The Tools of Liberation and The Tools of Control: Two Sides of The Same Coin?

“Creativity” is a potentially loaded word in the context of the contemporary Chinese media landscape.  On the one hand, it is potentially anathema to a state which is worried about and quick to censor anything which might threaten its hold on political power.  On the other hand, creativity is a major driving force behind innovation in the business world and other economic sectors that the same government is keen to see keep growing. In this way, the freedom that allows for full-fledged creativity is a two-edged sword.  The standardization and sanitization of media content has a restrictive impact on the capacity of Chinese citizens to live their everyday lives while the creation of an environment conducive to the flowering of creativity has the opposite effect.  The empowerment of Chinese citizens by media comes in many different flavors, whether it is in a political, economic or social context; some categories, such as identity, are able to bridge between all three of these contexts (e.g. the relationship between Kung Fu films and the socio-politico-economic identity of Hong Kong citizens).  As such, the media experience of Chinese citizens on the mainland a well as perceptions of how such experiences lead to empowerment in their lives can vary from those of other Chinese communities within Greater China.

Empowerment and Liberation

How do the media consumed by the average Chinese citizen empower or restrict his or her practice of everyday life?  An examination of one’s substantive quality of everyday life within this context is helpful.  For instance, a relatively recent example of the constraining influence of media in regards to the repetitive and ordinary qualities of living is the Sanlu milk scandal.  Going out and buying food and other basic necessities is an everyday event which the Chinese consumer engages in on a regular basis and, in a way more pronounced than say in the United States, these consumers rely on the media to help them make informed decisions.  The use of high profile persons such as movie stars and other pop figures by the now disgraced milk company Sanlu enabled that company to drive sales of its product, yet in the end the media failed consumers; several individuals were killed by the tainted milk, and death after all is the ultimate restriction on one’s capacity to live his or her everyday life.  Yet even in this case media is manipulated in a manner touching on both extremes: The consequent production of anti-Sanlu commercials was a creative response to the scandal that helped the Chinese citizen give vent to his or her frustration concerning product safety and how such worries impaired their capacity to go on living their regular lives (if one is afraid to buy food or toys because of fears it may not be safe to consume, one is coping with a substantive breach in their quality of living).

Another major way in which Chinese citizens are empowered is through the production of viral content and its dissemination via viral market networks.  The medium through which this viral phenomenon takes place, the Internet, is one of the most empowering mediums available to the Chinese citizen.  This is not to say that the Internet is a new media panacea which will lead to the “liberation” of the Chinese user; Wang Jing makes this clear with her allusion to “China’s firewalls and legions of Chinese Internet police” (Wang, pg. 308).  However, Wang also makes mention on multiple occasions of the open-ended, vast, and flexible nature of the medium, qualities which make total and instantaneous control impossible (as evidenced by the fact that web content deemed inappropriate can linger in cyberspace for others to see until a censor manages to find and remove the offending content).

One of the best examples of the creative use of the viral model of dissemination involves the amateur films produced by Hu Ge.  In an environment where commentary on political issues is controlled and generally frowned upon if done through anything other than an official state channel, the satirical bent of Hu Ge’s productions is an example of an attempt to work around such restrictions.  Through his creative productions, Hu Ge is able to take personal control of the processes of self-formation and life-extension.  In a selection by Michael Keane, he points out the role Chinese teachers and artists had played in the “high socialist period” as “‘engineers of the soul’”, a role in which “the idiosyncratic character of artistic activities and individual competences” were eliminated and replaced with a mandate to disseminate a truth produced by the state (Keane, pg. 120).  Before the advent of the neoliberal era in China, Hu Ge’s fate would have been quickly determined and shaped by such factors; in the China of today, there is apparently more leeway in which Hu Ge and other media prosumers such as himself are empowered to take more control over the way in which they can live their lives.

Viral content and networks are also utilized by Chinese users in order to empower themselves economically.  Not only is this aspect of the viral phenomenon better tolerated by the government but it is also probably embraced as a way in which to reinforce neoliberal concepts in the everyday lives of the people.  The example in question here is Dynomedia and its linking of popular media content with advertising content such as coupons.  The peer-to-peer platform set up by Dynomedia allows users to quickly “spread the word” about a hot new media product.  Examples of some of these products, such as the “sixty second nonsense film” depicting a proxy battle of words between Google and Baidu ( Wang, pp. 295, 296), demonstrate how the novel and fresh quality of the everyday (as opposed to the repetitive aspect) is empowered by such creatively produced content.

