中国传媒行业的版图扩张

Where exactly is the media going?

Well, basically it's going toward English language news, and it's going abroad. Um, you are seeing Xinhua, who plans to start a 24-hour English channel.

They are the state-owned wire services.

Exactly, CCTV has recently launched an Arabic station in 22 countries. And China Daily which is the English language newspaper of Xinhua, they are planning a North American edition, they are planning a European edition. And they are recruiting heavily from western journalists to fill the ranks there.

Why?

Well, I mean that's a great question. One of it is that basically China wants to increase its soft power in the world, feels like that China’s story's being skewed through western eyes, through western media. And it is, you know, intent on changing that. But it's an uphill battle for them obviously, because it's state-sponsored.

Exactly, I mean, there is a serious credibility issue here, that is, I mean, it wasn't that long ago when all state media was a straight mouthpiece of the Communist government, of the party (Exactly). So...

That's changed over time, I mean, there is more credibility with Xinhua, but it always is still always hampered by the, its, you know, its paycheck from the state, from the government. But within there, there are opportunities. Laura Flora wrote a piece for us today, looking at one company, Blue Ocean Network which was a privately-funded, Chinese-owned network, that is producing independent, and really some really strong segments geared toward North American audience. If you wanna a flavour of that, check out this segment here:

I'm here in Dashila, a popular tourist spot, just south of the Tian'anmen Square, and behind me is a scene that seems almost unthinkable just a few years ago. A campaign for same-sex marriage. It's still illegal in China, but the people who are behind me are hoping to change that.

We are gays and lesbians, and we want to show the general public that we are here in China.

So you see it's a little bit, you know, some more interesting content that you won't normally find in state media.

Okay, I'm interested in that. This Blue Ocean Group said that they are doing mainly news and features, I guess, specifically for North American audience. (Exactly.) Why there?

Well, because they think, with the power of Xinhua and so forth, they think that there is a niche for them by, you know, basically telling themselves as independent, as, you know, separated from state government, and bankrolled by private Chinese investors, to the tune of ten million dollars.

It's interesting because, I mean, politically there are certainly plenty of tensions between the U.S. and China at the moment. And I'm thinking when Al Jazeera launched, it was very difficult for them to get into the distribution network in the U.S. I'm just wondering would someone like Blue Ocean, are they gonna come up against the same sort of things, same sort of concerns?

Well, right now, they are in three markets only. They're in New York, New Jersey and Hawaii. But there're negotiations in which they say within the year they expect to be in most major cable markets in the U.S. So they seem to be addressing that. We have to wait and see how that goes.

Okay, and do you think, Voigt, is this the sort of the canary, if you like, more likely to follow, I gotta say, a sort of, an explosion of the privately-owned media companies from China going out?

It will be interesting to see and it is important to know that, you know, Blue Ocean Network is broadcasting outside of China, they are ...

So it doesn't have the same, um, restrictions. (Restrictions, Exactly.)

So you can actually do pretty much what you want to do.

Right.