture a good relationship with the Chinese government.
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It takes a long time for a foreign company to win trust from the government.
Only well-funded foreign media corporations can afford to wait; as they cannot
directly produce content for broadcast, they will often establish covert and
‗under the radar‘ joint ventures with Chinese media organisations and
state-owned TV stations in particular. News Corporation‘s FOX Network, a
highly resourced entity, had to provide platforms for CCTV-9 to broadcast in the
US to gain approval for its entertainment channel (xingkong weishi) in
Guangdong Province. This may entail registering under a different kind of
production license. However, this places overseas media companies, especially
those of comparatively smaller scale and lesser resources, at a disadvantage,
since their negotiating partners are very clear about their situation. Dai Lü
described the Chinese partner as ‗arrogant sometimes‘ and said that it‘s hard for
non-local media companies to enter into dialogue with local media organisations,
especially state-owned TV stations, on an equal basis. Media giants from outside
China don‘t necessarily win the upper hand all the time. In fact, while they are
depicted as ‗the wolves from the West‘ by Chinese academics (as cited in Zhao,
2008), the reality is that in China they often resemble sheep in need of
protection.
Nevertheless, dealing with government control is not the only issue for
international media firms to solve. Another difficulty is content localisation. In a
recent report, David Wolf, CEO of Wolf Group Asia, criticises the assumption
that Chinese consumers will accept any Western media product. He argues that
Chinese audiences want media content about themselves and that the desire for
foreign cultural products is declining (Nicholson, 2009). In addition to this,
Chinese people‘s wary attitude towards representatives of foreign media is
produced by the government censorship and face-saving concerns. Janek
Zdzarski, a Polish TV reporter and producer recalled:
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One day I had a very interesting chat with the elevator operator when
I was in the elevator. She complained a lot to me about her work and
life. Then I decided to shoot a documentary of her and she agreed.
But she started saying how grateful she is to the government and how
happy she is with her job and work when I brought my casting crew
over to her place and started shooting. I think her boss must have
talked to her and she didn‘t want to embarrass her homeland in front
of foreigners.
(Interview with Janek Zdzarski, 2009)
5.3.3 Confident domestic players
Many scholars have discussed reforms in the media sector in China and the
transformation from media institution (shiye) to media companies (qiye)
(Donald & Keane, 2002; Fung, 2009; Zhao, 2003). While much change has
occurred, there is still a big gap between Chinese practices and international
‗best practice‘. In short, local practices contradict international models
depending on the circumstances. State-owned media organisations such as TV
stations and film studios are mostly financially independent from government,
but are still shielded by government in other ways. Hence they are relatively
confident in their competitive capacity. Tang Haifei, a TV producer at China
International Television Corporation, explained that the reason for the popularity
of Korean TV dramas in China12
is that ‗Chinese audiences haven‘t watched
high-quality TV drama before‘. According to him, China‘s capacity to produce
12 Since 2005, Korean TV dramas have been extensively purchased by Chinese TV stations;
although they are broadcast over and over again, audience ratings remain high.
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quality TV has improved a lot due to government support with funding,
personnel, and policy. (Interview with Tang Haifei, 2009)
Their confidence is not misplaced. Locally produced media products are
preferred by audiences in the same ‗geo-linguistic region‘ (Bielby & Harrington,
2002). Cultural proximity reflects not only the language, but also the music,
costume, and humour. Viewers seek the pleasure of recognising their own
culture in TV programs (Sinclair, et al., 1996). The failure of Desperate
Housewives in China illustrates the significance of building up the connection to
Chinese audiences. Domestic media companies are very well aware of their edge
in understanding local audience tastes and the importance of cultural proximity
in the Chinese media market. Tang Haifei stressed: ‗Who can understand our
audience‘s needs better than us Chinese?‘ (Interview Tang Haifei, 2009) The
state-owned media organisations are also pushed by competition to gradually get
rid of their old ways of thinking about relationships (guanxi). Wang Binbin gave
a vivid example to demonstrate this change:
We used to work with an advertising company that has some relationship
with our boss. But it turned out that their work is not good at all. Then we
just stopped our contract with it and found a better agency in the market.
Our boss didn‘t reject our action because the audience rating is our first
concern.
(Interview with Wang Binbin, 2009)
Moreover, there is significant change in media workers‘ attitudes. People
working in state-owned TV stations or film studios used to be regarded as
‗doing labour for the Communist Party‘ (Zhao, 2008, p. 46), seeking a stable job
and better welfare than average people, or working to gain a higher position in
the bureaucratic hierarchy. Much has changed. The advent of the creative
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industries has brought with it a discourse of precarious labour: it has been
argued that media workers are now exploited by post-Fordism and short term
work contracts (Hesmondhalgh, 2007). Yet this sense of precariousness has yet
to translate into China where there is a palpable sense of liberation from the past,
where cultural workers were heavily tied to prescriptive work unit practices and
used to generate propaganda campaigns and where work permits were not
negotiable.
Like creative workers elsewhere, work is no longer just a means of making a
living, but a way of living (Leadbeater & Oakley, 1999). They seek knowledge,
personal development, individual value and fun in their work, which is
especially true of media workers in Beijing. Yang Li said:
Work is a part of my life… I want to absorb knowledge, which is the
biggest source of my feeling of self-worth, and therefore I am always
looking for new opportunities. And I am not the only one having the same
idea in China.
(Interview with Yang Li, 2009)
Furthermore, Chinese media workers have started rebuilding their integrity and
self-esteem after decades of suppression. To them, in addition to their own
interest, they are ‗proud of their job‘, and think it‘s their ‗obligation to ignite
China‘s media industry‘13
. Carrying this new professional attitude, media
workers find ways to bypass the state‘s control and include their daring ideas in
the media content subtly. One of the bestselling films of 2010, Let the Bullets
13 This observation is based on the data I collected during my fieldwork in Beijing in late
2009.
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Fly (rang zidan fei), directed by Jiang Wen, which largely satirises the dark side
of the society in contemporary China by setting the story during the warlord
period of the 1920s, was co-produced and distributed by China Film Group, the
biggest state-owned film company in China.
The question of political control remains paradoxical and raises the question of
how people in the industry in Beijing understand pluralism. It is clear that their
responses indicate that the situation is better, but far from perfect. It is also clear
that avoiding politics is the concession that they are willing to make. One
example is that ‗hard news stories‘ are avoided or left to CCTV; independent
private companies pursue other strategies: this may include embedding political
messages in entertainment programming, such as Jiang Wen‘s production
mentioned above. Some of my interviewees said they are not afraid of
government control or they don‘t even feel any control since they are always
running ahead of the government. They make good use of the autonomy
generated by commercial reforms and believe that their influence is strong
enough to make the government change. Furthermore, they believe that their
presence in Beijing may be advantageous to further reform. When describing
their relationship to the government, Peng Yang, CEO of Kuaile de Gou, the
Beijing office of Kuailegou, a TV shopping channel of Hunan Satellite TV
station, said: ‗In fact, our innovative practice and successful results significantly
illustrate the necessity and feasibility of reform, and accordingly help us to
negotiate with the government and win greater freedom and support‘. (Interview
with Peng Yang, 2009) Therefore, to them, Beijing is certainly the ideal place
for work, as this is the place where their ‗boss‘ (laoban) works.
Qian Chongyuan, head of distribution of Beijing Forbidden City Film Company
(beijing zijincheng yingye) explained the logic behind this argument:
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It‘s good to be close to the government. Firstly, you are able to understand
the policy at first hand and communicate with the government when you are
confused. However, you may have difficulties in understanding the
government‘s intention, or resist to understand the policy because of your
misunderstanding, if you are in other cities. In fact you can talk to the
government officials face to face in Beijing, and your communication with
the government and your feedback is appreciated by the government and
impacts on their future decisions. In this way your desired changes will
happen sooner or later. Secondly, your constant contact with the
government helps you to build up a sort of friendship with officials, which
would facilitate your business to a great extent, as policies in China are not
always so clear. For example, if we make a film involving sensitive topics
such as street girls, who are an inevitable social issue in contemporary
society, whether we are allowed to bypass the censorship restrictions is at
the discretion of the officials.. We can explain our purpose to the official in
charge, and it is easier to persuade them if you have a good relationship
with them. But if you are not that close to them, they can be very strict on
your production and order you to take this topic out of your film, which
would negate the purpose of the story.
(Interview with Qian Chongyuan, 2009)
The case of Beijing Forbidden City Film Company supports his logic. Its film,
The Dream Factory (jiafang yifang) was almost vetoed by the Beijing Municipal
Government just prior to the news conference announcing the start of shooting
(Zeng, 2009). But the company managed to convince the government officials
quickly and subsequently had a big success in the film market. In this regard
media practitioners in Beijing have an advantage in gaining access to the ear of
government.
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The private sector is pragmatic, preferring to avoid talk about ideology or
national spirit. For many, international conglomerate penetration into the
Chinese media market is about occupying market share and profit. It follows a
similar logic to the Chinese government, which seeks to protect and stimulate
domestic media production. But for private media companies, most regard
international media companies as their role model; they believe that learning
from international media companies benefits their own business, in particular in
creativity and management. They don‘t appear to be frightened by competition.
On the contrary, they see it as ‗a good opportunity to enhance themselves by
struggling while learning‘, according to Li Haibin, an independent film producer
who often collaborate with Western film companies. (Interview with Li Haibin,
2009) Guan Yadi maintained that in China the key to doing media business is
networking and non-Chinese media companies need local companies‘ assistance
to achieve their business goals. (Interview with Guan Yadi, 2009) Thus, local
media companies are sure of their own knowledge, although they do
acknowledge international media firms‘ advanced capacities and abundant
experience.
5.3.4 Regulatory backflips
The problem of socio-cultural variations is best illustrated by attempts to
produce diverse content that appeals to more than one market. In Curtin‘s
account, successful media capitals have been able to export their stories and
formats. By 2003, the present secretary of the Municipal Committee of the CCP
of Beijing, Liu Qi, clarified the objective for Beijing to become the national
distribution centre for journalism, and the national production and trading centre
for film and TV, and to take its place in the international media market (Y. Sun
& Xu, 2003). The goal of being the locus of major national cultural, journalism,
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publication, film and television organisations was also clearly written into the
Overall Urban Planning of Beijing (2004-2020).14
Beijing‘s Eleventh Five-year
Plan stated that Beijing would be a production and trading centre for film and
TV programs.15
As far as the central government is concerned, its ambitions for
the media industries are not limited to the inward-looking development
previously exhibited by China‘s media industries.
Influenced by the concept of soft power (Nye, 2005; J. Zhang, 2009), the
Chinese government has charged the Chinese media sector with the role of
improving its international image. Soft power has emerged as a ‗wild card‘ in
China‘s media reforms. The term means many things, but essentially, in regard
to media exports it signifies an awareness of markets beyond the Mainland. In
this sense, soft power is the fundamental basis of socio-cultural variation. Early
in 2010, Zhu Hong, Spokesman of State Administration of Radio, Film and TV,
stressed that using the opportunity of the global financial crisis, top-ranking
international media companies should be constructed quickly to improve
China‘s international media influence and enhance its competitive capacity (H.
Zhu, 2010). Consequently, the Chinese government has started to look at the
international market, build up new channels and promote its media product
overseas. With so many powerful institutions in Beijing, it is predictable that the
Beijing municipal government will promote the development of media
industries more strongly in response to the central government‘s
internationalisation strategy.
14 It can be retrieved at: http://zhengwu.beijing.gov.cn/ghxx/ztgh/
15 More information can be found at:
http://zhengwu.beijing.gov.cn/ghxx/sywgh/t833176.htm
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However, in spite of its dedication to reform of its cultural and media sectors,
there are forbidden zones that remain blurry to market players, especially
non-Chinese players. This blurriness is described as ‗structured uncertainty‘
(Breznitz & Murphree, 2011). In other words, there is a degree of uncertainty
built in to policy making which is linked to informal knowledge of the rules of
engagement and the borders of expression. Once these informal rules are
infringed, the government adopts strict measures to punish the violator and
safeguard its authority. Many interviewees gave the same example to
demonstrate the sweeping effect of the Chinese government‘s policies. Criminal
themes were extremely popular with viewers in TV drama serials in China
before 2005 (Y. Zhu, Keane, & Bai, 2008). Many TV production companies
invested heavily in crime drama. Unexpectedly, SARFT produced a ruling that
criminal series were forbidden to be shown at prime time on TV stations,
apparently because some government officials were enraged by the heroic
narratives of criminal offenders in this type of TV dramas, which were deemed
as ‗unacceptable‘ to the government. Due to the huge value difference in
different broadcasting timeslots, many TV production institutions and
companies were not able to earn enough profit to cover their costs and were
forced to close down.
Similar policies impacted on period costume dramas in 2007 and spy dramas in
2011. The government‘s attitude and its reactions are ‗unpredictable‘, according
to Zhou Hao. (Interview with Zhou Hao, 2009) As a result, media companies
need to communicate with government officials regularly to learn what the
government‘s concerns are, to update their understanding of policies and to
adjust their strategies and find a way to reduce risk. State-owned media
organisations, especially those directly under the central government, such as
CCTV and China Film Group, enjoy an advantage in reading the political winds
because of their close relationship to the central government. According to Tang
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Haifei, they have regular meetings every week conveying the government‘s
recent instructions and briefing on officials‘ discussions. (Interview with Tang
Haifei, 2009)
However, the Chinese government is not always as rigid as its stereotypical
image might suggest. It welcomes competition in the media industry and
anticipates economic success. As in the manufacturing industries, the
government is always there to assist—or to make life difficult—depending on
circumstances. Once the government‘s endorsement is won, things will be
sorted out very quickly. Kai-Fu Lee, the former President of Microsoft Research
Asia and former CEO of Google China, believes that a company regarded as a
partner by the government will get favourable treatment, including detailed legal
instructions and friendly advice regarding business operations, whereas a
company considered unfriendly will encounter difficulties (K.-F. Lee & Fan,
2009). When the Beijing TV Art Centre was preparing for A Native of Beijing in
New York (beijingren zai niuyue), they sought to apply for a loan of 10 million
RMB, because traditional media investors were reluctant to invest substantial
money in risky TV production at that time. The loan application wasn‘t
approved because there was no precedent. Zheng Xiaolong and Feng Xiaogang,
co-producers of the drama, then wrote a letter to the central government asking
for help in the name of developing the market economy. They were fortunate
enough to obtain the support of the central leaders, and it only took ten days for
them to finalise procedures and get the money they needed from The Bank of
China (Y. Zhu, et al., 2008).
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5.4 Concluding remarks
It is evident that Beijing satisfies the first two requirements of media capital
(logics of accumulation and trajectories of creative migration). However,
applying the third requirement, forces of socio-cultural variations, leads into
uncharted waters. In this chapter, I have shown that creative human capital is
attracted because of Beijing‘s cultural ethos, its centrality, and its extensive
university and institutional networks. I have argued that Beijing has China‘s
biggest pool of job opportunities in the media and cultural industries; that there
is inspiration to be gained from the latest information from around the world;
that media professionals can easily find their peers; that they can get in contact
with all the TV stations and film studios in China; and that they can expose
themselves to the powerful media players. The continuous migration of media
personnel facilitates the media industries‘ growth in Beijing and helps Beijing
outstrips other cities in China in terms of the number of organisations working
in media industries. Thus, media industries accumulate in Beijing because
China‘s best media talents, the major source of creativity, are based in Beijing.
Industrial accumulation and creative migration nurture each other; these are
comparative advantages for Beijing.
In addition to the prominent industry development and flow of human capital,
Beijing‘s ethos is an advantage for media industries development; Beijing‘s
ethos is closely related to its political image. This represents the schizophrenic
nature of Beijing: politics attracts human capital; this then leads to the formation
of cultural communities, which continue to interpret and manoeuvre the political
system. In Chinese political language, there is a saying: shang you zhengce, xia
you duice (on the top there are policies, below there are strategies). After 1949,
Beijing became the political centre and with this came a parallel ethos: the
capacity to co-exist with political tensions. A huge portion of the population in
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Beijing is connected to the government in various ways; hence there is much
vested interest in ‗accommodation‘ due to the authoritarian political system and
this in turn leads to creative interpretation.
Curtin argues that political stability or expressive freedom is a significant factor
considered by creative workers, and consequently a political capital is less likely
to be a media capital due to the arm‘s length law (Curtin, 2010a, 2010b). As a
result, it seems that Beijing‘s deep involvement in politics hinders it from
becoming a media capital. But there are two points that we tend to neglect. One
is that political constraints are applicable to the whole country, not just Beijing.
No matter which Chinese city a media company is based in, it has to understand
the rules of the political game. However, there may be variations in how
supervision is conducted in different cities and regions. But being close to
government is usually an advantage, because the government‘s supervision of
media industries is negotiable, especially in the entertainment media sector. The
second point is that when media resources and personnel shift from Hong Kong
to mainland China, these entities have to contend with the rules of engagement,
particularly in relation to sensitive news issues. In relation to commercial media,
which is the focus of this paper, the Chinese government holds a more tolerant
attitude. It is possible to persuade the government to accept or even support
innovation and further reform. As a result, we should understand the Chinese
government in a comprehensive way. It is true that the government has its
forbidden zone. But as proved by my interviewees, the forbidden zone can be
bypassed or revised once a good connection with the government is built up in
the context of China.
