Media Politics in China
Improvising Power under Authoritarianism

Maria Repnikova offers an innovative analysis of the media oversight role in China by examining how a volatile partnership is sustained between critical journalists and the state.

Maria Repnikova (Author)

9781316647158, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 December 2018

283 pages, 3 b/w illus. 6 tables
23 x 15 x 1.4 cm, 0.42 kg

'… this book makes an original, thoughtprovoking and necessary contribution to our understanding of Chinese media politics and Chinese politics on the whole.' Preksha Shree Chhetri, Europe-Asia Studies

Who watches over the party-state? In this engaging analysis, Maria Repnikova reveals the webs of an uneasy partnership between critical journalists and the state in China. More than merely a passive mouthpiece or a dissident voice, the media in China also plays a critical oversight role, one more frequently associated with liberal democracies than with authoritarian systems. Chinese central officials cautiously endorse media supervision as a feedback mechanism, as journalists carve out space for critical reporting by positioning themselves as aiding the agenda of the central state. Drawing on rare access in the field, Media Politics in China examines the process of guarded improvisation that has defined this volatile partnership over the past decade on a routine basis and in the aftermath of major crisis events. Combined with a comparative analysis of media politics in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia, the book highlights the distinctiveness of Chinese journalist-state relations, as well as the renewed pressures facing them in the Xi era.

Part I. Conceptual Frameworks: 1. Introduction
2. Payoffs
Part II. Mutual Objectives and Routine Dynamics: 3. Unified objectives: the official discourse and journalistic interpretation of media supervision
4. Restrictions on critical journalism: how they are applied and negotiated
Part III. Crisis Events: 5. Critical journalists, the party-state and the Wenchuan earthquake
6. The battle over coal-mining safety
Part IV. Comparisons: 7. Beyond China: critical journalists and the state under Gorbachev and Putin
8. From Hu to Xi.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Media studies [JFD]