The global and the national of the Chinese media

Abstract

China and its media have been caught in the crosscurrents of nationalism and globalism in the post-Tiananmen and post-Cold War milieux. Having lost its way politically in Tiananmen Square, China has had to embrace capitalism in order to save socialism (particularly after 1992). Economic growth and nationalism have come to form the raison d’être of the regime’s legitimation, replacing the bankrupt Communist ideology that finds very few true believers in China today. On the other hand, the end of the Cold War has undermined the strategic alliance between China and the United States against the Soviet Union as a common enemy. The United States shifted its policy from containing China in the wake of the Tiananmen crackdown to engaging with it in the mid-1990s, culminating in the looming vision of “peaceful evolution” through global integration (see Chapter 4). At the same time, even as it is locked into antagonistic relations with the United States, China is embracing global capitalism and is seeking to elevate its international status in the new world order. Its eagerness to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and to sponsor the Olympic Games symbolizes a national yearning to cross the threshold into the elite power club. There is nothing new in such a yearning, but it takes the new form of inclusion in the post-Cold War, neo-liberal world order.

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