(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
“Chinese public”—the media and intellectuals—belong to this vulnerable emerging
urban middle class. They are willing and able to rally around an individual victim of
their class (such as Sun Zhigang), but limited in their call for freedom. Nor are they
ready to breach over class barriers to discuss the rights of the urban poor (as such the
Li family in Dwelling Narrowness) or defend the rights of the laid-off workers,
migrant workers, and peasants. They side with the political elite that broadening
political participation or freedom will lead to economic instability. Some of them
have stood up to speak for the interests of the disadvantaged groups and classes; they
have started to fight for cleaner, greener and safer living conditions. But such efforts
are limited scope, and there is a lack of class alliance among the working class, the
urban middle class, and the economic, intellectual and political elites.
This is the paradox in neoliberalism, or rather “disingenuous neoliberalism” in China:
a passion for intervention in the name of nonintervention, all in the name of “serving
the people” under the rubric of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The market
is not all free. It dances with the magic wands of both global capitalism and Chinese
authoritarian state. The television drama Dwelling Narrowness is produced at both the
market demand and the logic of political economy of Chinese media industry. It is
distributed at both a highly controlled channel (state television stations) and a freer
space of the Internet. Pulling the drama off air cannot stop the ripples it triggers off in
the popular media and the new media. The “ripples,” however, falls short at forming
waves that would bring structural changes to China. Although some have discussed
the increasing gap between rhetoric (socialist ideal of equality in wealth distribution
etc) and realization (restoring elite class power and re-constructing class dominance
without using the term “class”) in Chinese neoliberal development, few have called
for keeping neoliberalism in check or questioned its disingenuous applications in
China. The very few voices are either silenced or kept absence in mainstream media
and websites, as exemplified by the Lang Xianping storm (see Zhao 2008, chapter 6).
As analyzed earlier, Chinese state manipulation and interference in the media market
has seen the party-state media marketized but not weakened, media control
decentralized but not reduced, and media industry commercialized but not privatized.
In the wider ecosystem of Chinese media, a “power, money and knowledge regime”
known as “iron triangle alliance” has emerged in implementing neoliberal
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