Impact of globalisation on the local press in China : a case study of the Beijing Youth Daily from 1981 to 2006

This thesis addresses the issue of impact of globalisation on the news production and news content at local newspapers in China. By making an in-depth study of Being Youth Daily, the second biggest local newspaper in Beijing, essential changes in the local newspapers- are identified and analysed,thus revealing the relations between the global and local, external and internal influences, the Party-state and the media as well as the media and the market. The central argument is that globalisation impacts many aspects of local newspapers including media policy, organisation, journalistic practice, journalists' roles and coverage of world news. Such impact is uneven. In the case of the state's media policies and organizational changes the influence is explicit whereas in relation to news production routines and the perceptions of newspeople it tends to be implicit. Driven by the commercialization of the domestic media, the accelerated world-wide flow of goods and capital, population mobility, and the advancement of information technology, especially the Internet, Chinese local newspapers and newspeople share many commonalities and similarities with the western press and western newspeople but also maintain distinctive characteristics due to China's unique political-socialeconomic system. Consequently, globalisation is producing neither total homogenization nor total heterogenisation but a mixture. Globalisation is a process involving a multi-level deregulation and re-regulation, protectionism, capitalism, media convergence, hybridization and domestication driven by the interaction of global and local actors, political, economic and technical factors, and external and internal influences. In the globalisation era, the state still plays a central role. A free press does not emerge in an authoritarian state just because of globalisation.