Media-State Relations in China

Abstract

While one would be hard-pressed to call the People’s Republic of China an emerging democracy, or even a new state, there is much that can be learned from China’s experiences and from its extreme stance both on statism and on media-state relations in the 21st century. China does still consider itself a developing nation and it increasingly has direct engagement with many of the world’s third wave countries, usually through investment and trade. A Chinese consortium, for example, recently acquired 20% of South Africa’s biggest newspaper company (Hasenfuss & Mantshantsha 2014). A close look at China serves to highlight some interesting patterns that China has in common with the emerging democratic countries, as well as illustrating an important model for contemporary state intervention.