Socialist Media System Model with Chinese Characteristics

By: Zheng Haoyuan (John)

（The following are personal opinions）

    I think the same objective thing is under the influence of different backgrounds, political positions, and values. It will be presented with different views. This also applies to the Chinese media system. Because the samples analyzed by these three media system models are all Western capitalist countries. 

     Due to the differences in economic and political systems, I think one of these three models cannot fully summarize the Chinese media system. However, we can still try to analyze the Chinese media system in four main dimensions. First, in terms of the development of the media market: among the TOP 10 most socially valuable media in China in 2019, the central media accounted for six and the commercial media accounted for four. The central media does not have management power over the commercial media, and according to the data it can be concluded that without violating Chinese laws, the central and commercial media are developing freely in parallel, and we can neither say that the commercial media play a dominant role in the liberal model, nor that the development of mass circulation newspapers in the democratic corporate model is strong and rooted in commercial and party newspapers. Because China is a system of one-party rule, multi-party cooperation and political consultation, the central media acts as a bridge between the government and the people, taking on more tasks such as policy propaganda. 

     But I don't think the relationship with the political world is closer to the market, because China is a socialist country with a dominant state-owned economy and state-owned media are part of the market, so I think the market development of media is more polarized and pluralist model at this stage. But from a historical perspective, the situation may be different as China has experienced a feudal society and a capitalist society, in which the development was backward because of the low level of social development. , the government was incapable of regulating and controlling the media, so the dominant role of commercial media at that stage with limited state involvement. 

    Journalistic professionalism as defined in the West is often based on idealism and attempts to discipline journalists through ethics. Chinese news reports, on the other hand, are more likely to convey information to viewers by quoting other media outlets and by comparison. There will be no subjective news reporting based on ideology. I prefer to call this the fourth model, the socialist media system model with Chinese characteristics.

     The opposite is the usual technique of some Western media such as the BBC: I don't need facts, because you are communist, so the political power behind me, the consortium, needs me to use all means to smear you and subvert you, and this is a bunch of news media represented by the BBC.

       I believe that the socialist media system with Chinese characteristics can be summarized as follows.

1. the development of the media market, a mixed media market model dominated by state-owned media and flourishing commercial media.

2. The degree and form of political parallelism, focusing on the political elite but more on the Chinese people as a whole, is also determined by the nature of socialist media. Unlike Western media like the BBC, which serves the capitalists, China's state-owned media is accountable only to the Chinese people, and its economic sources come only from all Chinese taxpayers, and its revenues are only paid to the state treasury.

3. Journalistic professionalism, when we take objectivity and impartiality as the yardstick to measure journalistic professionalism. I think the professionalism of the Chinese media is incomparable to the Western media under the capitalist system, because capital makes your reporting never reach true objectivity and impartiality, while the news media under the socialist model, you only have to be responsible to the state and the people.

4, the role of the state, I think in China, the state will not interfere too much with the media, unless you are with malicious intent to discredit, subversive.

If you take a survey in China, the Chinese government has a very, very high approval rating, certainly over 90 percent, because our government is doing what we Chinese believe is right. So even if the West wants to try to subvert China through a color revolution, that's not going to help.