However, it is misleading to conclude that government intervention is overall a
positive factor for media industries development in China: the vagueness of
policy provisions breeds opportunities for corruption; the complicated,
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hierarchical administration system lowers operating efficiency and reduces the
effectiveness of policies; overprotection of domestic media organisations,
especially the state-owned ones, hampers the development of media industries
and engenders the waste of resource; and production capacity is hampered by
excessive government control . More importantly, the inward-looking
development of media industries generated by government intervention may
erode Beijing‘s advantages as a potential media capital. Hence, Chapter 6 will
conduct a case study of the CBD International Media Cluster in Beijing, to
examine its development and identify what results may be produced by the
government intervening in media industry clustering.
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Chapter 6: the CBD International Media Industry
Cluster in Beijing
In previous chapters, I have demonstrated why Beijing is the national media
centre of China. It has political, cultural and economic power, which contributes
to the high concentration of media business and talent. Beijing is also a city of
many clusters (jijuqu). As an economic development approach, clustering is
supported by the Chinese government and many domestic entrepreneurs. The
approach to media clusters internationally is usually the formation of large
flagship enterprises. In China, where the media are effectively state-owned, this
constitutes a government led approach. Generally speaking, the conglomeration
of private companies follow the lead of the state-owned ones, but that
sometimes this happens the other way around.
In many such clusters, industry and government actors are deliberately brought
together. Furthermore, cluster developments in China are often comprised of a
high degree of hierarchical management; actors obtain favourable investment
policies; and they are willing to accept state supervision (Keane, 2009). In this
chapter, I conduct a case study on the CBD International Media Industry Cluster,
the major media cluster in Beijing. This chapter shows that excessive
government regulation damages Beijing‘s prospect of becoming an international
media capital although media industries and talent are accumulated.
6.1 The CBD International Media Industry Cluster
There are four media clusters in Beijing officially recognised by Beijing
Municipal government (see Table 12).Among these, the city‘s CBD (Central
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Business District) area in Chaoyang District (where most media companies are
located), provides many clues to understanding the clustering process of media
industries, especially after the CBD area was designated as the International
Media Industry Cluster in Beijing‘s second wave of ‗cultural and creative
industries‘ projects in 2008. However, the process of clustering began long
before this. Companies started moving to the CBD spontaneously from 2004,
when the news about CCTV‘s relocation to Chaoyang District was released.
Table 12 Media clusters in Beijing
Item Name Content Location
1
Beijing CBD
International Media
Industry Cluster
TV and film
around CCTV new building at
the heart of CBD in Chaoyang
District, east urban area of
Beijing
2 China Huairou Film
and TV Base TV and film
Huairou District, northeast outer
suburban area of Beijing
3 China New Media
Development Zone New media
Daxing District, south suburban
area of Beijing
4 Huitong Time Square
TV, new media,
and music
industries
Adjacent to the CBD, Chaoyang
District, east urban area of
Beijing
6.1.1 The Central Business District in Beijing
The CBD is the primary location for finance, media and business services in
Beijing. It occupies 3.99 square kilometres of Chaoyang District on the east side
of the city. Chaoyang District occupies 470.6 square kilometres and has a
population of 3.55 million, making it the largest urban district of Beijing.
Chaoyang District is designed by the Municipal government to serve several
functions in Beijing: the Olympic functional zone; the CBD; the electronics
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industry zone, the diplomatic window of Beijing; and the node connecting China
and the international world. According to the official statistics on Chaoyang
District government‘s website, more than 13,000 enterprises have settled in
Chaoyang since the 1980s16
.Now Chaoyang District is home to more than
60%of the foreign business agencies in Beijing, over 3,000 foreign companies,
151 international financial institutions, 146 representative offices of
international financial institutions and 167 international news agencies. All
foreign embassies, except for those of Russian and Luxembourg are
concentrated in Sanlitun, ChaoyangmenWai and Liangmaqiao in Chaoyang
District, the diplomatic window of Beijing. The Beijing Capital International
Airport is in Chaoyang District, adding to the convenience of travelling
internationally. Chaoyang District is the most internationalised district in
Beijing. It is also very active in terms of contemporary popular art and culture. It
contains most of Beijing‘s artist villages, including 798 and Caochangdi,
important performance venues such as the Poly Plaza International Theatre
(Baoli Theatre) and the Workers Stadium and the well-known Sanlitun Bar
Street, a place where many international visitors go to enjoy themselves. It also
hosts a major annual pop music festival, the Chaoyang Music Festival, in
Chaoyang Park.
The CBD is geographically situated in the heart of Chaoyang District to the east
of the city centre, extending from Dongdaqiao Road to Xidawang Road from
west to east and from the Tonghui River to Chaoyang Road from south to north,
sandwiched between the 3rd Ring Road and the 4th Ring Road. After many
years of construction and development, the CBD has become the most active
16 More information can be found on the English version of Chaoyang District
government‘s website. http://www.bjchy.gov.cn/english/asc.htm
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and modern area in Beijing; it has attracted 117 Fortune 500 businesses in the
financial, media, information technology, consulting and service industries17
.
More than 60% of overseas-funded companies in Beijing are in the CBD.
In 2001, the Beijing Municipal Government established the Beijing CBD
Administrative Committee under the Chaoyang District government to facilitate
investment and manage the development of the CBD on its behalf. Now one of
the most important international financial centres in China, it is also the site of a
major media cluster. Beijing Television Station (BTV) moved into its new
headquarters (Beijing TV Centre) in this area on 1 April 2009, and the new
CCTV headquarters is expected to be put into use soon.
After nearly ten years of development, the Beijing Municipal Government
approved a CBD east-extension plan in 2009. The new extended area will add an
additional three square kilometres of land to the east of the current CBD and is
intended to further consolidate Beijing CBD‘s position as a leading international
business hub in China. It will mainly house top-level international office
buildings, along with several luxury business hotels, large international
exhibition centres, top business centres, modern recreational facilities and
central squares, making for a regional three-dimensional transport hub and
modern skyscraper locale. The project is expected to involve an investment of
nearly 100 billion RMB and will be completed by 2017. The east-extension area
of the CBD will attract more major multinational corporations and create as
many as 100,000 new jobs. According to the CBD Administrative Committee,
17 This data is retrieved from a report at Xinhua Net on 13
th July. More information can be
found at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2008-04/29/content_8075289.htm
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the new area will continue to shape into ‗an area leading international financial
and media industry with high-end service agencies as the essential sectors‘.18
Figure 14 Beijing CBD east-extension map (adopted from the website of CBD
administrative committee)
6.1.2 The formation of CBD International Media Cluster
The Beijing CBD International Media Industry Cluster was formally recognised
by the Beijing Municipal government in 2008. It is located around CCTV‘s
recently completed new building at the heart of CBD in the eastern part of
Beijing. Over 80% of overseas news agencies and 167 international media
organisations are located there, including CNN, VOA, BBC, Viacom, Timer
Warner and Disney, as well as significant Chinese media such as CCTV, Beijing
TV, and Phoenix TV. According to statistics, over 1700 cultural and media
18 See: http://www.bjcbd.gov.cn/en/dk/index.shtml for more information regarding the CBD
east-extension plan.
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organisations were situated in the CBD by September 2010. Chaoyang District
government‘s report claims that the rate of growth has been stable since
2006,and on average one media company has moved into the CBD per day
("Ten years of CBD," 2010).
The CBD International Media Cluster started with CCTV‘s relocation plan.
CCTV (China Central Television) is the biggest TV station in China, and is
considered one of the ‗big three‘ media outlets in China, along with the People’s
Daily and Xinhua News Agency. CCTV has a close relationship with China‘s
State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT); it is the only TV
station directly under SARFT, and normally the director of CCTV plays an
important role in SARFT. Therefore CCTV always speaks for the central
government, and its move embodies SARFT‘s policy trend. As a result of this
special relationship with SARFT, CCTV has been located in the west of Beijing,
in Xicheng District, the location of most central government branches. In this
sense, CCTV‘s proximity to the government symbolises the political power
behind China‘s media industries.
The CCTV centre in Xicheng is too small to serve the station‘s development.
Many of its staff have to rent studios and offices in the neighbourhood because
the building‘s strict security measures create inconvenience for those entering
the building, not to mention difficulties of coordinating such a huge but
scattered institution. As a result, the need for relocation was inevitable if CCTV
was to continue its growth. In 2004, CCTV conceived a plan of moving to the
core area of the CBD. This decision arguably represents a strategic shift from
party organ towards an international media enterprise. CCTV chose a design by
Dutch architect Remi Koolhaas, and the construction of the new building began
shortly after. The new building is a 234-metre high, 44-storey skyscraper in the
CBD. It is not a traditional tower, but a loop of six horizontal and vertical
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sections covering 473,000 square metres of floor space, creating an irregular
grid on the building‘s facade with an open centre. Because of its radical shape,
the CCTV new building is often jokingly called ‗the big boxer shorts‘ (da
kucha). The construction of the building costs 10 billion RMB and is considered
to be a structural challenge, especially because it is in a seismic zone.
CCTV‘s move to the core area of the CBD has many implications: Firstly, with
increasing commercialisation of the TV sector in China, and with growing
competition from domestic and foreign companies, CCTV realises the urgency
and necessity of reshaping its image and remaking its development strategy.
Historically, the dwelling spaces of Beijing have been distributed in a way that
is summed up by the old Beijing adage, ‗in the east are the wealthy, in the west
live the aristocrats and bureaucrats, while in the south and north are only poor
people in the lowest level of the society‘ (dongfu xigui nanpin beijian). This
spatial distribution is still evident in Beijing. The west urban area of the city,
Xicheng District, is the site of most central government offices and military
institutions, whereas the east urban area of the city, Chaoyang District, provides
residential and work space for China‘s ‗new rich class‘.
CCTV‘s move to the CBD, the core area of Chaoyang District, reflects its
determination to commercialise. Furthermore, the unusual shape of the new
building also demonstrates CCTV‘s aspiration to become a world-class media
organisation. CCTV is China‘s only national television media and is eager to
build a brand new image, which can impact on the world in accordance with a
national campaign of ‗soft power‘. CCTV is a major force in this campaign.
Through this building, which is in complete contrast to the shape of CCTV‘s old
building and challenges conventional architectural ideas, CCTV wants to
capture the world‘s attention. As explained on CCTV‘s website, ‗it not only
represents the image of a new Beijing, but also expresses the significance and
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cultural identity of TV media‘.19
But the most important implication here is in
the central government‘s support for the relocation plan. It would be impossible
for CCTV to purchase such a large area in the core of the CBD, which is the
most expensive area in Beijing, without the government‘s support. From this
perspective, CCTV‘s move is an expression of the government‘s decision on
media reform rather than an action simply taken by CCTV.
Figure 15 CCTV's old building vs. the new building (compiled by the author from
pictures at: www.cctv.com)
Production companies, broadcasting institutions, advertising companies, training
organisations, and performance agencies which used to be in the west of Beijing
and close to the current location of CCTV, began moving to the CBD soon after
CCTV‘s relocation plan was released. A business relationship with CCTV is a
symbol of strength: media companies collaborating with CCTV can benefit
19 This is the expert comment quoted in CCTV‘s report on its new building. More details
are available at:
http://cctvenchiridion.cctv.com/special/special/C20427/20071228/105782.shtml
165
economically and by association. Beijing TV (the local TV station) and Phoenix
TV (the most popular overseas TV station based in Hong Kong) soon moved to
the CBD. Despite the high rents, media companies have moved to the CBD. As
Wang Feng, the manager of Beijing Seventh Studio Co. said, ‗We have to come
here, no matter how expensive it is.‘ (Interview with Wang Feng, 2009) Hence
CCTV‘s move drives the restructure of the landscape of the media industries in
Beijing, resulting in the emergence of the CBD International Media Cluster. As
mentioned above, this agglomeration was recognised by Beijing‘s municipal
government as an official creative cluster in 2008, a time when China began to
up-scale its innovative productivity through new forms of creative organisation
and management, often in designated ‗creative clusters‘(Keane, 2007a).
The enthusiasm for the cluster, which began with the CCTV relocation plan,
wasn‘t derailed by a sudden fire at the beginning of 2009 which temporarily
stopped the construction of the CCTV new building. Rather, the agglomeration
continues. Although CCTV‘s move engendered the formation of the CBD media
cluster, other factors have now emerged to contribute to the process of
agglomeration. With the agglomeration of media companies, a reservoir of
employment opportunities has emerged and more media workers are attracted.
This in turn has attracted more people to settle in this area to take advantage of
the pool of benefits. Wang Kai, a manager in ACG Education International,
which is a major partner of CCTV in digital production and animation training,
explained: ‗We started our company here in 2007 for three reasons: the
international atmosphere, the conglomeration of cultural and creative industries,
and the new headquarters of CCTV and BTV‘. (Interview with Wang Kai, 2009)
The geographic proximity benefits media companies in respect to business
collaboration opportunities, production costs, brand value, credit rating, and
commercial status. Considering the heavy traffic in Beijing, being close to peers
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saves time and enhances work efficiency. Luo Xuan, CEO of Beijing BMC Co.
Ltd., a company providing animation, digital effect and advertising services for
CCTV and other commercial clients, said that now he can have at least two to
three meetings and have several tasks completed in one day, as his clients are all
in CBD, whereas before he might only have been able to meet one customer if
was delayed in Beijing‘s traffic. (Interview with Luo Xuan, 2009) In addition, to
have an office in the CBD media industry cluster symbolises quality, experience
and capability. Only companies that are good enough can make enough money
to afford the high cost. Lu Jia, the Chinese co-founder of Beijing Somebody
International Media, said:
When we meet with TV stations for the first time, they look at the address
printed on my business card. They will have more confidence in your
capacity even without inspecting your company in person once they see that
the address of your company is in CBD… because CBD represents
high-class and expensive to people...CBD is a status symbol.
(Interview with Lu Jia, 2009)
To media professionals, the CBD is the most stylish and bourgeois area in
Beijing. They can easily find places like cafés, bars, restaurants, galleries and
venues that give them space to display their work and socialise. They learn from
each other by exchanging information and knowledge. The coexistence of
people in related industries reinforces the impression of CBD as a vibrant media
cluster. However, it needs to be noted that the symbolic value of the CBD media
cluster is hard to reproduce or imitate elsewhere. The CCTV‘s move was
contingent on the Beijing municipal government‘s new CBD development plan,
which emphasised support for media industries in the area.
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6.1.3 The CBD International Media Cluster and the capital city
The CBD media cluster cannot be seen in isolation from the aspirations of
Beijing. The cluster reflects the development of Beijing towards an international
media capital. Although some of my interviewees expressed disappointment at
the temporary setbacks in CCTV‘s move (the fire) they still believe that the
CBD is now a good place for media business in Beijing and that Beijing is the
best place for media business development. In their view: Beijing, the national
capital, is the place where things are happening; the key to media business in
China is keeping up with trends; Beijing is the place where most job
opportunities lie and where the biggest network of media industries is situated;
and the emotional bond with Beijing due to its capital status is shared by most
Chinese people.
International media companies come seeking opportunities for a variety of
reasons. Beijing has attracted many foreign journalists because it is the nation‘s
political centre, and historically, Chaoyang District was designated as the
residential and work area for non-Chinese media in Beijing before the
government abolished restrictions in the early 2000s. As a result, Chaoyang
District has the biggest aggregation of foreign journalists and news agencies in
Beijing. Most non-Chinese in Beijing choose to live or work in Chaoyang, in
turn making it more internationalised and cosmopolitan. International media
companies feel closer to this area psychologically since they are familiar and
comfortable with the environment and can easily associate with peers from the
same cultural background, which makes them feel more secure and able to find
more help in this unfamiliar country. The proximity to the airport, and the
well-developed transport network, facilitates these international travellers‘ work
and life. Furthermore, considering the difficulty of doing media business,
foreign media companies need to build collaborative relationships with domestic
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media companies. For this reason, Beijing is an ideal place for them to start
learning the local business culture, choose suitable local partners and find
business opportunities.
As many scholars have noted (Chan, 2003; Fung, 2009; Sun & Zhao, 2009),
China‘s media has been granted a commercial mandate while fulfilling its
function as party mouthpiece. Inevitably, the government is an important factor
influencing the growth and clustering of media industries across the country.
Ideology remains a significant consideration, not only in terms of media
companies‘ survival, but also for government officials in deciding whether or
not a TV program or film can be broadcast. As the political centre of China,
Beijing provides the best access to critical information for lowering business
risks; in China this critical knowledge includes government policy developments.
Understanding cultures of production in Beijing is important for both local and
international players in reducing transaction costs. Not only the development of
the industry, but also the development of clusters is determined by the
government. So far, Beijing Municipal Government has recognised 30 cultural
and creative clusters and set 500 million RMB annually aside to support the
construction of such clusters, according to ‗Measures for Management of
Special Fund for Infrastructures in Cultural and Creative Industry Parks of
Beijing‘ (Beijingshi wenhua chuangyi chanye jijuqu jichu sheshi zhuanxiang
zijin guanli banfa)20
, implemented by the Beijing Municipal government in 2007
when the fever of creative industries started in China.
