The news and local production of the global

Abstract

Key to the local audience’s conceptions of the global spectacle, the marketized regional press in China has been increasingly confronted with a complex world to cover as China finds itself integrating steadily into the global marketplace and rising as a formidable power in the post-WTO era. Using the data collected from five Chinese regional newspapers in 1989 and 2009, this study indicates that the consequences of spillover in China’s growing integration with the global system and the ever-increasing media marketization have been carried into the domain of international news, particularly in terms of a more neutral journalistic perspective and a widened range of vision at the local level. The results also show that the regionalization of international news reporting is still contained within the orbit of the party-state. The comparison over a 20-year time span suggests that China’s integration into the world capitalism system has opened up a larger global landscape for the local press, but not necessarily a wider latitude to negotiate the terrain.