Download Free Televising Chineseness Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Televising Chineseness and write the review.

Offers new understandings of gender construction and nation-building through the lens of recent Chinese television programs.
This book provides a rich description of the shifting production cultures in convergent Chinese television industries, through the examination of daily production practices, showing how they embody a new set of opportunities and tensions across strategic, programming and individual levels. Lin argues that the current Chinese television landscape is an ideological, cultural and financial paradox in which China’s one-party ideological control clashes with consumer-orientated capitalism and technological advancement. These tensions are finely poised between new opportunities for innovation and creative autonomy, and anxiety over political interference marked by censorship and state surveillance. Through its in depth study of ethnographic data across Chinese broadcast and digital streaming sectors (including CCTV, Hunan Broadcasting System, and Tencent Video), this book illuminates how Chinese producers have placed their aspirations for creative freedoms within technological advancements and rhetorical strategies, both demonstrating compliance with ideological control, and leaving room for resistance and resilience to one-party state ideology. Nuanced and timely, Convergent Chinese Television Industries unveils a complex picture of an industry undergoing dramatic transformations.
This book examines music entertainment programmes on China Central Television, China’s only national level television network, as well as on nationally-available provincial channels, exploring how such programmes project a nuanced image of China’s identity and position in the world. It shows how the images presented - primarily to domestic audiences - are in step with China’s party-state nationalism, and at the same time flexible and open to change as China’s circumstances change. The book contextualises identity construction in the media by examining the development of television in China and the political struggles between provincial and national television stations, as well as by foregrounding the historical and contemporary role of musical culture in China's nation-building project. It discusses the portrayal of the majority Han Chinese, and of ethnic minorities and their music, which, the author argues, are shown as fitting with the party-state rhetoric of “a unitary multi-ethnic state”. It also outlines how the Chinese of Greater China – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and the overseas Chinese – are incorporated into a mainland centred Chinese identity. In addition, it shows how the performances of foreign personalities on the Chinese television stage emphasise foreigners' attraction to China, the uniqueness of the Chinese nation and Chinese civilisation, and the revitalised role of China in the world. Overall, the book demonstrates how the variations of Chinese identity fit with prevailing political ideologies in China and with the emerging theme of a China-centred world.
The past two decades witnessed the rise of television entertainment in China. Although television networks are still state-owned and Party-controlled in China, the ideological landscape of television programs has become increasingly diverse and even paradoxical, simultaneously subservient and defiant, nationalistic and cosmopolitan, moralistic and fun-loving, extravagant and mundane. Studying Chinese television as a key node in the network of power relationships, therefore, provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the tension-fraught and , paradox-permeated conditions of Chinese post-socialism. This book argues for a serious engagement with television entertainment. rethinking, It addresses the following questions. How is entertainment television politically and culturally significant in the Chinese context? How have political, industrial, and technological changes in the 2000s affected the way Chinese television relates to the state and society? How can we think of media regulation and censorship without perpetuating the myth of a self-serving authoritarian regime vs. a subdued cultural workforce? What do popular televisual texts tell us about the unsettled and reconfigured relations between commercial television and the state? The book presents a number of studies of popular television programs that are sensitive to the changing production and regulatory contexts for Chinese television in the twenty-first century. As an interdisciplinary study of the television industry, this book covers a number of important issues in China today, such as censorship, nationalism, consumerism, social justice, and the central and local authorities. As such, it will appeal to a broad audience including students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, media studies, television studies, and cultural studies.
Since the late 1990s, there has been a crucial and substantial transformation in China’s television system involving institutional, structural and regulatory changes. Unravelling the implications of these changes is vital for understanding the politics of Chinese media policy-making and regulation, and thus a comprehensive study of this history has never been more essential. This book studies the transformation of the policy and regulation of the Chinese television sector within a national political and economic context from 1996 to the present day. Taking a historical and sociological approach, it engages in the theoretical debates over the nature of the transformation of media in the authoritarian Chinese state; the implications of the ruling party’s political legitimacy and China’s central-local conflicts upon television policy-making and market structure; and the nature of the media modernisation process in a developing country. Its case studies include broadcasting systems in Shanghai and Guangdong, which demonstrate that varied polices and development strategies have been adopted by television stations, reflecting different local circumstances and needs. Arguing that rather than being a homogenous entity, China has demonstrated substantial local diversity and complex interactions between local, national and global media, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese media, politics and policy, and international communications.
