25 MA students  from Hong Kong Baptist University, specialising in Financial Journalism, attended the CMC study trip “Financial and Economic Reporting in the UK” from 3 January until 10 January 2010. The delegation was lead by Prof Huang Yu, who took his PhD at the University of Westminster under Professor Colin Sparks and is Head of Department of Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. Among highlights were visits to the Financial Times, London Stock Exchange, BBC and City of London. The trip was designed by Dr Zeng Rong and managed by Alja Kranjec.

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The Director spoke on China and joined the Chinese Ambassador Ms Fu Ying on a panel which also included the Lib-Dem Leader in the Upper House, Lord McNulty, and the Shadow Foreign Affairs Secretary Michael Moore MP.

WILTON PARK

The CMC partnered Wilton Park (an Executive Agency of the Foreign Office) with a conference called Working in China on Sustainable Growth — The Climate Change, Environment, Energy Nexus. The Vice Chancellor, Prof Geoffrey Petts, Visiting Professor Hu Zhengrong (Deputy President, China Communications University), Prof Hugo de Burgh and Dr Zeng Rong participated and represented University of Westminster. For further information please click on the link below.

Report on Wilton Park Conference WP1000 Final 281009

CONFERENCE ON BRITISH JOURNALISM

CUC and CMC are holding a conference in Beijing in October 2009. CMC is supplying 2 celebrity UK journalists Stephen Hewlett and Kevin Sutcliffe (paid for under the IMS contract) and its Director to speak at a CUC conference in October 2009. Steve Hewlett both presents The Media Show and writes regularly for The Guardian. He has a terrific track record as reporter and producer as well as in newspaper journalism.  Kevin Sutcliffe is Deputy Head of News & Current Affairs at C4 and has been responsible for the renaissance of the investigative series DISPATCHES. CUC has undertaken to provide an audience of influential media managers from the mainstream

FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

Copyright by Frankfurt Book Fair

EU Commissioner Orban and Chinese Minister for Culture, a French Diplomat and the CMC Director are the speakers at the EU-China Forum at the Frankfurt Book Fair on 15 October.

STATE COUNCIL

The highest-level ever delegation from China’s State Council Information Office undertook a three week course designed for the China Media Centre by Simon Goldsworthy and Visiting Professor Trevor Morris, experts in branding and PR. Among the highlights were a colloquy with Lord Bell and senior figures at Chime Communications plc; visits to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office, the BBC and the Guardian Newspaper; talks about advertising from Sir Chris Powell and on the use of new media from former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson MP; and a lecture in Edinburgh from John Brown, a PR expert who formerly shared an office at Scottish TV with his brother the current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and CMC Director Professor Hugo de Burgh.

SUMMER SCHOOLS

The China Media Centre has held its first 2 Summer Schools for Chinese media students. In July this was directed by former Reuters Editor Paul Majendie and in September by TV producer Dr Richard Wright. The students both learnt about the European media and undertook practical tasks, making TV features under the direction of Journalism Head of Department Geoffrey Davies. Both summer schools were managed by Alja Kranjec, who hopes to hold at least two each year from now on.

INNOVATION 1

In October CMC launches another first, a course specially designed for Chinese TV executives by Dr Zeng Rong entitled Innovation, creativity and programme development in UK television. This course is full; if successful CMC expects to offer it twice each year.

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The last thirty years have seen a transformation of the Chinese media. They have moved from being solely the “throat and tongue of the party” supported by state subsidies to a situation where the majority of their income is from advertising revenue, for which they must vigorously compete with each other. The need to gain and hold an audience are today central to the concerns of media managers, journalists and creative workers. At the same time, they still need to follow the party line and to carry positive messages about China’s development. Many observers have noted how these two tasks impose unique burdens on the media and oblige them to develop new strategies to report the news and to entertain the audience.

The change in the economic situation of the media, and the orientation on the preferences of consumers, has meant that Chinese media producers have had to find new forms of journalism and new kinds of programming that are attractive to the mass audience.

In television, despite the regulatory protection that CCTV still enjoys, it must face sharp competition in markets like Guangdong from provincial and city stations whose programming is much more attuned to local tastes and language. Nationally, provincial satellite channels, notably from Hunan, are in the forefront of innovation in entertainment programming. Similarly, Phoenix TV is introducing new ways of reporting the news and winning a substantial audience, particularly amongst the younger and elite audiences.