20 The full text of this policy can be retrieved at the website of Beijing Cultural and
Creative Industry Promotion Centre:
http://www.bjci.gov.cn/292/2007/11/06/[email protected]
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As one of those officially recognised creative clusters, the CBD International
Media Cluster is heavily promoted by the policies of Beijing‘s municipal
government. In addition to the city‘s policies for creative industries and clusters,
the Beijing Municipal government also pays a lot attention to the development
of media industries. In Beijing‘s Eleventh Five-year Plan (2006-2010)21
, the
Beijing government proposed to develop the city as the national centre for film
and TV production and trading, with the major measure for achieving this
objective being to ‗reform the system and implement policies‘. In this plan, the
Beijing Municipal Government designated Chaoyang District, especially the
CBD, as the key area for the development of media industries. It is written in the
plan that ‗based on CCTV and BTV, the CBD will be developed as a cultural
and creative centre for media production, where cultural and media industries
cluster‘.
In the District‘s Twelfth Five-year draft plan, the Chaoyang District government
proposed that the CBD will ‗vigorously develop information and media
industries…absorb more provincial and city TV stations…and enhance the
cluster of international news agencies and media groups.‘ All these government
discourses give media practitioners the confidence which drives them to join
media industries and move to the CBD. Wang Feng, director of Beijing Seventh
Studio Co., admits that his dedication to media industries is largely aroused by
the government‘s vigorous promotion and believes that great potential will be
released by CCTV‘s relocation. To him, media industries have a big future in
China as a ‗sunrise industry‘. He attributed his decision to locate here to the fact
21 The plan can be found at Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform‘s
website.
http://www.bjpc.gov.cn/fzgh_1/guihua/11_5/11_5_zx/11_5_zd/200612/t146098_2.htm
170
that the media industry is listed among the key industries of Chaoyang District
in Beijing Municipal government‘s plan. (Interview with Wang Feng, 2009)
Thus, Beijing‘s unique socio-political status helps the CBD media industry
cluster grow and consequently smooths the progress of its development as a
media capital.
6.2 Tensions
Government plans and policies have provided a strong impetus. But evidence
shows that the CBD‘s prosperity may be misleading. According to a survey by
the renowned financial and consulting service company in real estate, Jones
Lang La Salle, the vacancy rate of office buildings in the CBD was 37.5% in
2010, much higher than other areas of Beijing22
. Moreover, the government
designated another nine plots in the core area of the CBD for office buildings in
the first half of 2011. Rents are still increasing despite the abundant supply of
land. According to the report on Beijing Office Building Information Net23
, 47%
of office buildings in the CBD increased their rent in 2011, and the highest
increase was 66%. This reveals that there is a large bubble forming in the
development of the CBD and that the government‘s enthusiasm does not match
its expectations.
22 This survey is quoted by a report ‗Beijing CBD area is still hot in the real estate market‘
on Beijing Office Building Information Net:
http://bj.fouxun.com/news/32/2010812143821.html
23 Please refer to: http://www.beijingoffice.com.cn/news/34/201174170951.html
171
The conglomeration effect is taking place much more slowly than the
government expected, and the huge investment from government increases the
cost of operating a business in the CBD. The disparity between the
government‘s intentions and the actual outcome is also applicable to the media
industries. In addition to Chaoyang District‘s CBD development agenda, the
Chinese government‘s media policies and political advocacy are understood and
executed in a way which generates outcomes and effects in conflict with media
industries‘ needs. Therefore the question of whether or not Beijing can become a
media capital is impacted upon by the socio-political status of the city, which
has assisted it to leverage advantages in the accumulation of business and
human capital.
6.2.1 Small and medium companies
Gao Daquan (literally tall, big and perfect) is a major figure in the novel Golden
Road (jinguang dadao) written during the Great Cultural Revolution period and
later adapted for film. This figure was created based on the government‘s
requirement for media content and cultural products at that time: the core figures
must be tall, big and perfect. Since then, this logic is deeply rooted in every
movement and action taken by the Chinese government. It appears that
everything built by the government must be high-class and large-scale. In
writing about media Wanning Sun (W. Sun, 2010b) has identified the concept of
‗scale‘ as a way of making sense of the ambitions of provincial, regional and local
actors. Sun notes how the question of scale informs policy making and
administration at the formal level, as well as in the popular imagination of place.
The most illustrative evidence of the government‘s strategy of ‗scale jumping‘
and aspiration for ‗tall, big and perfect‘ enterprises is its media group strategy
since 2000. Governments at all levels are encouraged to reorganise the media
172
resources within their respective territories and build up their own media groups
so as to meet the challenge from international media conglomerates brought in
by China‘s accession to WTO. In addition to building these flagship enterprises,
sometimes literally called ‗aircraft carriers‘, the government‘s agenda is
reflected in its construction of clusters.
In the case of CBD International Media Cluster, it is evident that the
government aims at building a high-end cluster. As seen on the CBD
Administrative Committee‘s website, the east-extension area will ‗enrich and
improve CBD‘s industry position of modern and high-end commerce… and
form a modern and high-end business district‘24
. The expansion phase began in
2010, and the demolition area is 2 million square metres. Old buildings are
being torn down and new skyscrapers will be built in order to foster a modern
environment, attract multinational companies, enhance the quality of the cluster
and realise the government‘s aspiration. The deputy head of Chaoyang District,
Chen Gang, explained at the CBD International Finance Forum in 2011 that the
newly added area in the CBD east-extension plan was intended to service
domestic and international large enterprises25
.
From these plans it is clear to see that it is going to be more difficult for SMEs
(small and medium enterprises) to secure CBD space, since they are not able to
24 This is proposed in the Committee‘s specification for the CBD east extension plan bid.
For more information please refer to: http://www.bjcbd.gov.cn/dk/index.jsp
25 According to Chen Gang, large enterprises invited by the government will be able to
make their requirements for work space and the government will have the office buildings
custom made according to their requirements.
http://business.sohu.com/20091014/n267350550.shtml
173
afford the increasing rents, which are already high. The construction of the CBD
under the government‘s leadership makes the environment less suitable for
SMEs. However, the vast majority of companies moving to the CBD are SMEs.
Beijing Somebody International Media is one of those SMEs. It was founded by
Chinese and Taiwanese producers in 2007, and producing a children‘s program
for CCTV and several entertainment shows for provincial TV stations, including
Guangdong TV and Guangxi TV, when I interviewed its co-founder, Lu Jia. On
the question of the movement of media companies from the west to the east
because of CCTV‘s relocation, he said:
We started our business in CBD considering the new headquarter of CCTV
will be here too… But large companies still remain where they are… Only
small media companies like us who have a very close business relationship
with CCTV would move here and cluster around CCTV…. [because]
Sometimes a small media company‘s livelihood depends upon just one
program of CCTV… Constant contact with TV stations can create more
opportunities for us.
However he is not satisfied with the environment offered by the CBD except for
its international image. He complained:
CBD only looks expensive and high-class although it is not at all in reality.
Only people who actually work here and suffer the same problem can
understand our difficulties in the CBD. I don‘t like here but I had no
choice… As a small company, we depend upon CCTV.
(Interview with Lu Jia, 2009)
The fire in early 2009 postponed CCTV‘s move to the new premises. This
disadvantaged small companies relocating to the CBD in order to establish
174
better connections with CCTV. Li Yan, the freelance film director, also
observed:
It is true that many small companies have moved to the CBD for the sake of
CCTV. But CCTV hasn‘t moved yet. Therefore people have to wait in the
CBD, which is too expensive for most of them. Therefore some of them
closed their business during this time and some of them are still struggling.
(Interview with Li Yan, 2009)
According to scholars, SMEs constitute an extremely significant part of overall
employment in creative industries in Western countries (O'Brien & Feist, 1997;
O'Connor, 2007; Pratt, 1997). Furthermore, in Hollywood the entire production
system is significantly reconstituted as congeries of many small and
medium-sized firms linked together in shifting coalitions by flexible production
networks (Scott, 2005). In China, along with the media reform, the separation of
production and broadcasting (zhibo fenli) has become one major model of media
business operation. As a result, a vertical system of media outsourcing is
forming. In the emerging system, state-owned TV stations like CCTV mother
SMEs by means of subcontracting: SMEs supply creativity and innovation
continuously by selling their technology, production or service to TV stations.
As a result, the role of SMEs in China‘s media industries is growing bigger and
they need more assistance from the government. However, the government only
sees the benefit of having big media organisations such as CCTV in the cluster
without acknowledging the foundation sustaining the cluster, which is ‗a great
level of vertical disintegration and transaction-intensive interaction‘ (Scott, 2005,
p. 112).
The development of the CBD media cluster at times seems more like a vanity
project requiring propaganda rather than creativity. Consequently, SMEs feel
175
discriminated against by the government‘s policy directives. Large companies
are the major targets, and construction work is centred on them. There is no
space in the CBD left for SMEs in the government‘s plan. To them the
government‘s grand plan of clusters is contorted into a conspiracy of real estate
developers. The government‘s focus on development scale is not only reflected
in the CBD‘s growth. The discrimination also exists in the government‘s media
policies as well as their cluster policies. For example, benefits for large
enterprises are obvious in the Beijing Municipal Government‘s Eleventh
Five-year plan. Large media companies, and infrastructure such as BGCTV
(gehua youxian, the biggest cable company in Beijing), Beijing Media (beiqing
chuanmei, a big print media company owned by the Beijing Municipal
Government), the new CCTV building and BTV are listed in the plan as the key
targets for government support, but the SMEs are left out.
In 2010, however, some national policies began to pay more attention to SMEs.
The ‗Guiding opinion on promoting the film industry‘ and the ‗Guiding opinion
on financial support to cultural industries‘ implemented by the State Council in
2010 proposes that SMEs will be supported in media industries. However when
it comes down to local government level, no concrete execution measures have
been made yet because the local officials‘ first concern is to make its ‗face work‘
more visible to the central government in order to obtain more credit.
Accordingly, it is more risky to invest in SMEs than in large enterprises,
especially state-owned ones. Therefore the central government‘s advocacy for
supporting SMEs remains on paper only.
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6.2.2 The content of media products
According to Curtin, one major factor attracting creative migration in the Asian
context which tends to be neglected by Western scholars, especially economic
geographers, is expressive freedom (Curtin, 2007, p. 288). He emphasises that
expressive freedom is a baseline requirement for the emergence of a media
capital. According to him, media capitals emerge where opportunity, prosperity,
expressive freedom, and rich cultural resources converge. Moreover, Curtin
argues that a city‘s ability to attract creative labour and make effective use of it
seems to rely not only on the city‘s supply of creative venues but also on its
diversity. A media capital should have sufficient creative human capital.
Moreover, a media capital also needs to ensure creativity is as diversified as
possible and foster an environment for diversified culture and creativity to
converge and mix. Curtin contends that government policies must be designed
to ‗cultivate and exploit the often serendipitous confluence of variables‘ in order
to continuously maintain creative migration. A secure and diverse creative
community, together with the growth of media enterprises and their
internationalised operations, can enhance a city‘s chance to develop into a media
capital. On the contrary, policies discouraging secure and diverse cultures will
undermine a city‘s possibility of being a media capital, as the status of media
capital can be won and lost under different circumstances. According to Curtin,
Hong Kong‘s case is illustrative. The atmosphere of free speech and vibrant
popular culture in Hong Kong bred the biting sarcasm reflected in its content on
a broad range of topics, characters and social conventions. This is why Hong
Kong emerged as a media capital in the ‗Great Chinese market‘26
before 1997.
26 Here the ‗Great Chinese Market‘ includes Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
Chinese Diaspora communities scattering in other continents.
177
But Hong Kong‘s status as a media capital has waned partly because of the
decreasing space allowing for expressive freedom and cultural hybridity since
the handover of sovereignty to the PRC. Therefore a media capital is more likely
to emerge at ‗those times and places that genuinely nurture personal expression‘
(Curtin, 2007, p. 288).
As discussed previously, Beijing is a city where we can see a great deal of
cultural diversity. However, the key difference concerns how much cultural
diversity is allowed by the Chinese government to be incorporated into media
content, which is the final product for audience consumption. Looking at media
policies and the production environment in China, it is evident that the answer to
the question is ‗not much‘. The foremost regulatory measure adopted by the
Chinese government is censorship. Compared with international media
environments, a TV drama or film needs to pass through censorship procedures
twice in China. One is before production27
and the other is after production.
According to China‘s media regulations, a production company needs to submit
the production, including storyline and plot, to SARFT for registration prior to
the production. The production organisation will be asked to stop production
once SARFT finds something wrong or in conflict with the mainstream culture
in the production plan. Requested changes can be made. In this regulatory
system of double censorship, topics are filtered twice by the government, and
only topics in line with the culture the government wants to promote can pass
through. For example, SARFT publishes monthly notices of censorship
outcomes on TV drama shooting plans. In the notices, SARFT also provides
information hinting at what content is encouraged and what content is not
tolerated. In SARFT‘s notice for TV drama shooting plan registration in March
27 It is normally called ‗registering in the system‘ (beiangongshi) in relative media policies.
178
of 201128
, SARFT warned TV companies that ‗some of their productions lack
positive ideological significance (jiji de sixiangyiyi) and therefore they should
correct their thoughts, and promote the prominent traditional Chinese culture‘.
In the same notice, SARFT also asked TV stations to ‗produce a few excellent
TV dramas on the revolution, reform and opening-up and the national revival
under the CCP‘s leadership to celebrate the 90th
anniversary of CCP‘.
Furthermore, in terms of media export the Chinese government also controls
what content can be exported to overseas audience. The Chinese government
wants to show the global community the prominent traditional Chinese culture
and the happy life that Chinese people enjoy in modern times. Media export is
strongly associated with the soft power strategy. Accordingly, it is impossible
for the Chinese government to accept any content that does not conform to the
mainstream ideology in exported media product, not to mention content
mocking or criticising the state.
Rather than banning cultural diversity by explicit order, the Chinese government
chooses to promote socialistic mainstream culture by policy leverage. Firstly,
the government supports media export on topics of mainstream culture. For
example, in the Catalogue of Cultural Export Projects of Excellence in China
(2009-2010) (2009-2010 niandu guojia wenhua chukou zhongdian qiye mulu)
and Catalogue of Cultural Export Enterprises of Excellence in China
(2009-2010) (2009-2010 niandu guojia wenhua chukou zhongdian xiangmu
28 This notice is available at SARFT‘s website:
http://www.sarft.gov.cn/articles/2011/03/31/20110331140820680073.html
179
mulu)29
released by the Ministry of Commerce in 2009 and 2010, the key
enterprises supported by the government to export media products are mainly
state-owned media companies, such as China Film Group and China
International Television Corporation; the key TV programs, dramas, films and
events supported by the government for media export are documentaries on
culture, nature and history, TV dramas on ancient history and legends, and
infrastructure construction work in African countries. The same orientation is
also obvious in Beijing‘s local policies. In Policies for the Promotion of Cultural
and Creative Industries of Beijing (Beijingshi cujin wenhua chuangyi chanye
fazhan de ruogan zhengce) released by the Beijing Municipal government in
200730
, international collaboration is encouraged to ‗enhance Beijing‘s
competitiveness in cultural and creative industries and expand the international
influence of the splendid Chinese culture‘. As a consequence, media products
that the Chinese government wants to export overseas do not appeal to
audiences in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other overseas markets. This is the
‗plodding style‘ as Curtin has observed (Curtin, 2007, p. 142).
The Chinese government punishes violators severely. The film Lust, Caution (se
jie), directed by Ang Lee in 2007, depicts a group of Chinese university students
29 Both documents are available on MoC‘s website at:
http://fwmys.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/a/ad/200911/20091106638174.html?3144928510=201
099483
http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/bh/201001/20100106740265.html?3295923454=20109
9483
30 The document can be found on the website of Beijing Cultural and Creative Industry
Promotion Centre, http://www.bjci.gov.cn/292/2007/06/26/[email protected]
180
from Hong Kong who plot to assassinate a high-ranking special agent and
recruiter of the puppet government, using an attractive young woman to lure him
into a trap in Shanghai in 1942, when the city was occupied by the Imperial
Japanese Army and ruled by the puppet government. At the end of the film, the
young woman, overcome by the special agent‘s love, urged him to escape the
assassination attempt and was captured and killed. The film caused huge
controversy in Mainland China, while winning quite a lot awards in different
countries, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The
controversy was not only about the three episodes of graphic sex with
full-frontal nudity, but also, and more importantly, about the film‘s narrative of
a special agent working for the puppet government. Normally, people like this
man from the time of the anti-Japanese war (1937-1945) are supposed to be
irreconcilable villains in China‘s ideology. However in Lust, Caution he is
shown to have some positive attributes. An associate professor from the Institute
of Communication Studies at CUC, Liu Jianping, criticised the film, saying that
it ‗did a plastic surgery on traitors‘ and it was an ‗alarm bell for the mainstream
culture safeguarding the national spirit‘31
.
Eventually, the film was shown in China after the removal of 13 minutes of
footage. The leading actress, Tang Wei, who is from Mainland China, is still
banned by SARFT from appearing in any domestic film and TV productions.
According to SARFT, the government ‗reduces her public appearance‘ because
‗her rapid rise due to her performance involving a lot of sexual scenes may
31 This is expressed in Liu‘s review for the film on Global Times (huanqiushibao), the
newspaper on international news report managed by People‘s Daily (renminribao). Liu‘s
review can be retrieved at: http://world.people.com.cn/GB/89881/6500389.html
181
mislead the youngsters‘32
. Therefore the case of Lust, Caution illustrates how
important it is to be ideologically correct in China. Ideological correctness
constrains editorial freedoms in media production in China.
