Methodologies in Researching Communication in China

            “Just as domination is never total, resistance is never complete.  The landscape of Chinese media can never be summed up in a neat tale of the weak fighting the strong, capital against the state, or rationality upsetting myth-making” (Wang, 270).  These words are found in chapter 7 of Wang’s book Brand New China.  As a chapter in which Wang “examine[s] the tortuous process of the commodification of state-owned Chinese media” (Wang, 34), this part of his book marks a convergence between that source and Zhao Yuezhi’s book.  Ironically, the quote stated at the beginning of the paragraph seems better suited to Zhao’s book, in which there is a strong emphasis on the influential role the Chinese government plays in the Chinese communication field; the discussion of the government/media connection takes on  much more of a peripheral thrust in Wang’s book where the emphasis is on advertising and marketing.  As one looks deeper into the two books one will realize that the discussion of the social-political-economic connection on the one hand and advertising on the other are different faces atop a common discussion of facets of social tension/conflict such as increasingly glaring distinctions of class and the divisive influence of a widespread adoption of neoliberal ideology.

            One thing that adds legitimacy to the arguments presented by the two authors is the two-fold approach they take in studying their respective subjects.  Wang states this best, indicating her goal to “cultivate a cross-fertilization between academia and the advertising sector, and to write from an in-between, fluid perspective” (Wang, xi).  In other words, Wang is not just another aloof academic writing about advertising in China; rather, her approach is a combination of “the textbook-based approach” (Wang, xi) and practical, hands-on experience working at a Beijing advertising agency.  Zhao’s approach is similar in that she combines documentary research and other academic research with dozens of trips to China and hundreds of interviews conducted with people working in the various communication fields in China.

            In regards to the “two-fold approach” mentioned above, it seems that it is more prevalent in the research conducted by Zhao.   At the very start the reader is introduced to an actual person, Feng Xiuju, who is depicted as one among many who have been affected by the neoliberal changes in China.  This method of presenting real people with their real situations has an appealing human interest bent to it that serves to draw the reader in better than just a relatively drier academic discourse on the subject.  The same can be said of the presentation of the individual cases of Sun Zhigang and Wang Binyu, whose stories of death as a nameless police detainee and murderous anger at consistent ill-treatment as a worthless second-class citizen probably strikes a nerve of shock in a Western audience unaccustomed to such blatant violations of human rights and devaluation of human life.  Building up to such moments in chapter 6 of her book Zhao presents an academic discourse on the media, the history of its commercialization and its special relationship with the government until finally integrating communication in China with these events in the lives of ordinary people and how they are portrayed by the Chinese media.