In the newspaper press there has been a series of new and innovative titles, which have much more sensational and personalised reporting than the old norms. Some journalists have reported on events and individuals that have had major repercussions for aspects of the legal situation. At the same time there has been an explosion of journalism devoted to different aspects of lifestyle and consumption, aimed squarely at the new middle class audience. In the broader printed press, a new generation of magazines targeting audiences like young women and, more recently, young men, have enjoyed substantial success in terms of circulation.

Social change, and in particular the rise of car ownership, has also led to a revival of radio. The notorious traffic jams of big Chinese cities have created what is literally a captive audience for the medium. So, too, increasing affluence and the spread of the internet has led to an explosion of computer gaming, both offline and online, that is attractive to many young people.

The sources of these new ideas are many and varied. Sometimes, as with TV dramas, there is the straightforward purchase and broadcasting of foreign shows, many originating from Korea, which have proved very popular with audiences. In entertainment programming, there have been notorious cases of unauthorised borrowings from abroad (Supergirl is the most famous example) but today there are more and more entirely legal purchases of foreign formats. In broadcast news, Phoenix uses presentational techniques developed by international broadcasters to deliver the same sort of news as CCTV in a more approachable format. In magazines, the model is one of close collaboration in joint ventures between Chinese publishers and big western publishers that have established Chinese equivalents of many of the most famous global fashion and lifestyle titles. These borrowings, however, are hardly ever simple transfers from one country to another: in almost all cases, Chinese importers modify the original to fit better with the preferences of their audience.

Increasingly, however, Chinese media are seeking to break free from imported models and to produce media content that is wholly original. They are following in the footsteps of producers in other countries who started off with a debt to more advanced media systems but have increasingly generated their own nationally-specific content. Some Chinese media organisations have plans to develop themselves into truly global players, to generate wholly original content, and to export their programmes, ideas and formats to other countries.

These innovations in the media are taking place at the same time as the much more general and very rapid social and cultural changes that are sweeping China. Millions of people flood into the cities from the countryside and millions of urban dwellers have seen their personal wealth and their cultural horizons transformed in the last thirty years. Some welcome these cultural changes and celebrate the forms of media that are attractive to this new audience. They welcome the relative freedom and the influence of foreign ideas and values, seeing them as the building blocks of the new China. Others worry that the deluge of novelty threatens the traditional values of Chinese culture and seek to insulate the population from alien cultures. In the film industry, for example, some claim that the price of international success has been the adaptation of traditional Chinese themes and stories to fit western tastes. China will only succeed in exporting cultural products, they argue, if they are stripped of their unique Chinese characteristics.

We invite papers that look at any aspect of this complex process of change. Our interests include, but are not limited to:

• Joint deals between Chinese and overseas media companies
• Intellectual property rights and the Chinese media
• Adapting foreign models to Chinese conditions
• Originating wholly Chinese media artefacts
• Managing the process of change, creativity and innovation in the Chinese media
• Planning entry into the global market
• The nature of cultural change in contemporary China
• New freedoms and new constraints for Chinese media producers
• Chinese media and foreign capital

Send abstracts (250 words maximum) by 1st February to Guo Dawei: georgedawei@hotmail.com

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China’s Media Handlers

学术研讨会：新闻发言人与政府公关

A key issue in modern public affairs, following the Tibet crisis and Sichuan disaster, and before the Olympics.

Who are the people who manage media relations in China? How do they work?

当今中国，谁在协调政府与媒体及公众的关系？他们如何工作？

2008年6月6日，中国传媒中心在伦敦举办了一场公开讨论会，讨论的问题集中在当代中国的政府新闻发言人制度，主要探讨在西藏事件、四川地震之后以及奥运会之前的阶段，中国政府与媒体的关系。

Steven Guanpeng Dong

Trainer of China’s official spokesmen for the State Council Information Office; former CCTV journalist and Lecturer at Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism and Communication

In the chair: David Hill, formerly Tony Blair’s Director of Communications, now working at Bell Pottinger Group

with Lord (Tim) Bell

Host: Professor Simon Jarvis, Pro Vice-Chancellor,

University of Westminster

Entry is free and open to all

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