In order to cope with the government‘s requirement for ideological correctness,
Hong Kong film makers who target mainland China as their biggest market start
making two versions of their films. For example, the Hong Kong crime-thriller
film Internal Affairs (wujiandao), which was later remade by Martin Scorsese in
2006 as The Departed, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture,
made a different ending specially edited for Mainland China in order to pass
censorship. In this version, the bad guy was captured in the end, whereas he
lived safely under his cover as a good policeman in the universal version. Since
then, one film with two different endings has become a major strategy for Hong
Kong–China co-productions. Any product or company can be banned for not
cooperating with the government. A Hong Kong film company, Universe
International (huanyu dianying), was banned by SARFT for one year simply
because it promised to change its film title from Shaolin Football (shaolin zuqiu)
to Kungfu Football (gongfu zuqiu) as SARFT requested, but didn‘t make the
change on the posters. In this case, the government‘s concern is that using
Shaolin Temple‘s name in a commercial film may harm the reputation of
Shaolin Temple, which is renowned for its association with Chinese martial arts.
Chinese director Lou Ye has been banned by SARFT from shooting any film in
China for five years because he sent his film Summer Palace (yiheyuan) to the
Cannes Film Festival without SARFT‘s approval in 2006.
32 This information is from the report on the website of Xinhua News Agency. The report is
available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/ent/2008-03/19/content_7819881.htm
182
6.2.3 CCTV’s influence
The Beijing Municipal Government assumes that CCTV has a strong influence
over China‘s media industries. Therefore the government took CCTV‘s move as
a great opportunity to integrate most of China‘s media capacity into the CBD
and build up a media cluster that can influence the whole country. However, the
government has never asked the question whether CCTV is attractive enough for
media companies, especially the big ones, which are the government‘s major
target, to follow CCTV‘s lead. Different types of media companies have
different concerns and needs for their office location depending on their status in
China‘s media market. From the list of addresses of major private media
companies in Beijing in Table 14, it is clear that none except for Ciwen Pictures
are in the CBD area designated by the government and that none have been
attracted to the CBD by the government‘s development agenda of CBD media
clustering, although they all stay comfortably in the east of the city, mostly in
Chaoyang District and Dongcheng District. These large-scale private companies
have established their brand and stable distribution channels; and they don‘t
necessarily need to move with CCTV, which is just one of their clients or
partners. On the contrary, ‗It‘s simply because we are very used to life in the
east,‘ said Guan Yadi, who used to be assistant to Yu Dong, CEO of Poly Bona
Film Distribution Co., one of China‘s biggest private film companies, and now
works as an independent film producer. Here the ‗life‘ mentioned by Guan
refers to the business atmosphere and the bourgeois environment which is
people‘s general impression of the east of Beijing.
Table 13 Location of major private media companies in Beijing (distance calculated
based on Google Map)
No. Company Feature Address District
Distance
to the
core of
CBD
183
1
Huayi
Brothers
Media Group
(huayi
xiongdi)
China‘s
biggest
private film
production
company
No. 18
Chaoyangmenwai
Street
Chaoyang
District 3.4 km
2
Poly Bona
Film
Distribution
Co. (baoli
bona)
China‘s
biggest
private film
distribution
company
No. 105
Yaojiayuan Road
Chaoyang
District 5.5 km
3
Dongfang
Fengxing
Media &
Culture
Company
China‘s
major TV
program
production
company
No. 107 Dongsi
North Street
Dongcheng
District 7.1 km
4
Enlight
Media
(guangxian
chuanmei)
China‘s
biggest TV
program
production
company
No.11 Hepingli
East Street
Dongcheng
District 8.4 km
5
Hairun Movie
& TV Group
(hairun
yingshi)
China‘s most
productive
TV drama
company
No. 5 Anyuan,
Anhui Beili
Chaoyang
District 10.7 km
6
Pegasus
Movie & TV
Group
(jinyingma
yingshi)
China‘s
major TV
drama
company
Huating Jiayuan,
North 4th
Ring
Road Middle
Chaoyang
District 10.6 km
7
Beijing
Xinbaoyuan
Movie & TV
Investment
Ltd Co.
China‘s
major TV
drama
company
No. 2 East 3rd
Ring Road North
Chaoyang
District 6.1 km
8
Beijing
Galloping
Horse Film
&TV
Production
(xiaoma
benteng)
China‘s
major TV
drama and
film
production
company
No. 6
Chaoyangmen
North Street
Chaoyang
District 5.1 km
9 Ciwen
Pictures
China‘s
major TV
No. 8 Dongdaqiao
Road
Chaoyang
District In CBD
184
drama
production
company
Moreover, in terms of state-owned media companies, the CBD media cluster is
less attractive than the government imagines. Beijing Forbidden City Film
Company (Beijing zijincheng yingye) moved from South Chizi Street (nanchizi
dajie) in the core of Tiananmen Square, to Shazikou Road in Fengtai District,
south of the city, and then finally settled down on the North 3rd
Ring Road.
According to Qian Chongyuan, the head of distribution, his company has
travelled a long way towards the north-east of Beijing. Qian recalled:
No one liked to approach us, or even pay a visit to our company when we
were in the south of the city… Cultural and creative enterprises need to
cluster together. We felt isolated before we moved to our current office...
Now it‘s so convenient for us. Even reporters didn‘t like to come to our
press conferences before.
However his company chose the current location, which is 14km away from the
core of the CBD because:
It‘s so easy to go anywhere from our current location because most of our
partners are in the north and the east of Beijing, there is no suitable space for
us in the CBD, and as a film company it‘s more convenient for us to be close
to China Film Group and Beijing Film Studio.
(Interview with Qian Chongyuan, 2009)
In addition to being close to their business partners, another reason is that, as
state-owned media organisations, ‗we have our own asset so that it‘s too
expensive for us to move… besides, we don‘t need to follow CCTV because we
185
don‘t rely on CCTV that much,‘ explained Xu Gang, deputy director of
distribution of August First Film Studio (bayi dianying zhipianchang), which is
managed by the Chinese military and produces educational military feature films,
commercial films, and TV dramas. (Interview with Xu Gang, 2009) China
International Television Corporation, the wholly-owned subsidiary of CCTV,
will also remain in its current location, which is next to CCTV‘s old building.
Furthermore, according to most interviewees, while they take the government
policy into consideration, they pay more attention to the proximity of their peers
and clients. Tom Wang, whose company is 7km away from the core of the CBD,
explained:
My brother‘s business was here initially, and a lot of animation, advertising,
TV and media companies have been clustered around here. So I thought
maybe I could recruit some good talents here… On the other hand, in Beijing
most cultural companies and media companies tend to relocate from
Dongcheng District to Chaoyang District. So it would be easier for me to
communicate with them. After all, the eastern side of Beijing is more cultural
and creative.
(Interview with Tom Wang, 2009)
Rather than an expensive office building, media companies prefer an
environment favourable for stimulating creativity. Kuailego, the TV shopping
channel of Hunan Satellite TV station, also chose to open its Beijing office,
Kuaile de Gou, in the Huitong Time Square, which is only 4km away from the
core of CBD and used to be the site of Beijing Thermo-power Plant. Huitong
Time Square was recognised by Beijing Municipal Government as another
media cluster in 2008, but is much more low-key compared to the CBD media
cluster. According to the general manager of Kuaile de Gou, Peng Yang, the rent
186
is much more reasonable, and they feel more comfortable with the open green
space where you can see a real fountain during the freezing winter in Beijing
thanks to the hot water rather than the narrow sky between high mansions in the
CBD. She explained:
We split Beijing into eastern half and western half when we were choosing
the best location for our Beijing office.... the eastern part is creative and
cultural. Therefore, we are inclined to the eastern part naturally as a creative
company. Additionally, the eastern part is close to the airport considering the
transportation. But we don‘t particularly want to squeeze into the CBD,
because we are an entrepreneurial creative company and we don‘t want to
look like an upstart at the very beginning. However, we have to be close to
the CBD, otherwise, we would look out of style. That‘s why we are here now.
We considered the CBD, but buildings in the CBD are all cold concrete
buildings. We don‘t like it… But the environment here is very nice… the
invisible interaction fostered in this cluster is much better than a huge
mansion.
(Interview with Peng Yang, 2009)
6.3 Discussion
Besides the CBD fever, media companies come to the CBD mainly because of
CCTV and their trust in the Chinese government‘s power of allocating
investment capital, personnel and land. However, Wang Feng believes that the
CCTV relocation plan is a groundbreaking point for media industry
development in Beijing. Although he is sure that the government will strongly
support media industry development in the CBD, he had to locate just outside
the CBD, given the affordability issue. (Interview with Wang Feng, 2009)
187
Government plays an important role in many international media clusters, such
as Hollywood and Gold Coast (c.f. Ben Goldsmith, et al., 2010; Miller, et al.,
2001). Curtin‘s media capital principles acknowledge the impact of
policy(Curtin, 2007). Curtin argues that policy makers should focus on the
supply side of the equation, and intervene selectively to enhance the productivity
of particular media centres and institutions by providing infrastructural,
educational, and financial resources that might stimulate further growth, because
new media capitals can‘t be generated without foundations. On the other hand,
policy makers should support and subsidise media institutions to provide
resources for local, national and alternative cultures, on the basis of the
acknowledgement of market dynamics and talent migrations. Policy makers also
should emphasise public infrastructure, such as libraries and public parks, which
foster identity, enhance social civilisation, enhance property values, and provide
spaces for public discourse (Curtin, 2008).
The CBD International Media Industry Cluster is not a successful cluster in
terms of its real clustering effects. The real situation is that state-owned
companies and large private companies don‘t want to move to the CBD cluster
which is specifically designed by the government simply because of CCTV,
whereas small media companies have to move because they are dependent on
CCTV. However, the latter are neglected by the government because the
government builds the CBD cluster according to its own understanding of
creative clusters. The government has invested a lot in the CBD media cluster,
but to date this has yielded little. The key reason for this is not only the
‗propaganda‘ or ‗ideology‘, which have already been argued by most Western
scholars to criticize Chinese media as tools of the authoritative regime (Donald
& Keane, 2002). It is more about the government‘s misunderstanding of media
industries. A successful media cluster is in line with the Chinese government‘s
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interests. In addition to the economic benefit, it will also facilitate the Chinese
government‘s soft power strategy, which is based on exporting ‗approved
content‘. As a result, the government fails to correctly recognise market
dynamics and to provide enough space for real media diversity.
Small and medium enterprises which are attracted by CCTV are not recognised
as important by the government. Many large scale media companies are also not
tempted by the CBD cluster which the government has custom-made for them.
The reason for this lack of fit between expectation and reality is the
government‘s inadequate acknowledgement of market dynamics; in turn, media
products are too stereotyped to export because the selection is made by the
government rather than the market. In the end, the government provides physical
space but there is a lack of space for diversity of content and expression.
Moreover, the government‘s old bureaucratic tradition causes inequality and
corruption due to its path dependence, its ideological pattern of power and
favour (guanxi). For example, the Beijing Municipal government has set aside a
specially fund to subsidise creative enterprises every year. However, the
application must first be evaluated and selected by the authority in each district,
and can only be submitted via district government. Companies with better a
relationship (guanxi) with the government are more likely to win the subsidy
since the government is endowed with thepower to decide.
In the long term, the government won‘t be able to distribute resources to the
place where it is most needed, despite its strong power in terms of concentrating
capital and talent. Furthermore, policies which are made to enhance productivity
won‘t be successful, and the government will lose the people‘s confidence,
which may further weaken the effectiveness of policy. Many media companies
don‘t believe in or even consider the favourable policies that the government
provides for clusters and media industries, since they have to go through all the
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complicated approval processes and deal with different requirements from
different government branches. Lu Jia recalled: ‗I heard about the tax deduction
policy and went to the Chaoyang taxation office to apply for it. But I was told by
officers there that they had never heard of the policy.‘ (Interview with Lu Jia,
2009) Luo Xuan said: ‗I would use my time on something else which matters
more.‘ (Interview with Luo Xuan, 2009) Therefore, despite the high-class office
buildings, the alliances that are set up under the government‘s advocacy and the
various management committees that have been established, many would rather
stay on the periphery of the CBD where they can do more creative business.
Ashas been demonstrated in previous chapters, many things are negotiable for
the Chinese government. It seems that it is too soon for Curtin to make the
conclusion that political capitals are unlikely to emerge as media capitals(Curtin,
2010b). Being close to the government is an important advantage for media
companies in China. Therefore our assumption of what a media capital is may
need to be revised in the ‗great Chinese media market‘. Curtin has observed that
Hong Kong, the old media capital in the ‗great Chinese media market‘ is losing
its talent to the mainland of China (Curtin, 2007, p. 283). Along with the
creative migration, the knowledge is also transferred to Mainland China. Among
different sites in China, Beijing is characterised by its close association with
government, an advantage appreciated by many Chinese media companies.
Hence Beijing stands a good chance of becoming a media capital in the future.
But we need to examine how real this opportunity really is. In Chapter 7 I will
return to media capital‘s three principles: logics of accumulation, trajectories of
creative migration and forces of socio-cultural variation and how they play out
in Beijing. I will discuss what kind of a media capital is possible in Beijing, and
what changes Beijing needs to make in order to become a media capital.
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Chapter 7: Beijing’s comparative advantages as an
emergent media capital
This thesis set out to investigate the possibility of Beijing becoming a media
capital. Previous chapters have provided an account of the development of
China‘s media industries in terms of reforms and exports and have investigated
the status quo of media industries in Beijing. This chapter analyses issues arising
from these chapters and discusses the five subsidiary research questions: (1)
How do media industries operate in Beijing? (2) Is Curtin‘s media capital
concept directly applicable to China? In not, in which way should the media
capital notion be revised when applied to China? (3) What factors differentiate
Beijing from other known media capitals? (4) Is there a push for Beijing to be an
international media capital? If yes, where does it come from? If not, what is
holding it back? (5) What are the strengths and weaknesses of Beijing as a
media capital?
Chapters 5 and 6 have shown that the development of media industries in
Beijing is strongly related to the political status of Beijing. The Chinese
government takes marketisation ‗as a balancing act between an open market and
a planned economy‘ and aims for ‗predictability, control and convergence‘
(Davis, 2010, p. 124). According to Davis, marketisation is a tool used by the
Chinese government to promote growth and profitability; but it must also uphold
socialist tenets and enlighten audiences of the Party‘s legitimacy.
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7.1 Predictability, control and convergence
The Chinese government wishes to maintain controlled development while
maximising economic interest. This is the dual identity of China‘s media
industries. The government‘s marketisation monitors and controls market
performance, overseeing what goes to market not by fiat but through
‗micro-adjustments‘ (weiguan tiaokong) (Davis, 2010, p. 123). This explains the
continued existence of protectionism in government regulations. Protectionism
is not only about strengthening China‘s media industries to compete with the
Western media conglomerates, but also, and more importantly, it is about
nurturing a group of strong state-owned media organisations—the mouthpieces
of the government—to maintain a stable ideology balanced by government‘s
direct investment in order to earn profit. According to the media economist
Robert Picard, the Chinese government is determined to maintain state-owned
media organisations and exercise a greater degree of control over media than
other industries because media has more significant cultural, social, and political
functions (Picard, 2007). Hence, in the game of media industries in China,
state-owned media organisations are the participants representing the
government. One may say that the government not only makes the rules for
market competition, but also acts as the referee who ensures compliance.
Protectionism for domestic media industries, especially for the state-owned
media organisations, is not simply about blocking out any perceived danger that
may be engendered by competition. Rather, the main strategy that the Chinese
government adopts is to reallocate resources nationally to build up its own
‗media capital‘ to battle with its counterparts in the international arena. This
strategy is assisted by government interference in competition. Hence, the
Chinese government‘s rationale of predictability, control and convergence, and
its development strategy of proactive interference, shapes the ecology in which
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media are produced and consumed. This in turn modifies the concentration of
media production, the expansion of media distribution and the migration of
creative labour. Moreover, there are differences between the TV and film sectors
due to the different attitude that the Chinese government holds towards them.
People watch television more than film, as watching TV is cheaper and easier,
and it thus has a stronger effect on society. Therefore the function as a
propaganda tool weighs more in television than in film, and accordingly the
government pays more attention to consolidating control on TV channels in
order to ensure that the ‗correct‘ content can be delivered to the audience. On
the other hand, the international recognition of the Fifth Generation of Chinese
directors informs the Chinese government that film is more exportable than
television: film is a form of art whereas television is a type of mass consumer
goods. As a result, the Chinese government is more tolerant to film, especially
international co-productions, and therefore emphasises the export potential of
the film content.
In China‘s TV sector, media reforms have led to the decentralisation of
administrative power (Keane, 2007b). The Chinese government established the
‗four-tier system‘ (siji ban) in 1983 to relieve the financial burden. Since then,
city and county governments were able to build up local TV stations and
broadcast local news and programs in addition to the national broadcaster,
CCTV; provincial stations and local governments entered into the media field.
They have increased autonomy in their own TV stations. Moreover, they are
capable of investing more in their own TV stations, due to the economic
improvements since reform and opening up. This is part of the reason why TV
stations develop better in economically advanced cities and provinces such as
Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong Province, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang
Province.
