This book examines China’s information and communications technology revolution. It outlines key trends in internet and telecommunications, exploring the social, cultural and political implications of China’s transition to a more information and communications rich society. It shows that despite remaining a one-party state with extensive censorship, substantial changes have occurred.

In a speech opening the nineteenth Chinese Communist Party Congress meeting in October 2017, President Xi Jinping spoke of a “New Era” characterized by new types of communication convergence between the government, Party, and state media. His speech signaled that the role of the media is now more important than ever in cultivating the Party’s image at home and disseminating it abroad. Indeed, communication technologies, people, and platforms are converging in new ways around the world, not just in China. This process raises important questions about information flows, control, and regulation that directly affect the future of US–China relations. Just a year before Xi proclaimed the New Era, scholars had convened in Beijing at a conference cohosted by the Communication University of China and the US-based National Communication Association to address these questions. How do China and the United States envision each other, and how do our interlinked imaginaries create both opportunities for and obstacles to greater understanding and strengthened relations? Would the convergence of new media technologies, Party control, and emerging notions of netizenship in China lead to a new age of opening and reform, greater Party domination, or perhaps some new and intriguing combination of repression and freedom? Communication Convergence in Contemporary China presents international perspectives on US–China relations in this New Era with case studies that offer readers informative snapshots of how these relations are changing on the ground, in the lived realities of our daily communication habits.

"The essays in Green Communication and China explore the importance of studying environmental communication in, about, and with China"--

This authoritative study explores China's rapidly evolving polity, economy, and society through the prism of its communication system. Yuezhi Zhao offers a multifaceted, interdisciplinary analysis of communication in China and its central role in the struggle for control during the country's rise to global power. The industry in all its forms--ranging from the news media to entertainment outlets to the Internet--has been a critical battleground among different social forces in this period of wrenching change. The author explores alterations in the structure and content of Chinese communication in light of the rapid evolution of state-society relations to reveal the profoundly contradictory, conflicted, and uncertain nature of China's ongoing transformation.

In recent years, China 's leaders have taken decisive action to transform information, communications, and technology (ICT) into the nation's next pillar industry. In Networking China , Yu Hong offers an overdue examination of that burgeoning sector's political economy. Hong focuses on how the state, in conjunction with market forces and class interests, is constructing and realigning its digitalized sector. State planners intend to build a more competitive ICT sector by modernizing the network infrastructure, corporatizing media-and-entertainment institutions, and by using ICT as a crosscutting catalyst for innovation, industrial modernization, and export upgrades. The goal: to end China's industrial and technological dependence upon foreign corporations while transforming itself into a global ICT leader. The project, though bright with possibilities, unleashes implications rife with contradiction and surprise. Hong analyzes the central role of information, communications, and culture in Chinese-style capitalism. She also argues that the state and elites have failed to challenge entrenched interests or redistribute power and resources, as promised. Instead, they prioritize information, communications, and culture as technological fixes to make pragmatic tradeoffs between economic growth and social justice.

It is widely recognised that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses the media to set the agenda for political discourse, propagate official policies, monitor public opinion, and rally regime support. State agencies in China control the full spectrum of media programming, either through ownership or the power to regulate. Political Communication in China examines the two factors which have contributed to the rapid development of media infrastructure in China: technology and commercialization. Economic development led to technological advancement, which in turn brought about the rapid modernization of all forms of communication, from ‘old’ media such as television to the Internet, cell phones, and satellite communications. This volume examines how these recent developments have affected the relationship between the CCP and the mass media as well as the implications of this evolving relationship for understanding Chinese citizens’ media use, political attitudes, and behaviour. The chapters in this book represent a diverse range of research methods, from surveys, content analysis, and field interviews to the manipulation of aggregate statistical data. The result is a lively debate which creates many opportunities for future research into the fundamental question of convergence between political and media regimes. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Political Communication.

This book examines how China’s international political communication of the Belt and Road Initiative comprises narratives about infrastructure and the Silk Road. By carefully selecting infrastructure modalities and Silk Road representations, it is argued that China’s aesthetic production of the Belt and Road Initiative advances China’s image as an infrastructure and standards-setting power, conjures up a historical continuation of friendly and cooperative relations, and forges China’s identity as good neighbor, good friend, and good partner. Using a multiple-case study approach, this book analyses China’s communication of the Second Belt and Road Forum, the Alternative North-South Road in Kyrgyzstan, the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, and the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge. Detailed literary analyses of the Travels of Marco Polo and the Travels of Ibn Battutah further elucidate China’s selective uses of history. Chapters highlight spatial, temporal, political, economic, technological, and perceptual modalities in infrastructure narratives, and reveal the composition of Silk Road narratives, contributing to key debates about Chinese discourse, media strategy and infrastructure communication. China’s Communication of the Belt and Road Initiative will appeal to students and scholars of politics, international relations, communication, and Asian studies globally.