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In the past decade, the initiative of "brand propaganda," a form of positive reporting on local governments in exchange of financial support, emerged within a few of China's city-level and province-level press groups. Employing the theoretical perspective of journalistic legitimacy, this study investigates how involved local journalists rationalize this initiative and the implications it bears for the future of China's local journalism. In-depth interviews with 17 journalists from the local press group X Daily suggest that brand propaganda is legitimized through a "story of survival" entailing discourses of balance, returning, and adaptation. The effects of brand propaganda on local press and the future of Chinese journalism are complicated by the interactions between individual journalists, local press markets, and the overall media-political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the influence of media convergence in China either took a market- or norm-oriented approach. From a news production perspective, the current study analyses the interaction between the top-down design and bottom-up practices of journalists to disclose the influence of the dominant path of media convergence within the press industry of Fujian Province. A survey and 20 in-depth interviews show that the current media convergence practices of Fujian’s press industry fail to receive the support of journalists because of institutional, organisational and individual complexities, rather than technological reasons. This study discusses the implications of this finding for media convergence in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese press, instead of acting purely as a state propaganda instrument, now functions as ‘Party Publicity Inc.’ — that is, a quasi-business that seeks to make huge profits on the one hand and to legitimate the Party mandate by promoting its image on the other. The accelerated pace of media conglomeration following China's accession to the World Trade Organization has sharpened this trend. This study examines the impact of press ecology in Shenzhen, a national trend-setter for ‘Party Publicity Inc.’, before and after conglomeration. We observe that press conglomeration has (a) engendered a more centralized management structure and operation; (b) replaced duopolistic competition with market monopoly and greater price-fixing abilities; (c) continued to rely on state office subscription; (d) dampened journalists' enthusiasm for political reform in favor of economic interest; (e) developed a two-tier Publicity Inc. to serve both the Party and the market; and (f) provided an opportunity for overseas expansion. Marketization does not trigger political reform, but pre-empts pressure for political change. The Party Publicity Inc. in its conglomerate form represents a complicitous accommodation between power and money engineered by a post-Communist bureaucratic-authoritarian regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about self-censorship in reference to Hong Kong, China. The case ,of Hong Kong provides an interesting example. During its last few decades as a colony Hong Kong maintained Western standards of press freedoms. Compared especially to practices throughout most of Asia, its press was enormously unrestricted. As a matter of fact, it remains relatively free by Asian standards even under Chinese authority. To be sure, for several years before Hong Kong returned to China its government did flirt with press restraint A 1987 Public order Ordinance created a new offense, applying only to newspapers. That offense, the publication of false news, also reversed the presumption of innocence and required journalists to demonstrate that they had taken reasonable measures to, verify the truth of any news item they printed. But this potentially repressive rule quickly evaporated, which demonstrated the strength of Hong Kong's traditions of free expression. The measure became known immediately as the "Press Gag Ordinance," and the resulting flood of criticism led the Legislative Council to repeal its offending press provisions. The repeal took place on January 10, 1989, making the life of the restrictions shorter than two years-and they were never enforced.