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In addition, China is not a homogeneous entity. It is very difficult for the central
government to strictly control various local government agencies due to the
multi-level governance structure, decentralised economy and the growth of
localism (Chin, 2007). With greater economic power, local government and
television stations are able to negotiate with the central government. The
legitimacy of the central government is largely built upon the support and
resources provided by local governments. Along with the growth of localism in
the country, provincial TV stations are more vigorous in transforming the
system and innovating content and formats and accordingly have developed
rapidly, especially since being allowed to broadcast to the whole country via
satellite technology. As Sun (2010b, pp. 539-540) maintains, ‗such a picture of
uniformity and total top-down centralization no longer fits, and the Chinese
media landscape is now marked by scalar contestation, conflicts, and
contradictions‘.
As indicated above, the central government has to secure its control over TV
channels to maintain a unified socialist ideology. SARFT keeps formulating
policies regulating TV stations and the TV market; this occurs especially when
provincial TV stations upstage CCTV in the market. For example, Super Girls
(chaoji nvsheng), a contest for female singers produced by Hunan Satellite TV
and based on the UK Pop Idol format, had huge success all over China from
2004 to 2006. According to CSM, CCTV‘s own media consulting company,
audience ratings for Hunan Satellite TV (next to CCTV-1, the most watched
CCTV channel) took second place in the national market when Super Girls was
on air. Soon after this, SARFT enacted a series of national policies to regulate
idol-inspired shows in relation to broadcast time, length, content and the age of
contestants (Keane, Fung and Moran 2007). Hunan Satellite TV stopped making
Super Girls in 2007 and 2008 and relaunched the program in 2009 after
approval by SARFT. By making national media polices, the central government
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maintains its control over the market and ensures the predictable development of
the TV industry. Furthermore, it is inevitable for provincial TV stations to set up
office in Beijing and communicate with SARFT constantly, because it is hard
for them to predict when and how the central government is going to interfere.
Similarly, this logic also applies to TV drama production companies, as SARFT
constantly regulates TV drama production and distribution as well.
In relation to the TV sector, localism drives the development of provincial TV
stations. Since 2010, provincial TV stations have increasingly adopted in-house
production to save costs and wield their own influence, in spite of the fact that
the government encourages the separation of production and broadcasting. In
order to grab market share, which is continuously squeezed by provincial TV
stations, private TV companies need to find quicker access to China‘s
fragmented TV market and to enhance production quality. Beijing is the
preferred locality to for them, as nearly all the TV stations have offices there in
addition to CCTV, BTV and Phoenix TV. They can more easily get in direct
contact and showcase their work to provincial TV stations.
In the film sector, the centripetal tendency of production is even clearer. As film
is deemed as a type of art, it needs to be associated with culture, literature and
other types of fine arts. Beijing, China‘s cultural centre, is closely related to the
film industry. Shanghai used to be very active in the arts and had an edge on
Beijing in terms of film production before 1949. Since the CCP government set
up the state capital in Beijing in that year, the central government has vigorously
developed education and cultural infrastructure in Beijing because of the need to
construct a socialist civilisation (shehui zhuyi jingshen wenming).
In 1982, the central government approved the ‗Beijing Master Plan‘ in which the
Beijing Municipal Government set the development position of Beijing as the
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national cultural centre. This position has been incorporated into each city
development plan for Beijing, whereas Shanghai has set itself up as the
economic centre of China and has been successful in finance and manufacturing.
Gradually, Shanghai‘s association with culture was weakened and with this its
talent base. In contrast, a better cultural atmosphere is fostered in Beijing due to
the clustering of China‘s top universities, such as Peking University and
Tsinghua University, and in particular, the talent base for the film industry has
been enhanced by the rapid development of Beijing Film Academy, The Central
Academy of Drama and the Communication University of China. Gradually,
Beijing has attracted most of China‘s top actors, directors and producers, and
grown to be China‘s most active hub for the film industry workforce. For this
reason, private capital is attracted to Beijing, and many private film companies
have established there.
In addition to the government‘s agenda of developing Beijing as a national
cultural centre, the centripetal tendency of film production in Beijing is driven
by the Chinese government‘s ‗Chinawood‘ aspiration, which, according to
Davis, is to match Hollywood internationally (Davis, 2010, p. 124). Therefore
the film industry is regarded by the Chinese government as a visible, lucrative
source of revenue and prestige. The China Film Group Corporation was
established by the Chinese government in 1999 to promote China‘s own
blockbuster (dapian). Not limited to film production, the China Film Group is
involved in a variety of businesses, including film distribution and exhibition,
film importation and export, cinema circuit management, digital cinema
construction, print developing and processing, film equipment management,
film and TV CD production, ancillary products and even advertising. The vast
business scope also covers a huge amount of small- and medium-size film
companies in Beijing. Moreover, Beijing is one of China‘s major regions in
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terms of film consumption and, as one of the economically developed regions,
has a high density of cinema circuits and screens.
In terms of distribution, Beijing also benefits from this rationale, becoming the
distribution centre for China‘s media industries. First, the two biggest
distribution companies, China Film Group Corporation and Huaxia Film
Distribution Company, were set up in Beijing to secure the government‘s
supervision of the film market. The concentration of production companies
provides distribution companies with ready access to products. Hence, private
film distribution companies aggregate in Beijing to save cost. Gradually, Beijing
has become China‘s film trading centre: most of the Chinese film production
companies and distribution companies are located there.
Market competition is severe. Film companies need to ‗stimulate audience
demand and ensure access to theatres in far-flung locales‘ to widely circulate
their products (Curtin, 2007, p. 13). Film companies tend to cluster in places
where there are a lot of broadcasting channels. In China, this place is Beijing.
Moreover, film companies establish their own distribution companies and
theatre chains or collaborate with other companies to widen the circulation
channel. Companies in Beijing have accumulated capital to invest in theatre
construction. For example, in 2004, Huayi Brothers co-established the Xiying
Huayi Film Distribution Company in Xi‘an, Shaanxi Province, with Xi‘an
Movie Corp. In 2010, Huayi Brothers built its first cinema in Chongqing,
China‘s fourth municipality, directly under the central government, in the
south-west of China: this enables Huayi Brothers to capture the market share in
southwest China, a big, unexploited market. It also has plans to construct 15
cinemas in China in five years in order to incorporate the distribution and
circulation sectors into its industry chain. Poly Bona, China‘s largest private
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film distribution company, is located in Beijing and started developing film
production in 2007 in order to make better use of its distribution channels.
The central government needs to control film distribution and cinema screens so
as to make economic profit and to regulate the cinema market by participating in
market competition and winning a dominant status in the market. China Film
Group Corporation controls China‘s second largest theatre chain, China Film
Xingmei Circuit Co. Ltd. (zhongying xingmei). In contrast, film companies
outside of Beijing can be locked out of the market if they fail to make an early
start. Gradually, the film companies located in Beijing have gained control of
most of China‘s film market and cinemas.
7.2 Issues arising
Compared with Hong Kong, industrial accumulation and creative migration in
Beijing are fuelled by the government‘s proactive endeavours and regulation.
Hong Kong‘s media capital status was obtained due to the colonial
government‘s benign neglect, which provided artistic freedom. According to
Curtin, diversity has provided a similar structuring influence on the status of
media capital as the logics of capital and creative migration (Curtin, 2007, p. 23).
However, in China the programmed development approach is problematic with
respect to the market, the industry and exports.
The domestic market of China does not reward originality (Keane, 2010).
Isolated from Western countries for decades, domestic audiences were unable to
compare the quality of content. Audiences started receiving imported TV
programs and films in the early 1980s; however, these are censored and edited
by the government. According to Curtin, markets are made, not given (Curtin,
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2007, p. 22).Markets are reactive to political interventions, and government
should use self-conscious state interventions and policies to fashion a terrain for
commercial operations in order to foster a healthy market. However, in China,
stemming from the rationale of predictability and control, the Chinese
government maintains the legacy of ideology not only in the industry, but also in
the market, by censorship and proactive interventions from time to time. On the
one hand, all the TV stations are owned by the government, which manipulates
both regional and national markets. In spite of the huge number of viewers, TV
stations choose ‗safe‘ content to broadcast, and TV production companies can
only sell their productions to state-owned TV stations for a very low price. On
the other hand, there is no particular Act or law governing the media industries.
SARFT can intervene in the market on the practical level via different regulatory
means when it thinks it necessary. Accordingly, TV production companies need
to play safe with their production and produce products acceptable to the
ideological climate. The safest way is to make subtle changes on the basis of
copying successful programs from other countries or regions instead of creating
their own genres and formats.
For most Chinese media enterprises, the domestic market is their primary target.
However, because the domestic market doesn‘t reward creativity as it should, a
media product must meet criteria in three respects in order to succeed in the
market: recognition from the government; financial support from investors; and
the cultural elites‘ praise (Yang, 2005, p. 26). Concern for quality always comes
last. Accordingly, Chinese media enterprises and practitioners prefer short-term
growth above all else and avoid any high risk activities because one can never
predict what the proper action is and where the boundary lies.
The Chinese government and media companies emphasise the importance of
internationalisation. The government conducts research on international
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development to see if they are on the right track; media enterprises are open to
international competition and collaboration. Nevertheless, China‘s media
industries develop in an inward-looking way. The government implements its
own rationale for regulation based on ideological concerns. Most media
companies focus on the domestic market, although they claim that they have
made plans for internationalisation33
. The production quality is compromised by
the pursuit of short-term interests. Media professor at Tsinghua University, Yin
Hong, observes that only two-fifths of the films made each year can be sold to
cinemas and circulated in the market, although production increases every year
(Yin & Cheng, 2011). In the TV sector, researchers at CUC, Hu Zhengrong et al,
also find that the rebroadcasting of old programs is rampant in China‘s TV
industry and that China‘s TV sector is full of program cloning and homogeneity
and severely lacks innovation and creativity (Hu, et al., 2011).
International media conglomerates are after China‘s huge domestic market. In
turn, China‘s own media export capacity is crippled by low production quality.
The inward-looking tendency of development persists (although statistical data
released by SARFT looks quite exciting on the surface). The increasing
significance of the African market in China‘s TV product export is more likely
the result of the quid pro quo in the political relationships between China and
African countries. According to Yin Hong, the data shown by SARFT is indeed
a reflection of China‘s international cultural exchange rather than cultural trade
(Yin & Cheng, 2011, p. 197). Films performing well in the international market
tend to be co-productions with Western companies, whereas the poor
33 This observation is based on my interviews with media companies in Beijing. They are
positive to the internationalization. However, almost all of them don‘t have a feasible plan
or timeline for the internationalization process.
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international box office of purely domestic productions illustrates the Chinese
film industry‘s shortage of talent, especially those with international experience
in film production, coordination, distribution, exhibition and marketing. For
instance, the China–USA coproduction, The Karate Kid, which was distributed
by Sony and Columbia in North America, achieved a box office of USD 176
million and comprised nearly half of the overall overseas box office of China‘s
film industry in 2010. In contrast, Zhang Yimou‘s A Simple Noodle Story
(sanqiang paian jingqi), only achieved a box office of USD 190,000 in the USA
in the same year, although it was the highest box office earner in terms of
domestically-made commercial films exported overseas.
Due to China‘s complicated bureaucratic system and local protectionism,
government actions in Mainland China are ‗a defensive embrace of bureaucratic
fiefdoms‘ (Curtin, 2010a, p. 21). CCTV is tied to the central government,
whereas provincial, city and county television stations are closely linked to local
governments on their level (although they still need to listen to the central
government in terms of overall guidance and ideological advocacy). They are
commissioned by government in their respective domains to accomplish their
political task and to achieve their economic goals. Due to local governments‘
political concerns, language differences and various cultural preferences in
different regions, China‘s TV market is further fragmented. So when Western
media companies come to China, they are not only battling with CCTV, the
national media network, but also the dozens of local TV stations in the
marketplace. Moreover, government actions in relation to media enterprises,
especially supposedly enabling actions, are sometimes made only to fulfil the
governments‘ political ambitions and to burnish their reputation. The CCTV
International Media Industry Cluster is an example, illustrating Beijing
Municipal Government‘s ‗face job‘ (mianzi gongcheng). From this perspective,
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the competition in the TV market is not a fair game, and this problem is rooted
in the structure of the whole system.
Similar things happen in the film sector. In China‘s film industry, the market
order is disrupted by the favouritism displayed by government towards certain
film companies, directors and topics. The China Film Group Corporation is not
only a commercial film enterprise, but also an appendage of the central
government. As a result, it is the biggest beneficiary, and its market conduct is
facilitated by the government‘s favouritism. This can be best illustrated by the
dispute over the schedule arrangement from the end of 2009 to the beginning of
2010 in China‘s film market. According to an anonymous informant, the
Hollywood blockbuster Avatar was supposed to air in late December 2009 but
was postponed to 4 January 2010 in order to leave the Christmas period for two
films, Bodyguards and Assassins (a Hong Kong–China Film Group Corporation
co-production) and A Simple Noodle Story (directed by Zhang Yimou).
Following this, cinemas all over the country were told to stop screening the 2D
version of Avatar on 22 January, the day when China Film Group Corporation‘s
production Confucius (Kongzi), was released. A problematic market is fostered
which ‗tends to marginalize the interests of audiences, to discourage industrial
reorganization, to limit capital investment, and to frustrate technological
innovation‘ (Curtin, 2010a, p. 21).
Competition between state-owned media organisations, domestic private media
companies and non-Chinese media companies is in fact a competition between
the government, domestic private companies and non-Chinese media companies.
Given the size of the state-owned media organisations and the influence of
government policies and actions with explicit favouritism, domestic private
enterprises and non-Chinese media companies need to conform to the official
policies and practices of the Chinese government lest they be locked out of the
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Chinese market. Curtin observes that Western media conglomerates are not so
optimistic about the commercialisation reform of China‘s media industries and
scale down their Mainland operations. Some of them are redirecting their
resources to other Asian markets. For instance, Murdoch‘s News Corporation
focuses more on the Indian market now. But those international media
companies that adapt to China‘s local circumstances, such as MTV, can indeed
succeed (Fung, 2006, 2008). As for Taiwan and Hong Kong media enterprises,
they tend to continue to engage in joint ventures with Mainland companies since
Mainland China is their biggest market target. Furthermore, under these
circumstances, Chinese media professionals are forced to invest most of their
time and energy in dealing with a lot of conflicting interests rather than focusing
on product innovation to suit the rapidly changing tastes of audiences. Li Haibin,
who has been working as the casting director in China on the Australian directed
Mao’s Last Dancer, reflected:
The media situation in China is very impetuous… In contrast to Western
film companies, people here only want to find the shortcut to making
money and never bother to stop and think about how to make a good film…
There is still a long way to go for China‘s media industries.
(Interview with Li Haibin, 2009)
7.3 Beijing as a media capital in the Greater China media
market
Curtin has made some observation of Beijing‘s potential to become a media
capital in the Great Chinese media market (Curtin, 2007, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c).
He clearly argues that despite its global aspirations, Beijing is not a media
capital but rather a national node of state policy and patronage (Curtin, 2010a, p.
203
26). He (2010a) has generalised that successful media capitals—such as
Hollywood and Bombay—have operated at arm‘s length from the state, catering
to audience interests rather than the government‘s. Successful media capitals
emphasise commercial imperatives and rapidly changing audience tastes so that
producers tend to avoid aligning themselves too closely to powerful patrons and
official culture. Therefore, despite Beijing‘s aspiration to become the centre of
China‘s media industries, Beijing‘s creative productivity is diminished by its
heavy political atmosphere and the oppressive official oversight. Accordingly,
Beijing won‘t be able to become the centre of China‘s commercial media sector,
although it will still exercise its powerful influence over state-sanctioned media.
In fact, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the two cities where Curtin believes there is a
robust ensemble of media enterprises and a distinctive regional culture, are more
likely to win capital status once the government loosens its hold on the
entertainment media industries. Meanwhile, financial resources, infrastructure
and geographical reach are significantly constrained by official national policy.
According to this view, a Great Chinese media market with multi centres will be
formed, one in which Beijing will still retain its paramount status in
government-owned media, while Shanghai-Taipei and Hong Kong-Guangzhou
will be the locations of commercial media aiming at diverse audiences
worldwide.
However the facts indicate otherwise. Not only the state-owned media
organisations, but also commercial media enterprises, both domestic and
international, continue coming to Beijing if they are aiming at the Mainland
China market. Among the domestic media enterprises, nearly all private media
companies are based in Beijing, especially film companies. Although two
famous private media companies, Huayi Brothers Media and Hairun Movie &
TV Group, both registered subsidiary companies in Zhejiang Province, these are
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strategically designed to take advantage of the local tax deduction policies. The
two companies‘ head offices remain in Beijing. Even Hunan Dianguang Media,
which owns one of China‘s most popular provincial TV stations, Hunan Satellite
TV, came to Beijing and opened a film company in 2010. Nowadays, most
Hong Kong films are not only made in large part for the Mainland market, but
also, studios, filmmakers, crews and talent are increasingly based in Beijing
(Pang, 2010, p. 140).
According to Lu Jia and Shaun Chang, more and more Taiwanese media
companies and professionals are also shifting to Beijing seeking opportunities.
Australian Brendan Harkin also moved his company, X Media Lab, from
Shanghai to Beijing recently, and his business has grown significantly since then.