The years following the Cultural Revolution saw the arrival of television as part of China’s effort to ‘modernize’ and open up to the West. Endorsed by the Deng Xiaoping regime as a ‘bridge’ between government and the people, television became at once the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party and the most popular form of entertainment for Chinese people living in the cities. But the authorities failed to realize the unmatched cultural power of television to inspire resistance to official ideologies, expectations, and lifestyles. The presence of television in the homes of the urban Chinese strikingly broadened the cultural and political awareness of its audience and provoked the people to imagine better ways of living as individuals, families, and as a nation. Originally published in 1991, set within the framework of China’s political and economic environment in the modernization period, this insightful analysis is based on ethnographic data collected in China before and after the Tiananmen Square disaster. From interviews with leading Chinese television executives and nearly one hundred families in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xian, the author outlays how Chinese television fosters opposition to the government through the work routines of media professionals, television imagery, and the role of critical, active audience members.
The study of Chinese media is a field that is growing and evolving at an exponential rate. Not only are the Chinese media a fascinating subject for analysis in their own right, but they also offer scholars and students a window to observe multi-directional flows of information, culture and communications within the contexts of globalization and regionalization. Moreover, the study of Chinese media provides an invaluable opportunity to test and refine the variety of communications theories that researchers have used to describe, analyse, compare and contrast systems of communications. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media is a prestigious reference work providing an overview of the study of Chinese media. Gary and Ming-Yeh Rawnsley bring together an interdisciplinary perspective with contributions by an international team of renowned scholars on subjects such as television, journalism and the internet and social media. Locating Chinese media within a regional setting by focusing on ‘Greater China’, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas Chinese communities; the chapters highlight the convergence of media and platforms in the region; and emphasise the multi-directional and trans-national character of media/information flows in East Asia. Contributing to the growing de-westernization of media and communications studies; this handbook is an essential and comprehensive reference work for students of all levels and scholars in the fields of Chinese Studies and Media Studies.
As China navigates the murky waters of a 'third way' with liberal economic policies under a strict political regime, the surprising battleground for China's future emerges in the country's highest rated television network - China Central Television, or CCTV. With 16 internationally broadcast channels and over 1.2 billion viewers, CCTV is a powerhouse in conveying Chinese news and entertainment. The hybrid nature of the network has also transformed it into an unexpected site of discourse in a country that has little official space for negotiation.
Due to high audience numbers and the significant influence upon the opinions and values of viewers, the political leadership in China attributes great importance to the impact of television dramas. Many successful TV serials have served as useful conduits to disseminate official rhetoric and mainstream ideology, and they also offer a rich area of research by providing insight into the changing Chinese political, social and cultural context. This book examines a group of recently released TV drama serials in China which focus upon, and to various degrees represent, topical political, social and cultural phenomena. Some of the selected TV serials reflect the present ideological proclivities of the Chinese government, whilst others mirror social and cultural occurrences or provide coded and thought-provoking messages on China’s socio-economic and political reality. Through in-depth textual analysis of the plots, scenes and characters of these selected TV serials, the book provides timely interpretations of contemporary Chinese society, its political inclinations, social fashions and cultural tendencies. The book also demonstrates how popular media narratives of TV drama serials engage with sensitive civic issues and cultural phenomena of modern-day China, which in turn encourages a broader social imagination and potential for change. Advancing our understanding of contemporary China, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Chinese culture, society and politics, as well as those with research interests in television studies more generally.
Serialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s timely new work draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect "refocusing" mainstream Chinese culture. Mainstream Culture Refocused opens with an examination of television as a narrative motif in three contemporary Chinese art-house films. Zhong then turns her attention to dianshiju’s most important subgenres. "Emperor dramas" highlight the link between popular culture’s obsession with emperors and modern Chinese intellectuals’ preoccupation with issues of history and tradition and how they relate to modernity. In her exploration of the "anti-corruption" subgenre, Zhong considers three representative dramas, exploring their diverse plots and emphases. "Youth dramas’" rich array of representations reveal the numerous social, economic, cultural, and ideological issues surrounding the notion of youth and its changing meanings. The chapter on the "family-marriage" subgenre analyzes the ways in which women’s emotions are represented in relation to their desire for "happiness." Song lyrics from music composed for television dramas are considered as "popular poetics." Their sentiments range between nostalgia and uncertainty, mirroring the social contradictions of the reform era. The Epilogue returns to the relationship between intellectuals and the production of mainstream cultural meaning in the context of China’s post-revolutionary social, economic, and cultural transformation. Provocative and insightful, Mainstream Culture Refocused will appeal to scholars and students in studies of modern China generally and of contemporary Chinese media and popular culture specifically.