Abstract
In seeking to explain why Shanghai, China’s economic capital, has
a more timid media system than its sibling cities, we examine the
political economy of the Shanghai
media from the perspective of clientelism in the post-Communist and
cultural milieus of what we call “party-market corporatism.” Through
field work we analyze
four aspects of clientelism, including media conglomeration, elite
circulation, resource allocation, and (lack of) media professionalism.We
conclude that Shanghai
is at once a “big city” and yet a “small place:” a resource-rich city
governed by one layer of power authority, hence the distance from
the epicenter of power to various
media organizations is so short and direct as to make media control
through clientelism very effective and powerful. Clientelism represents
one of the three
major patterns of party-market corporatism in China’s media sector.
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