The co-director of Movingcities34
, Bert de Muynck observes a blooming fashion
scene in Beijing, which, as a political capital, would be deemed by Curtin to be
an environment oppressive to creativity. Bert de Muynck contends that Beijing
is a place that combines the presence of media, other creative talent and a wide
variety of subcultures. (Interview with Bert de Muynck, 2011) It is evident that
Beijing continues to absorb media enterprises and personnel and nurture
creativity.
In addition to the agglomeration of business and personnel, there is significant
grassroots media activism in Beijing; the liveliness of the grassroots media
environment is reflected in various independent media activities. There are over
34 Movingcities is an independent research organization investigating the role that
architecture and urbanism play in shaping the contemporary city. More details can be found
at: http://movingcities.org/
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one hundred registered hosts of film activities in Beijing on Douban Location35
which provides users to share and discover local events and activities; most of
them are film clubs, independent documentary centres, or cafes featured with
films including Broadway Cinematheque MOMA, the first art-house cinema in
mainland China under the Broadway Circuit operated and managed by EDKO
Films Ltd in Hong Kong. Nearly 90 film activities are organised in Beijing
every week according to Douban Location whereas only around 30 in Shanghai.
Seminars and dialogues with directors, producers, actors, and academics are
normally arranged for participants after watching Chinese and foreign
independent documentaries and art films which are rarely exhibited in
mainstream cinemas. Furthermore, in order to promote their culture and
language in China, foreign embassies and cultural associations in Beijing, such
as British Council and Goethe-Institut, organise cultural and media activities
either free or at a very low price. Information, knowledge and skills are
exchanged between media professionals and audiences. The diversity of media
in Beijing is also enriched by marginal groups, such as rural migrants and artists.
The dynamics driving media enterprises and talents to Beijing are more
complicated than Curtin has observed; there are four reasons for the divergence
between Curtin‘s observation and actual development in Beijing.
35 Douban Location is a content of douban.com, which is the most popular interest sharing
and social network service website in China. More details can be found at:
www.douban.com
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7.3.1 Adaptive informal institutions
Curtin maintains that, in the Asian context, political stability or expressive
freedom are the baseline requirements for the emergence of a media capital
(Curtin, 2007, p. 288). He reflects that the popular culture in Hong Kong during
its prime, Taipei‘s rising cultural force when popular passions regarding the end
of martial law spilled over into the rapidly proliferating media outlets of the
1990s and the Singaporean government‘s embrace of liberty and creativity
demonstrate that stability and liberty have been persistently attractive to creative
labour in the Chinese screen industries. But according to Curtin, Mainland
China is a ‗treacherous terrain‘ (Curtin, 2010a, p. 24) for media companies, with
ambiguous policies, political favouritism, censorship, piracy and a lack of
financial transparency being among the most common concerns. By creating a
complex operating environment that helps to keep foreign capitalists at bay, the
Chinese government intends to gain time for domestic media industries to grow
strong enough to fight with Hollywood media conglomerates. But such a fickle
environment discourages media talents, who require a stable policy environment,
and undermines the development of media enterprises, both domestic and
international.
Hence, for media enterprises aiming at Mainland China, a locality where they
can find liberty and expressive freedom is crucial. Instead of Shanghai and
Guangdong Province, which are nominated by Curtin, I argue that Beijing is the
potential locus due to the ‗adaptive informal institution‘ (Tsai, 2006), a force
that Curtin pays little attention to. Based on her observations on the dynamics of
private sector development in China since the late 1970s, political science
professor Kellee Tsai argues:
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Under certain circumstances, the etiology of formal institutional change lies
in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the
restrictions of formal institutions… Formal institutions comprise a myriad
of constraints and opportunities that may motivate everyday actors to devise
novel operating arrangements that are not officially sanctioned. With
repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an
institutional reality of their own… In contrast to deep-rooted, primordial
informal institutions, which tend to resist change, the resulting norms and
practices can be called adaptive informal institutions because they represent
creative responses to formal institutional environments that actors find too
constraining. Wide-spread use of adaptive informal institutions may then
motivate and enable political elites to reform the original formal
institutions…
(Tsai, 2006, pp. 117-118)
The adaptive informal institutions are embodied in various acts based on social
relationships (guanxi) in Chinese society. Traditionally, society in China is a
hierarchically structured order covered by interconnected social relationships.
Private and public matters are not yet legally organised and safeguarded; a
person‘s function in a vertically organised society is very significant (Heberer,
2007). Reform has led to a significant expansion of guanxi rather than a
decreasing tendency.
The strong orientation towards a market economy combined with the
simultaneous retention of the party‘s monopoly of power has led to more
fostering and development of guanxi in the form of an explosion of
gift-giving and hospitality, including significantly higher costs for
individuals and institutions.
(Heberer, 2007, p. 276)
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The foundation for guanxi is shared experience and emotional bonding and it is
accordingly deeper than those relationships which are built up simply during
work. Establishing and maintaining guanxi requires a high degree of sociability,
especially constant contacts with key people. The social, political and economic
use of guanxi is proportional to the extent of a relationship. The deeper the
relationship, the bigger its utility. Though the guanxi between entrepreneurs and
government officials is responsible for the corruption often seen in China, it is
an indispensable facilitator for entrepreneurs to secure their business and
interests in the insecure socio-political environment in China. Accordingly,
many media enterprises in China need to make constant contacts with the
government, i.e. SARFT, in order to push their own interests. As Zhou Hao,
director of Beijing Golden Screen Culture Communication Co., Ltd reflected:
I hang out with officials of SARFT regularly, as well as officials at the
Ministry of Culture and even the Propaganda Department of the CCP
Central Committee. Inviting them to dinner is a kind of cultural input…
because you can make money only when you correctly understand policies.
(Interview with Zhou Hao, 2009)
According to him, during his interaction with government officials, he can
always get useful hints in terms of what the government is thinking and what the
next step might be. Hence, guanxi not only informs him about policy changes,
but also enables him to prepare for possible changes in advance.
Furthermore, China‘s bureaucratic system does not include a formal channel
which allows the people‘s voice to be directly heard during the decision making
process. In Western countries, industry associations, such as the Screen
Producers Association of Australia (SPAA), have developed the capacity to
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lobby the government in order to influence public policies (see Johnson, 2011).
But there is no presence of strong industry associations or groups in China, since
all of them are established and managed by the Party. Therefore, guanxi is
commonly adopted by entrepreneurs to influence government policy-makers,
negotiate with government and even persuade government to push reform in the
direction they want. Especially in China‘s media regulatory system, there is no
particular law or Act governing media industries. Rather, SARFT constantly
changes media-related policies and regulations in order to maintain a
harmonious society and, more importantly, to serve the central leaders‘ ideas
and objectives. Rather than being a routinised and professional system,
policy-making and implementation in China is a highly specific and
personalised endeavour (Breznitz & Murphree, 2011, p. 11) rooted deeply in the
structure of the system.
According to Tang Haifei, producer at China International Television
Corporation, the lower the official‘s level in the bureaucratic system, the more
conservative she or he is. In order to keep their positions in the government,
officials have to play safe and interpret central leaders‘ intentions cautiously to
prevent any trouble that may irritate central leaders; officials on the execution
level do not dare to challenge the boundaries of the central leaders who are
several levels higher than them. (Interview with Tang Haifei, 2009) This is why
Curtin finds that ‗execution at the local level is open to a range of interpretation
further fragmenting the patchwork of interests that sustains the status quo by
frustrating innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurial activity‘ (Curtin, 2010a, p.
21). In addition, the different interest groups existing within the Party increase
the complexity of policy-making and implementation.
Where the situation involves ‗ruling by person‘, the issue of media policies is in
fact an issue of politics. One can win the first-mover advantage and take the lead
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by exerting a bigger influence on government via adaptive informal institutions.
Over time, those isolated adaptive responses of the government to industry
development evolve into adaptive informal institutions, the ‗regularized patterns
of interaction that emerge as adaptive responses to the constraints and
opportunities of formal institutions, that violate or transcend the scope of formal
institutions, and that are widely practiced‘ (Tsai, 2006, p. 125). In this sense,
adaptive informal institutions bridge the gap between media companies that
need policy support from the central government and the central government,
especially the central leaders, who are eager to develop China‘s media industries.
According to Tsai, adaptive informal institutions are formed and thrive in places
where the interests of the enforcers of formal institutions and the creators of
informal adaptations converge (ibid, p. 126). Hence, media professionals need to
be in Beijing to establish guanxi with government officials in order to negotiate
for their desired outcomes. More importantly, they benefit from being there
because during interactions with government officials the adaptive informal
institutions gradually form. According to Qian Chongyuan, the distribution
director of Beijing Forbidden City Film Company ‗…your feedback is
appreciated by the government and impacts on measures they take in the
future… in this way your desired changes will happen sooner or
later‘.(Interview with Qian Chongyuan, 2009)
7.3.2 Continuous adaption and convergence of the media
regulatory system
Curtin points out that, under the cover of commercialisation reform, forces of
socio-cultural variation in Mainland China shape the deployment of capital, the
creation of content and the distribution of product, all of which aim to
strengthen the government-owned media organisations and exploit commercial
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activities in the interest of the Party (Curtin, 2010a, p. 23). As a result, it is
difficult for private media companies aiming at the Mainland market to survive,
given the size and influence of government media institutions. Although joint
ventures and co-productions have provided some opportunities for private media
enterprises to break out of these constraints, in 2003, the central government
announced three formal measures: Temporary provisions on foreign investment
on cinemas; Administrative provisions on Chinese-foreign co-producing films;
and Administrative provisions on Chinese-foreign co-producing TV drama.,
According to Curtin, these new restrictions on foreign media ‗are part of a
cyclical pattern of liberalization and retrenchment that discourages innovation‘
(Curtin, 2007, p. 283). However Curtin‘s conclusion neglects the continuous
adaption and convergence of China‘s media regulatory system.
Indeed, the nature of China‘s political economy has changed from the old
party-state of the 1950s and 1960s to a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime or a
capitalist developmental state (c.f. Baum & Shevchenko, 1999; Tsai, 2006, p.
141) and one reflection of this transition is to embrace the development of the
private sector. However, the government reforms the whole system in an
unsteady way along with its own evolution, and the interaction and
confrontation of formal institutions and informal institutions is the root cause.
Similarly, in China‘s information technology industry, Breznitz and Murphree
observe that ‗the institutions that govern China‘s economy, and the political
battles that fashioned its evolutionary change, both stimulate and constrain the
opportunities available to entrepreneurs and companies‘ (Breznitz & Murphree,
2011, p. 20). Therefore, the trajectory of reform in China is always
‗trial-and-error economic experimentation led by subnational entities but
fashioned by political contestations between conservatives and reformers at the
centre‘, rather than a progress ‗carefully orchestrating its industrial development‘
(Breznitz & Murphree, 2011, p. 20). According to Liu, the deregulation process
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in China‘s TV industry has happened gradually, and the government is
cautiously opening the door of the market (Liu, 2011). In the film sector, the
government has begun to study and respect market laws, which can be
demonstrated by the government‘s follow-up measures regarding the furore over
the rescheduling of the Hollywood production Avatar and the Chinese
blockbuster Confucius from the end of 2009 to the beginning of 2010. Due to
the low attendance for Confucius and the high demand for Avatar, the Chinese
government later reversed their decision and allowed Avatar to remain on some
2-D screens in China. Despite the inconsistent pace of reform and the erratic
development of reform, the Chinese government continues to make progress,
albeit with path dependency based on the nature of a bureaucratic-authoritarian
regime or a capitalist developmental state.
Domestic media companies also experience the government‘s transition to
media marketisation. State-owned media companies especially are forced to
adjust themselves to accommodate the transition. Qian Chongyuan recalled:
We used to get money very easily from the government as long as we
submitted some shooting plans which were mainly main melody films of
socialism. But nowadays it is getting more and more difficult for this kind
of plans to be supported.
(Interview with Qian Chongyuan, 2009)
The Chinese government is slowly changing its media regulatory system
towards an international model, but it remains a model underpinned by adaptive
informal institutions.
Interestingly, during the adaptation and convergence of China‘s media
regulatory system, the central government has always distinguished Hong Kong,
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Taiwan and Macau from the general concept of foreign countries in most
policies due to political concerns. The three regions have been given special
preferential policies, even when rigorous limitations are made for non-Chinese
media companies: foreign capital can‘t exceed 49% in joint-venture film
companies and cinemas with the exception of capital from Hong Kong, Macau
and Taiwan; once they have passedcensorship, Hong Kong Taiwanese film
product will be able to screen in Mainland China without being counted in the
annual quota on film importation which applies to all the other countries and
regions in the world; Hong Kong–China and Taiwan–China co-produced TV
dramas are treated the same as domestic productions; and media personnel from
Taiwan and Hong Kong are encouraged to come to the Mainland and participate
in TV and film production. Moreover, the central government also distinguishes
domestic private companies from foreign private companies. While the
government remains very careful of Western private companies, the tendency to
treat domestic private companies in the same way as the state-owned media
companies is increasing. For example, in the ‗Guiding opinions on promoting
the film industry development‘releasedby the State Council of China in 2010, it
is explicitly stated that ‗[domestic] private film companies should be treated the
same as state-owned film companies, regarding investment, land utilisation,
taxation policies, financing and international trade‘.
Thus, Hong Kong and Taiwan, both regions which have significant political
implications for Mainland China, and which share the same root culture as the
Mainland, enjoy the central government‘s favouritism due to the government‘s
political concerns and their acknowledgement of Chinese culture; by contrast,
the central government is highly alert to non-Chinese companies and regards
them as a threat to the country‘s cultural security. Moreover, the government‘s
‗nationalism‘ leads to an increasingly tolerant and supportive attitude towards
domestic private companies as the government gradually recognises the power
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and potential these companies have. As elaborated in Chapter 3, while
experiments in media reform are usually initiated outside of Beijing, success at
the national level or beyond can‘t be achieved without the central government‘s
consent and support. Nowadays, media enterprises in China must aim at the
national market, since competition is becoming increasingly severe.
Therefore,by being close to the central government, media companies can do
bigger business or make bigger decisions since ‗once investors get strong
support from the central government, central authorities will help persuade
stubborn local officials or help solve local problems‘ (cited in Breznitz &
Murphree, 2011, p. 105).
7.3.3 The generational transition of power in Chinese film
directors
Curtin argues that in Mainland China, the private media sector suffers from
government censorship and a lack of investment capital; whereas national media
conglomerates, such as CCTV, are conservative in regards to creativity and
innovation because their headquarters are located in Beijing and therefore their
content is closely monitored by the central government (Curtin, 2007).
Especially in the film sector, successful films of recent years have tended to be
blockbusters produced by a relatively small circle of directors with international
investment partners, while small to medium sized indie productions gain little
exposure at home(Curtin, 2007, p. 283).Furthermore, in spite of the rapid
injection of massive investment from both the private sector and the government,
the lack of experienced talent in the areas of finance, planning, coordination,
distribution, exhibition, and marketing leads to a situation where the majority of
investment is wasted on low-quality productions which can‘t be sold anywhere.
215
It is not only the mainstream commercial media, but also the indie media that
have significance. Curtin emphasises the significance of those indie media
talents who are active in niche or even non-commercial creative venues, and
contends that ‗a city‘s ability to attract creative labour and make effective use of
it seems to rely on not simply the number of creative venues but the diversity of
them as well‘ (Curtin, 2007, p. 288). Hence, the state-controlled institutional
structure in Mainland China, along with the legacy of authoritarian leadership,
does not allow for new cultural forms to percolate up from the grass roots
(Curtin, 2007, p. 284). In particular, the proportion of government agencies in
Beijing is greater than in other cities in China, and this creates such a strong
political atmosphere that creative development is discouraged. Hence the lifeline
of media industries, a mechanism for discovering and transferring new forms
and ideas into the mainstream is lacking in Beijing.
But what Curtin doesn‘t notice is the generational transition of power in Chinese
film directors. Though the fifth generation film directors still have massive box
office appeal in the domestic film market, the sixth generation film directors
have emerged. Unlike the fifth generation directors who are now addicted to
commercial blockbusters and have seemingly stopped providing critical
commentary on contemporary socio-cultural problems in China, the sixth
generation directors, including Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, Zhang Yuan,
Zhang Yang, Wang Quanan, Ning Hao, Lou Ye, and Lu Chuan, most of who
have been based in Beijing since they graduated from Beijing Film Academy in
the 1990s, have produced an edgy underground film movement in China, and
focus closely on contemporary urban life, especially on those affected by
disorientation, rebellion and dissatisfaction with China‘s contemporary social
tensions(Corliss, 2001). Their early work was mainly circulated in the
international art circuit and exhibited at international film festivals.
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The black market and indie film salons in Beijing, plus Beijing Film Academy
and The Central Academy of Drama (house the sixth generation directors‘ work
for the purpose of teaching) disperse these films in Beijing (the area where
Beijing Film Academy is located is a famous black market for art film DVDs).
Gradually, an underground film circle has formed in Beijing. In the meantime,
as the sixth generation film directors are further exposed internationally and
keep winning international awards, many receive bigger investment from
domestic film companies and international film groups. Though their subsequent
movies are more and more commercialised, they still maintain a particular
interest in marginalised individuals and the less represented fringes of society.
Notably, investment in the sixth generation directors comes mainly from film
companies located in Beijing, and some of it is even made by China Film Group
Corporation, which tends to favour ideologically safe and widely popular
directors and productions, according to Curtin (2010a, p. 22). In addition to
producing films with the sixth generation, China Film Group Corporation has
launched several young director development plans to establish its own reserve
of talent for future development while conducting its task as an appendage of the
state. Therefore it is not accurate to equal Beijing‘s political atmosphere to an
environment incapable of accommodating diversified cultural content and forms.
