The Constitution of the People's Republic of China guarantees
citizens' freedom of speech and information. With the economic
development that started in the 1980s, Chinese media have become
more diversified as they extend their reach throughout China
through multiple transmission, including satellites, wireless and
wired systems. Today, there are over 2,000 newspapers, over 8,000
magazines, 282 radio stations and 374 TV stations in China. By the
end of 2004, there were 774 medium- and short-wave radio
transmitting and relay stations, and 114.7 million households with
access to cable television, covering 94.1 and 95.3 percent of the
population, respectively.?
News Agencies
Headquartered in Beijing, Xinhua News Agency is China's official
news agency, as well as one of the world's major international news
agencies with more than 100 branches in Asia-Pacific, the Middle
East, Latin America, Africa and other regions. In 2003, its
subordinate Xinhua Financial Network Ltd. formed an international
alliance with Agence France-Presse (AFP) Finance. Xinhua Financial
Network Ltd. purchased the news agencies of AFP Asian Finance in
Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore and eight other Asian
countries and regions, which expanded the coverage of Xinhua News
Agency's international network. With its head office also in
Beijing, China News Service mainly supplies news to overseas
Chinese, foreign citizens of Chinese origin, and compatriots in the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Macao Special
Administrative Region, and Taiwan.
Newspapers
Between 1950 and 2000, the number of Chinese newspapers increased
nearly ten-fold. In 2004, over 400 kinds of daily newspaper were
published in China, their circulation reaching 80 million, the
highest figure of any country in the world. Targeted at different
reader groups, newspapers format are becoming increasingly diverse
and colorful. Recent years have seen an important trend of
newspaper reorganization. To date, 39 newspaper groups have been
established, such as Beijing Daily Newspaper Group, Wenhui Xinmin
Associated Newspaper Group and Guangzhou Daily Newspaper Group. In
2003, trans-regional cooperation among the print media became a new
trend. New Beijing Newspaper, invested and run by Guangming Daily
Newspaper Group and Nanfang Daily Newspaper Group, was the first to
receive formal approval from the Chinese government to publish
trans-regionally. Also Orient-Observation Weekly came out in
Shanghai, its largest shareholder being the Beijing-based Xinhua
News Agency.?
Radio
The Central People's Broadcasting Station, the nation's official
radio station, has eight channels, and broadcasts for a total of
over 200 hours per day via satellite. Every province, autonomous
region and municipality has local broadcasting stations. China
Radio International (CRI), the only national overseas broadcasting
station, is beamed to all parts of the world in 38 foreign
languages, standard Chinese and four Chinese dialects, and
broadcasts for a total of over 300 hours every day. It offers
various special programs of news, current affairs, comment,
entertainment, politics, economy, culture, technology and so on.
Currently, CRI ranks third in overseas broadcasting time and
languages in the world.?
Television
China's television industry has grown into a complete system with
high-tech program production, transmission and coverage. China
Central Television (CCTV), China's largest and most powerful
national television station, has established business relations
with more than 250 television organizations in over 130 countries
and regions. In conformity with trends in the international
television industry, CCTV has made progress in the direction of
specialization, introducing two specialized channels -- the News
Channel and the Children's Channel in 2003, and the Music Channel
in 2004. Altogether there are 3,000 television stations across the
country. Large international TV expositions, including the Shanghai
Television Festival, Beijing International Television Week, China
Radio and Television Exposition and Sichuan Television Festival,
are held on a regular basis. Besides judging and conferring awards,
these festivals conduct academic exchange and the import and export
of TV programs. Shanghai has become the largest television program
trading market in Asia.
The Internet
Since the mid-1990s, the nation's online media have developed
rapidly and of China's some 10,000 news media across the country,
2,000 have gone online. Quite a number of famous websites have
begun to appear, relying on information flow from the news media,
and taking full advantage of the latter's superior news coverage.
Experts predict that Internet news media and traditional media will
merge in the 21st century into a multi-media news platform with
sound, images and text. It is estimated that by the end of 2005,
China will have over 50 million Internet-connected computers, and
over 200 million users of data, multi-media and the Internet, with
about 15 percent of the population having access to the Internet.
Multi-media Groups
Since China entered the World Trade Organization, the trend within
China's media industry is to form inter-media and trans-regional
media groups operated with multiple patterns so as to meet
competition and challenges from powerful overseas media groups. In
2001, the Chinese government put forward a goal of promoting media
amalgamation by establishing trans-regional multi-media news
groups. It also instituted detailed regulations on media industry
fund raising, foreign-funded cooperation and trans-media
development. China Radio, Film and Television Group, founded at the
end of 2001, integrated the resources of central-level radio,
television and film industry plus those of the radio and
television, Internet companies into China's biggest and strongest
multi-media group covering the fields of television, Internet,
publishing, advertising, etc.? At the same time Chinese media
industry is cooperating with overseas media groups. By 2003, 30
overseas television stations, including "Phoenix Satellite TV,"
"Bloomberg Finance," "Star Satellite TV," "Eurasian Sports" and
"Chinese Entertainment TV" had landed in China with limitations. At
the same time, the English language channel of CCTV entered the
United States through Fox News Internet under the jurisdiction of
the News Group.
