China's Journalism: the emancipatory potential of social theory

Abstract

This article explores the liberating and empowering potential of social theories for China's authoritarian-bureaucratic journalistic practices. By relating them to empirical studies, it analyzes the sociology of knowledge-cognitive interests, social positions and politico-economic contexts-of (a) liberal-pluralism, (b) the reformist Chinese ''Old Left'' of the 1980s and (c) the radical-critical Chinese ''New Left'' of the 1990s. These social theories converge on the central importance of democratizing China's party-state, but diverge on the role of the market in this process. While liberals empower the market to foster ''negative freedom'' for journalism, radicals attack the anti-democratic tendencies of media commercialization. Among the Chinese intelligentsia, the ''New Left'' is sharply critical of both liberal-pluralism and the ''Old Left''. New democratic discourses must explain the relationships between China's journalism and the state-market nexus in the context of globalization, thereby balancing universalistic principles with national narratives.

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