On the contrary, since the national media policies in Mainland China don‘t
provide enough space for cultural diversity, one can find channels to penetrate
political barriers in Beijing, since there are cultural resources, distribution circles,
exhibition spaces as well as financial support. Sometimes, the state-owned
media organisations are also involved in the process because they, as
participants in the media marketisation which the government is determined to
deepen, need to explore talent and to continuously create new content and forms
along with the deepening of reform of media commercialisation.
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7.3.4 Audiences and other issues in the Mainland TV market
Although China‘s media industries don‘t suffer a shortage of capital any more,
quality is still the biggest problem. In the TV sector, low-cost genres tend to
prevail and thus a cloning culture is formed, encouraging endless imitation
(Curtin, 2007, p. 283). The slow growth of the creative ability of domestic
media companies cannot keep up with the rapidly increasing market demand. On
the other hand, domestic audiences are more exposed to Western media products
via video websites, unauthorised satellite channels, pirated DVDs and internet
downloading (Curtin, 2007, p. 284). By focusing his comparison on the narrow
range of programming available on Mainland TV, Curtin tries to indicate that
the domestic production in the Mainland TV market is vulnerable. Faced with
the emergence of new media, which involve more interaction and proactive
participation, the TV industry is supposedly losing audiences in China, as a
result of a type of passive consumption. However, according to CSM Media
Research, TV viewing time has been very stable in China since 2001. But
interestingly, the age structure of TV audiences in the Mainland market has
changed a lot: the over 55s account for the majority of the national audiences
(Chen & Zhou, 2011).
Audiences over 55 years of age in China are very conservative, because their
ideological legacy exerts a strong influence on Chinese people in this age group.
The traditional education they received and their life experience leads to their
preference for traditional value rather than the edgy and trendy non-Chinese
productions. According to Curtin, TV service must insinuate itself into domestic
settings, as in the TV sector, forces of socio-cultural variation have more
influence (Curtin, 2007, p. 279). Because of the issue of cultural proximity,
Western companies shouldn‘t be over confident of their advantage when
competing with domestic media companies in the Mainland TV market, even if
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the Chinese government loosens its control over media industries completely,
which is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Furthermore, Curtin‘s media capital notion is partly based on the argument that
media products are distinctive prototypes (Curtin, 2007, p. 13), and therefore
media conglomerates in Hollywood still keep a firm hand on the generation and
ownership of intellectual property (Miller, et al., 2001) in order to maintain the
distinctiveness (the prototype). However, this view has been challenged by
Moran and Keane (Keane & Moran, 2004) who argue that contemporary media
products contain interchangeable elements. The process of copying formats and
interchanging elements is more and more evident, and in the area of the creative
industries, products are gradually moving beyond the jurisdiction of the
traditional IP concept. Thus the definition and function of piracy needs to be
redefined along with technology development and the evolution of innovation.
According to a BBC report, British Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently
announced that Britain‘s intellectual property laws are to be reviewed to ‗make
them fit for the internet age‘36
. In fact, more and more Chinese media companies
are starting to collaborate with new media, for example, by selling TV dramas
and program to or co-broadcasting them with video-sharing websites, and some
of them have made a success in the market. Therefore Curtin‘s concernthat
companies find it difficult to sustain the artificial scarcity that is the basis for
pricing media services and artefacts (Curtin, 2007, p. 284) seems less worrying
in reality.
36 The BBC report ‗UK copyright laws to be reviewed, announces Cameron‘ is retrieved on
2nd
August, 2011 from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11695416
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7.4 Beijing’s advantages and challenges
Curtin contends that media capitals tend to emerge where opportunity,
prosperity, expressive freedom and rich cultural resources converge. Media
industries in Greater China confront challenges in financing, production,
distribution and exhibition (Curtin, 2007). However opportunity, prosperity,
expressive freedom and rich cultural resources come together in different ways.
In Beijing, under the guidance of the government, the interaction of formal and
informal institutions constantly occurs. During these interactions, media
enterprises, talent and cultural resources are integrated into the spatial dynamics,
further directing the centripetal tendency of production and the centrifugal force
of distribution and creating a tolerant environment for cultural diversity.
The mechanism can be illustrated by the changing relationship between
government and industry, both of which evolve along with the development of
their mutual relationship. In addition to regulating, the other function of policies
is to enable. Being in Beijing, the media regulatory centre, not only implies
being close to the government‘s regulation but, more importantly, also endows
enterprises with closer access to enabling government actions. Further, via the
adaptive informal institutions, which require constant and direct contact between
media companies and the government, media enterprises stimulate the evolution
of the government which supplies media companies with further development
space and enhances the freedom for media talents to continuously create and
innovate. In turn, the development of media companies is fuelled by the
evolving government regulatory system. Accordingly, media companies will
raise more requirements and inform the government via the informal institutions.
In this sense, an open-ended evolutionary spiral is formed between media
companies and the government.
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Curtin argues that the dynamics of media agglomeration are stable once formed
and thus locales that fail to make an early start are subject to ‗lock-out‘ (Curtin,
2010a, p. 5). However, although Beijing provides a model of relationship
building between government and media industries, in the long term the Beijing
model requires systemic change. These changes include fostering an
increasingly competitive media market; allowing a more open attitude towards
media industries; and recognising opportunities engendered by media
convergence.
Undoubtedly, political factors at play in Beijing are at odds with global media
capital aspirations. Beijing, as the national media centre, is attached to the
aspiration of an international media capital by the government. Actions made by
the government including policies, plans, investment, and infrastructures have
been incorporated into the political force that is constructing Beijing‘s media
capital status. Nevertheless, as the centre of state power, Beijing is less likely to
become a global media capital according to Curtin, since ‗media capitals tend to
flourish at arm‘s length from the centres of state power, favouring cities that are
in many cases disdained by political and cultural elites‘ (2011). The entrenched
state intervention into media, while generating political force and accelerating
the centripetal trend of media industries in Beijing, reduces Beijing‘s
attractiveness to media companies and workers whose pursuit for openness and
freedom grows along with their own development.
As a result, it is difficult to directly apply the media capital model in Beijing.
Both media companies and workers are reluctant to leave Beijing although they
know that they need to find another location for creativity. For example, Li Yan,
the freelance director, said: ‗I want to live in Yunnan Province to create for two
months every year where I can find bigger space for creativity when my career
becomes better in Beijing‘. (Interview with Li Yan, 2009) In Luo Xuan‘s
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business plan, he wants to open a branch in Wuhan which focuses on creating
content while keeping the Beijing office for business operation. (Interview with
Luo Xuan, 2009)
Furthermore, profit is the top-ranking pursuit for media enterprises as
commercialised organisations. The Mainland market remains the biggest market
for media companies in the Great Chinese community. Hence, seizing business
opportunities in the Mainland market is of strategic significance to media
companies in the Greater China community. Accordingly, to a great extent, the
agglomeration tendency in this stage is driven by the appeal of the Mainland
market, which is defended by the government‘s policies. Under the current
circumstance, in order to succeed in the Mainland market, media companies
must be sensitive to official policies, which invariably aim to insure state
leadership and the supremacy of the Communist Party; this undermines the
exportability of their productions. Furthermore, Beijing‘s (formal and informal)
political institutions and spheres of uncertainty shape growth that is oriented
towards short-term interests and facilitate limited innovation. But, although still
influential, the new characteristics of China‘s media industries decrease the
territorial power of government policies over media circulation and consumption
along with the enhancing of market force. Instead of protectionism, the
government should focus on supply, encouraging the capacity to sustain
creativity and innovation.
According to Michael Curtin, media capital is geographically relational (Curtin,
2007, p. 285). Therefore in the next chapter, I will elaborate on the relationship
of Beijing, as an emergent media capital, to other important nodes in the Great
Chinese media field, in order to revise and modify Curtin‘s media capital notion
for a better ‗fit‘ to Chinese media industries, which is the conclusion of this
222
thesis. I will also discuss the implications and limitations of this research and
directions for further study.
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Chapter 8: Conclusion
In previous chapters, I have described the development of the audio-visual
industries in the People‘s Republic of China to show how media enterprises,
professionals and the Chinese government interact and evolve in Beijing‘s
political, economic and cultural environments, and to identify Beijing‘s potential
to become a media capital. I have found that in Beijing, the political capital of
China, media industries are experiencing a transition from a completely
state-sanctioned sector ‗creating enclaves of ―indigenous‖ production and
topographies of national circulation‘ (Curtin, 2010a, p. 13) to a quasi
market-oriented economy in which state-owned media companies, private media
companies and overseas media companies collaborate and compete under the
supervision of the state government. I have also found that despite an evidently
constrained capacity to innovate and export, nowadays, Beijing is the
destination to which Chinese media resources and talent are flowing.
In this concluding chapter, I will summarise and evaluate the findings from
previous chapters in order to answer the research question of this thesis: What
are the possibilities of Beijing becoming a media capital?
8.1 Positioning Beijing in Chinese media industries
Until recently, the media capital of the Chinese media market was Hong Kong.
However as Hong Kong‘s status wanes, Beijing is gradually showing potential
to be a media capital. As shown in Chapters 4 and 5, it has learnt to embrace
international media companies, especially those from Hong Kong and Taiwan,
while nurturing Mainland China‘s own media force. Nevertheless, Beijing offers
a distinctive model of connecting the global and local capitals due to the
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organisational specificity of media industries in China, namely the coexistence
of state-owned institutions and commercial organisations (see Chapter 2). While
this is consistent with Curtin‘s description of Beijing as ‗strongly influenced by
national policy guidance‘ (Curtin, 2007, p. 285), it does not consign Beijing
forever to administrative status. The Chinese government is aware of the value
of media industries: on the one hand it successfully constrains the autonomy of
the media industry for its political purposes. All media companies in China are
domesticated into the Chinese environment, whether they come from
Guangzhou, London or Seoul.
But on the other hand, Fung‘s research on multinational media corporations in
China (Fung, 2008) shows that the Chinese government‘s intention is more than
to simply secure ideological security by taming international media companies.
At this stage, the key problem for China‘s media industries is no longer the lack
of funding (see Chapter 4); rather, it is how to make better use of the existing
capital from the government and the private sector to produce and export
distinctive content appealing to international audiences; this is something the
Chinese government has always intended to achieve but has not yet succeeded in
doing so.
In the meantime, the Chinese government receives and uses the de-centred,
de-territorialising nature of global capital to help China‘s own media companies,
state-owned as well as private (Fung, 2008, p. 186). For example, in Chapter 4 I
have demonstrated that, in addition to the government‘s direct investment,
CCTV‘s rapid expansion in other countries is assisted by local media companies.
In Australia, subscribers to Foxtel cable television can access CCTV-4, brought
in by Australia‘s Telstra; CCTV English Channel is broadcast via Sky TV in
New Zealand; and cable TV subscribers in Korea can access CCTV English
Channel promoted by KBS, Korea‘s biggest television network. Those media
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companies‘ assistance is not given for free. In return, they are given various
facilities to assist their operations in the Mainland China media market, such as
co-production, market access and joint-venture opportunities. Fuji Television
Network, the most influential Japanese commercial TV station, which
co-established Daifu TV (dafu dianshitai) with CCTV to promote CCTV-4 in
Japan in 1998, has been assisted greatly by CCTV to produce several TV
programs and documentaries.
Despite dissatisfaction and resentment at China‘s ideological control and
ambiguous regulatory system, international media companies still maintain their
interest. Curtin has observed that some Hollywood companies have scaled back
their Mainland operations due to China‘s complicated policies and fragmented
regional markets, while Taiwanese and Hong Kong companies continue to
engage in the Mainland market (Curtin, 2010a). Yet, although Curtin is correct
in saying that government intervention is responsible for Western media
companies‘ withdrawal, we should also recognise that, behind the scenes, it is
market forces that are really at play. For Hollywood media companies, which
are thoroughly globalised in their operations, the cost of penetrating a new
market is probably equal to or even lower than the corporate effort that they
have to make in order to stay in the Mainland China market. Rupert Murdoch‘s
News Corporation invested billions in media ventures and public relations
efforts before quietly scaling back its Mainland operations and redirecting its
resources to other Asian markets (Curtin, 2010a).
For the Taiwanese and Hong Kong media companies that mainly serve the
Chinese geo-linguistic market, it is a different story. Taiwanese media
companies are subject to ferocious competition and audience fragmentation in
their local market (Curtin, 2010a, p. 26) and thus have to reach out to the huge
Mainland market. Hong Kong media companies are suffering from the market
226
downturn and the outflow of talent and hence must find a bigger pool of media
workers and a more prosperous media market, which is the Mainland offers as
well. As such, the Taiwanese and Hong Kong media companies that are bonded
to Mainland China by market forces have to adapt to rather than challenge
Mainland China‘s authoritarian environment.
Consequently, Beijing is a necessary location for Taiwanese and Hong Kong
media companies, as well as those Western media companies that still aim at the
Mainland market, which fits Curtin‘s thesis. In Chapters 4 and 5, I have shown
that Beijing is the preferred clustering location for most domestic media
companies in China. It therefore offers the widest range of opportunities for
companies from overseas to team up with domestic companies and the most
convenient way for them to learn about the Mainland market, overcome
regulatory barriers and build up cultural proximity with local audiences.
Secondly, in Chapter 5 I also demonstrated that Beijing has the densest network
of media talent in China. By operating in Beijing, companies can easily acquire
media workers through the local labour market if they need to acquire additional
talent and reduce labour costs. Thirdly, in Chapter 5 I showed that, as the
national media regulation centre, Beijing provides the best location for coming
to a rapid understanding of policies and engaging with policy and key decision
makers.
Finally, due to the Chinese government‘s tendency to constantly change policies
and devise complicated implementation procedures identified in Chapter 7,
media enterprises from overseas need to establish good relationships with the
central government and hence they come to Beijing.
These four reasons for choosing Beijing also demonstrate that most of these
companies comprise a slice of the Mainland market. Beijing may be the best
227
place to make connections, but it is not a place to innovate and prepare for the
global media market. As a result, international companies in Beijing are not
undertaking media export, which is the other important component of a media
capital. Then are the domestic media companies carrying forward the mission of
media export? Another way of saying this is: are the domestic media companies
able to export media products across boundaries so as to complete Curtin‘s
media capital formula? The striking contrast between the government‘s
endeavours, as shown in Chapter 4, and the real situation, as revealed in Chapter
8 suggests a negative answer to this question. Apparently China‘s domestic
media companies are not capable of producing exportable media products at this
stage due to the government-regulated environment, which doesn‘t
accommodate innovation, creativity and diversity. But despite the fact of
China‘s export incompetency, we should also recognise the knowledge transfer
from overseas media companies to domestic companies that is happening in
China and which presages greater potential in the future.
As I have shown in Chapters 3 and 4, during the transition of China‘s media
industries from shiye to qiye, especially after China‘s accession to WTO, foreign
media companies attracted by the privileges offered by the Chinese government
have assisted China‘s domestic media companies to expand overseas. More
importantly, they have transferred enormous knowledge to China‘s domestic
media companies with respect to formats, managerial operations and the
international media market. Beijing provides the best learning space for
domestic media companies while mediating the interaction between
international media flows and domestic media forces. In the TV sector, the
Mainland TV stations and companies accumulate experience in formats of
entertainment shows and trendy dramas (ouxiangju) via co-production with
Taiwanese TV companies. In the film sector, China Film Group Corporation,
Huayi Brothers, and Poly Bona have enhanced their production capacity and
228
marketing via co-production with Hong Kong film companies and talent as
discussed in Chapter 5.
Dissatisfied with the Chinese geo-linguistic media market, since the 2000s,
China‘s film companies have proactively embraced international investment and
co-operated with Hollywood film companies to circulate their products in the
global market. Poly Bona is now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The
well-received film Karate Kid, co-produced by Columbia Pictures, China Film
Group Corporation and a few other international film studios in 2010, was
distributed globally by Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures and Disney. In Beijing,
while international enterprises and China‘s domestic media forces are seemingly
in opposition to each other due to the government‘s cultural security concerns,
they need each other. This relationship is well catered for in Beijing. Beijing
provides international media companies with the political and human resources
they require to enter the Mainland market. Rather than being opposed to or
frightened by competition brought by international companies, Chapter 5 has
shown that China‘s domestic media companies hold the belief that they
‗enhance themselves by struggling while learning‘. International media
companies coming to Beijing for the Mainland market are role models for
domestic media companies to study and accumulate firsthand knowledge and
experience during the communication and collaboration process
Despite the fact that domestic companies are gradually expanding their
connections internationally, China‘s media industries still suffer from a lack of
content diversity. The lack of diversity is mainly caused by the Chinese
government‘s ideological control and old mindset as we have seen in Chapters 6
and 7. Hence Curtin argues that once the Chinese government substantially
eases its control over media industries, Shanghai and Guangdong Province
would be more prominent than Beijing in the commercial media sector, since
229
Beijing‘s close association with politics constrains media companies‘ appeal to
the mass consumers. I have argued in Chapter 7 that state policies, political
patrons and official culture have been adapting themselves to the requirement of
industry development, although such adaptation is rarely transparent and has
some way to go.