In terms of neoliberal globalization, the spread of viral content also occurs within a transnational context and is not limited by national borders.  A great example occurred the other day and was much akin to the aforementioned Baidu short clip.  A friend in a Chinese language class excitedly spoke of a YouTube clip of a white Canadian who can speak Chinese so well it would make the viewer sick with jealousy.  Another example is found in a very interesting from far away Britain (far from China at any rate) devoted to exporting traditional Chinese children’s games to a foreign audience.  If anything, this is related to the issue of local vs. global (and the fuzzy mixture of the two known as “glocal”) discussed in such books as Brand New China and how such an entertainment medium as traditional Chinese games is perhaps evolving into an international product.  These are just two recent examples among many of “cool” Chinese related media products that are being spread virally via word-of-mouth and the Internet.  Chinese culture is being disseminated not only in the domestic sphere but is also via transnational networks that are an integral aspect of neoliberal globalization.

Repression and Control

If “living one’s daily life” refers to being able to do so in a free and relatively unrestricted manner, then it can be said that the Chinese citizen’s capacity for doing so is impaired.  An example that comes to mind is the illusion of empowerment given to individuals that harbor sympathies in opposition to the state-sanctioned program of neoliberalism (such as sympathizing with workers laid off due to the privatization of SOE’s).  These individuals were able to use the Internet medium to express their opinions on the subject yet the “People’s Daily chat room” in which they did so was “highly confined and well-monitored”, which ultimately meant their supposed “freedom” to express themselves essentially amounted to an unnoticed marginalization (Zhao, pg. 309).

Another example of the restrictive capabilities of media in the lives of Chinese citizens is found in a short online documentary about the fine art medium in China.  It is of interest in connection with the issue raised in the book Communication in China of the symbiosis between Chinese state patronage of the entertainment industry and the pacifying effect entertainment consumption is supposed to have on the Chinese middle class: For instance, one video clip speaks of an up-and-coming art town which the government designates a contemporary art district that the state seeks to commercialize, not only as an attraction for domestic but for foreign consumers as well.  The globalization of entertainment media and the subsequent flood of foreign-produced media coming into China may actually have a reinforcing effect on the state’s use of entertainment as a pacifier of the population; the government might hope that the average Chinese middle class citizen will be busy sorting through all these entertainment choices rather than engaging in policy debates.  In this sense, more is not necessarily better, and it is evident that globalization and creative production can work to restrict as well as empower the capacities of the Chinese citizen.

Examples that stand in stark contrast to the standardized and sanitized content of mainland China’s state-run media are found within the larger sphere of Greater China.  One such example that stands out is the Taiwanese talk show 21:00 hosted by Lee Tao. For much of the second half of the 20th century, the course of the Taiwanese media had closely mirrored that of the mainland, namely, that it was state-controlled, sporting sanitized and pre-censored content.  The media empowerment revolution came for the Taiwanese with the lifting of martial law and the creation of an environment of information freedom in which creativity could flourish.  In the case of 21:00 – which was one of the first news-based programs allowed to present criticism of the government – the author notes “the delight of call-in guests and the viewing audience, [since] it was one [sic] the first times that the government literally found itself out in the cold” and that “viewers were just enthused that phone-in comments weren’t screened in advance and topics weren’t vetted by censors” (Wang, pg. 157).  For these Taiwanese viewers, this medium was a novelty, a creative production which thrilled them because it empowered them to speak their minds concerning government and other controversial issues.

Conclusion

The world is filled with examples of how the same tools are put to use for diametrically different purposes.  The news media in the United States and many Western states is predominantly private and is a tool for keeping government accountable and empowering the average citizen; the state-run news media in China is the polar opposite, being rather an ideological and propagandistic tool for maintaining political control over the population.  The story told by Xu Bing has much relevance to us today; even if the written word today does not quite have the effect on Heaven as it did in ancient times, its various media manifestations mold our own lives day by day.

Other articles by this author:

Fulfilling the Dream of a Modern China

Methodologies in Researching Communication in China

Gender Construction in China’s Late Imperial Period

About the author:

Name: Mike

Country: United States

Interests: numismatics, reading, history, Star Trek, computer games

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