Diasporic Chinese media in Australia: A post-2008 overview

Abstract

Despite the exponential growth of Chinese migrants in Australia, and despite the sizable body of work in various locations, the picture of how the Chinese-language media have developed in Australia over the past decade is still somewhat unclear. Even less clear is a sense of how the field has changed since the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games, a significant event that signalled China's ascent on to the global stage. This paper seeks to update the picture of the Chinese-language media landscape in Australia. We explore a number of angles, which work in articulation to produce a picture of growing complexity and fluidity. In doing so, we put forward a number of arguments. First, the diasporic Chinese-language media are subject to, as well as respond to, the vagaries of the wax and wane of the multicultural polity of the host nation. In addition, the diasporic Chinese-language media, for a wide range of reasons – technological, cultural, and economic – need to reassess their cultural role and strategies in the wake of the PRC's new status as a global power and its push for expansion of its media content and cultural impact outside China. Furthermore, to a varying extent and in a variety of ways, the diasporic Chinese-language media have become part and parcel of the global transnational cultural economies of Chinese-language media productions.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Cultural Research Network, which funded a Chinese Media in Australia industry forum in Sydney in November 2009, as well as a small academic forum in Melbourne in August 2009, attended by the authors of this paper.

Notes

1. Interview August 27, 2009.