In Chapter 3, I argued that the government is determined to continue to promote
further media reform to encourage the reconstruction of China‘s media
industries. During the process of reform, the Chinese government‘s rationales of
control, predictability and convergence, which I have discussed in Chapter 7,
adjust state policies, political patrons and official culture to facilitate this reform.
The convergence has set the tone of the media reform, which is the
interdependency between public and private sectors. The Chinese government
applies different policies to state-owned media companies, domestic private
companies, Hong Kong and Taiwanese media companies and Western media
companies to take advantage of international media forces to build China‘s own
media flagships rather than simply blacking out any possible danger that may be
engendered by the competition. Moreover, political patrons are frequently
adopted by the Chinese government to promote the development of selected
media enterprises in various ways. For example, Chinese government‘s agenda
of soft power contributes a lot to the expansion of China‘s satellite TV network
internationally. CCTV‘s expansion and the development of Great Wall Platform
are all conducted in the name of ‗soft power‘. SARFT and MoC host many
international exhibitions and film festivals every year to facilitate media trading.
SARFT even organises domestic media companies to attend international
festivals or cultural exchange activities to display China‘s film production in
different countries although not everyone, of course, enjoys the government‘s
favour.
230
In practice, the internationalisation and marketisation of China‘s media
industries develops in a way that can be controlled by the government and in a
direction that can be predicted. Problems, of course, are generated due to the
regulatory environment, but informal institutions in Beijing offer channels for
media companies to have their voices heard and their requirement for greater
liberalisation included in state policies and reform debates. The ideal freedom
scenario of Curtin—that the Chinese government will completely loosen its
hand—is not going to happen; Beijing will keep absorbing media companies for
economic as well as political reasons. Shaped by the joint force of the evolution
of China‘s media regulatory system and the generational transition of power in
media talent, and film directors in particular, content diversity is more and more
tolerated within the official media culture—although most times in edited forms.
Hence more and more of the underground cultures mentioned in Chapter 5
choose to come to Beijing, because, with a certain degree of compromise, there
is a chance to be embraced by official culture and therefore a greater chance to
enhance their influence in Beijing. Thus, on balance, I have argued that there is
an overall advance in the quotient of socio-cultural variation, which in turn
underpins Beijing‘s potential as a media capital.
Therefore, to answer the principal research question proposed at the beginning
of this thesis, Beijing is not a media capital at this stage. However, as identified
in Chapter 2, contemporary media products contain interchangeable elements.
Although the global industry tries to maintain the distinctiveness (the prototype)
of each media product and media conglomerates still keep a firm hand on the
generation and ownership of intellectual property (Miller, et al., 2001), the
process of copying formats and interchanging elements is more and more
evident. The point is that Beijing (and China) has learnt how to adapt its media
formats, which in turn has given new life to state owned media, e.g.: talk shows,
reality type shows and current affairs shows based on the 60 Minutes style.
231
Therefore, what matters to a media capital is probably its ability to react to
market trends and to recognise and adopt emerging formats. Considering the
importance of the Mainland market, the Chinese government influences media
enterprises in Hong Kong, Taiwan, most Asian countries and some Western
countries by decisively shaping the Mainland market. Positioned in the network
constituted by node cities in Chinese media industries, such as Hong Kong,
Taipei, and Singapore, Beijing, as the location of the Chinese government,
controls the Chinese media production concentration to a certain degree,
although it is not always in a good way. Thus I argue that Beijing is very likely
to be the next Chinese media capital after enough accumulation and
development has occurred, although as a lower-tier version as compared to other
media capitals in the world such as Hollywood on the first tier and Mumbai on
the second (Curtin, 2007, p. 285).
8.2 Revisiting Curtin’s media capital
In the second chapter of this thesis, I discussed the theory of media capitals.
According to Curtin, media capitals are locations of concentrated media
enterprises, managerial and productive operations in particular as well as talent;
media capitals are also ports exporting products and shedding cultural influence
across countries. The centripetal tendencies of production and management and
the centrifugal tendencies of export and cultural influence are always modified
and complicated by socio-cultural variations. Curtin only recognises that forces
of socio-cultural variations can modify and even complicate the first two
principles: logics of accumulation and trajectories of creative migration. But
after taking a close look at developments in Beijing, I argue that media
industries‘ development and human capital can influence and revise the third
principle, socio-cultural variations.
232
The one-way point of view on the interaction between socio-cultural variations
and the other two principles is right about the inflow of media resources and
talent in Beijing. In Chapter 5, I argued that the concentration of media
enterprises and workforce in Beijing has always been driven by the government.
This development path produces many negative effects, leading to the
vulnerability of exports as shown in the case study on the CBD media cluster in
Chapter 6. However, this can lead to the mistaken assumption that the
non-mainstream factors in China are completely subject to the official
mainstream culture due to the intense surveillance environment. The argument
here is that the government prioritises control and maintains mainstream culture
while media industries seek freedom and require an independent voice to
produce distinctive prototypes.
In contrast, I have argued that Beijing offers a distinctive model of coordinating
and integrating the official culture and the non-mainstream within a high
surveillance regime. In Beijing, the counter-hegemonic factors mainly originate
from private media companies, especially foreign ones, whereas state-controlled
actors reinforce hegemony. However, the same goal is shared by private media
companies and the Chinese government, which is the internationalisation and
marketisation of media industries. Instead of assuming conflict, both official
mainstream culture and non-mainstream culture act synergistically in Beijing;
non-mainstream factors recognise that they won‘t gain traction if they protest
overtly. Generally speaking, the hegemony maintained by the Chinese
government doesn‘t accommodate cultural diversity and consequently obstructs
innovation and creativity. In response, media companies inform, lobby and
persuade the government to modify their views through adaptive informal
institutions. The government‘s awareness of further reform is raised accordingly.
233
In this way, counter-hegemonic factors are incorporated into the hegemonic
system and converted to a part of the hegemonic system.
Hence, due to co-evolving relationships between hegemony and
counter-hegemony in Beijing, the government and media industries influence
each other. The media regulatory environment dictates the conduct of media
firms and the extent to which they perform in the market, especially in the
international market. This is one of the socio-cultural variations in Beijing.
Although the industry is altered by socio-cultural variables, in Beijing the
industry does affect and change the environment. The reason is that the
government has strong interests in promoting the economic role of media while
balancing it with the ideological roles of media. As such, media enterprises with
growing power and media professionals with increasing integrity and
self-esteem are able to use the state through informal institutions to improve the
operational environment in pursuit of their desired outcome, as shown in
Chapters 5 and 7. This may not happen in a very stable way but it has been
functioning in China. Therefore it should be recognised that socio-cultural
variations, especially state policies, institutions and culture, are also changing
and evolving under the influenced of the first two principles. Even in places
such as Beijing, where a significant degree of state control exists, the first two
principles, logics of accumulation and trajectories of creative migration, can also
influence, modify, reshape and change socio-cultural variations.
8.3 Significance of this study
The impetus for this study has come from the spate of media reforms in China
and the Chinese government‘s internationalisation strategy, which have had a
234
significant impact upon the development of China‘s media industries. Of interest
to this study was Beijing, the national media centre of Mainland China.
However, local networks in Chinese media industries have not been sufficiently
studied in existing Western studies. The focus of these studies are still on
‗propaganda‘ or ‗ideology‘ (Donald & Keane, 2002); whereas the linkage
between cultural studies and geographic development is still missed, which is
critical to understand the agglomeration of media industries in mainland China
and the relationship of China‘s local media production and export. In particular,
there is little systemic empirical research analysing development dynamics.
When compared with a growing body of literature on the relationship of global
media production networks and media clusters/cities within Western countries
(e.g. Bathelt, 2002; Goldsmith, et al., 2010; Kaiser & Liecke, 2007; Kratke,
2002, 2003; Mossig, 2004; Nachum & Keeble, 2003; Turok, 2003), the
literature on media clusters/cities in Mainland China is limited. Thus, this study
is significant, as it has filled a gap in the research literature by exploring media
production in Beijing and its connection with other media centres.
8.3.1 Implication for theory
This study used a conceptual framework that draws upon Michael Curtin‘s work
on media capitals. The reason for drawing so heavily on Curtin‘s research is that
it has provided a perspective from which to understand the spatial dynamics of
media industry agglomeration. Curtin‘s framework of media capital integrates
three aspects of media clustering and export and establishes a perspective of
their interaction. In seeking to understand the nature of media capitals, this
research confirmed most findings identified in Curtin‘s work (Curtin, 2007).
While Curtin‘s media capital notion has helped to interpret the findings of the
235
study concerned with media industries in a Chinese context, in other ways it is
limited. This is understandable, given that media industries are a reflection of
the wider cultural context in which they are located. An important implication of
this study, then, is that it has further developed and revised the media capital
conceptual framework. It is argued in this thesis that media capital should also
acknowledge the media companies‘ and professionals‘ influence over the
government to obtain the outcomes they desire and that this revised theoretical
framework makes an important contribution to knowledge, particularly the
knowledge regarding interpreting the relationship of media industries
development and the Chinese government.
8.3.2 Implication for policy
The findings of this study revealed that despite the government‘s aspirations,
China‘s media industries are still greatly constrained by institutional obstacles.
Beijing therefore needs to create more room for creativity as Curtin argues that
media capital cannot work under the heavy control of political leaders or the
privileged classes (Curtin, 2011). In Curtin‘s paper in 2011 (ibid), he adopts
Hong Kong‘s receding media capital status to illustrate that the conditions of
media capital are dependent on converging forces and therefore subject to the
vicissitudes of history. Hence the low quality of production has severely
damaged Hong Kong‘s reputation as a media capital; consequently Hong
Kong‘s transnational base and network of media industries and consumers
slowly dissolved. Nowadays, although informal institutions in Beijing can
compensate to a certain degree, Hong Kong is making efforts to revive its film
industry, and Taiwan and Singapore are ambitious of a bigger picture. Policy
makers in China should keep in mind that the real challenge lies in the
competition for regional soft power. Despite the long history of cultural
236
engagement and convergence of Beijing, which is a remarkable characteristic of
media capitals, Beijing still has much ground to make up in order to catch up
with real media capitals. Its current status as the national media centre is largely
formed and sustained by the political force which is not helpful for Beijing to be
a peer to Hollywood or Mumbai while competing with its rivals, such as Hong
Kong, Taiwan or Singapore, in the international media market. Therefore
Beijing should re-evaluate its policies regarding media industries and allow for
fair competition. Otherwise, it will always be a national media centre in the
domestic market in spite of the political push behind the city.
8.3.3 Implication for practice
The results of this study provided informative insights into how the Chinese
government perceives its role and consequently how media industries are
transforming in China. Therefore this study‘s findings have important
implications for media companies (both state-owned and private) and media
professionals (both domestic and international) in Mainland China.
8.4 Limitations of this study
Two main limitations need to be acknowledged. First, this study does not
exhaust all elements of socio-cultural variation. Rather, this thesis is mainly
focused on state intervention, one of the key factors facilitating and enabling
diversity. The other limitation of the study refers to the reliance on documents as
the prime data resources regarding government actions because of the difficulty
of gaining access to government officials. While the use of documents proved to
be an effective data collection device, the ambiguous text in these government
documents can lead to superficial understandings. Furthermore, the implement
237
of policies can differ a lot when they are interpreted by different officials having
discretionary powers. The observations on policy effects were accordingly
counterbalanced with interviews with media companies and professionals who
have firsthand experience regarding policy implementation.
8.5 Directions for further study
Three key recommendations for further research are identified as follows:
There is great disparity between regions in Mainland China in terms of culture,
language and market. It is recommended that future studies be conducted to
explore media agglomeration in other cities and regions in Mainland China,
Guangdong Province, Zhejiang Province, Hunan Province and Shanghai in
particular.
It is evident that, in addition to government policies, there are many factors that
impact on media agglomeration and export in Mainland China. It is
recommended that future studies explore a wider range of factors that help to
shape a deeper understanding in terms of the forces of socio-cultural variations
in the Chinese context and to further investigate the dynamics underpinning or
inhibiting the marketisation and internationalisation of China‘s media industries.
Media capital is a relational concept. Most of this study‘s focus was on an
exploration of Beijing, although some relationships with other media centres
were briefly discussed. Therefore it is recommended that a comparative study be
conducted on Beijing and other cities that are prominent nodes in the Chinese
media network, especially Hong Kong and Taipei.
238
Appendix I: List of Interviewees
Category Name Position description Date
Private media
companies
Tom Wang
CEO of Beidong Media
(beidong chuanmei), a media
and animation company
23/10/2009
Wang
Qiang
Co-founder of Timetimes
(taimei shiguang), a media,
animation and advertising
company
29/10/2009
Wang Feng CEO of Beijing Seventh Studio
Co., a TV production company 5/11/2009
Zhou Hao
Co-founder of Beijing Golden
Screen Culture Communication
Co., Ltd, a TV and film
production company
5/11/2009
Wang Kai
Manager in ACG Education
International, a media
production and animation
training company
19/11/2009
Lu Jia
Co-founder of Beijing
Somebody International Media,
a Chinese-Taiwanese
joint-venture of TV production
19/11/2009
239
Luo Xuan
Co-founder of Beijing BMC Co.
Ltd., a TV, animation and
advertising company
20/11/2009
State-owned
media
organizations
Peng Yang
CEO of Kuaile de Gou, the
Beijing office of Kuailego, the
TV shopping channel of Hunan
Satellite TV station
21/10/2009
Tang Haifei
Producer in China International
Television Corporation invested
by CCTV
6/11/2009
Wang
Binbin Producer in CCTV-2 12/11/2009
Xu Gang
Deputy director of distribution
of August First Film Studio
(bayi dianying zhipian chang)
19/11/2009
Qian
Chongyuan
Distribution director of Beijing
Forbidden City Film Company
(zijincheng yingye)
26/11/2009
Media workers
Li Yan Freelance film director 28/10/2009
Yang Li TV producer 4/11/2009
He Lei Film photographer 15/11/2009
Li Haibin Freelance film producer 19/11/2009
Guan Yadi Independent film producer 22/11/2009
Foreign media Shaun Taiwanese media producer 13/10/2009
240
practitioners Chang
Paul
Pennay Australian media practitioner 26/11/2009
Dai Lv
Director of Beijing Office of a
Taiwanese TV company and
station
26/11/2009
Janek
Zdzarski Polish TV producer and reporter 26/11/2009
Bert de
Muynck Co-director of Movingcities
4/08/2011
(via email)
Media scholars
Guo
Manman
Associate professor at
Communication University of
China, Art director of Digital
Channel of CCTV
18/11/2009
Fan Zhou
Professor at Communication
University of China, expert on
creative cultural industries
14/4/2010
241
Appendix II Sample Questions for Semi-structured
Interview
Four sets of questions are designed according to each focus group.
Questions for managers/directors in domestic media companies:
(1) Is there any trans-firm communication or collaboration? If yes, in what
forms are they conducted and why carry out such activities? How do you
evaluate the effect?
(2) Is there any trans-industry communication or collaboration? If yes, in what
forms are they conducted and why carry out such activities? How do you
evaluate the effect?
(3) How many staff comes from cities other than Beijing? How often is the
personnel turnover? What do you think the personnel turnover?
(4) How do you understand the relation between media companies and
government? How do you deal with the government control?
(5) What do you think of the media cluster?
(6) What‘s your judgement on the development tendencies of Chinese media
industry? What‘s the development direction of your company?
(7) Is there any motive for your company to carry out international collaboration?
If yes, what is the motive and in what form it is carried out?
242
(8) Comparing with other cities in China, why do you start up your business in
Beijing? / Why do you move your business to Beijing?
(9) In which aspect should Beijing improve in terms of media industry?
Questions for media workers:
(1) How long have you been working in this industry? Why do you choose
media as your career?
(2) Why do you work in Beijing?
(3) Is there any form of communication between you and your colleagues? Is it
useful? In which aspect you benefit?
(4) Do you change your job often? Why?
(5) In which way you absorb new knowledge?
(6) Do you think that the environment in your company is good for you to
absorb new knowledge? Why? How about the cluster? How about the City?
(7) What do you think of Chinese media industry? What do you think the
relation between media industry and Chinese government?
(8) What do you reckon the collaboration of your company with other
companies, especially those foreign companies?
243
(9) Regarding your own career development, what do you need the most?
Questions for media scholars:
(1) What do you think the function of media is supposed to be? Why?
(2) What‘s the attitude of government towards Chinese media industry?
(3) What‘s the attitude of government towards foreign media companies?
(4) What‘s the possible development trend of media policies? Why?
(5) What do you think of the cluster‘s function in media industry?
(6) Do you think Beijing is a media capital or can be a media capital? Why?
(7) What‘s your expectation of Chinese media industry?
(9) What‘s your expectation of Beijing as a media capital?
Questions for overseas media practitioners:
(1) Which country have you ever been work before?
(2) Why do you move to China? What‘s the difference between China and other
countries?
244
(3) Why do you come to Beijing? What‘s the difference between Beijing and
other Chinese Cities? What‘s the difference between Beijing and other foreign
cities?
(4) What do you think of Chinese media industry?
(5) What‘s your difficulty to work in Chinese media industry?
(6) Do you feel any networks in Beijing, especially in the clusters? What do you
think of it?
(7) What do you think of Chinese government‘s attitude towards media
industry?
(8) What do you think of Chinese government‘s attitude towards foreign media
companies?
(9) Do you have any collaboration with Chinese media companies? What do you
think of it?
245
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