Switching power or surviving on the margin? Wanda Group as a case study for understanding network power in China

Abstract

A growing number of private Chinese media companies have reached an economic scale comparable to established Western media conglomerates, providing fertile ground for revisiting and revising media theories developed in the Western context. This article makes theoretical and practical contributions by showcasing the potential and plight of Wanda Group (Wanda). In particular, it examines the extent to which Castells’ network theory of power (1998, 2016) can be applied to a non-Western political economy. We use publicly available financial documents and an archive of more than 3,000 newspaper articles to examine how Wanda builds, exercises, and loses its switching power. While highlighting the primacy of the switcher as described by Castells, we demonstrate Wanda’s switching power is fragile, and its exercise remains constrained and contingent on the extent to which the company aligns with the interests of the Chinese state.

Keywords:

• Wanda Group
• Chinese media industry
• network
• state
• political economy
• switching power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lichen Zhen

Lichen Zhen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California. Her research focuses on organizational communication, technology use in the workplace, and social network analysis. Her work has appeared in The Information Society, Information, and Communication & Society and International Journal of Communication.

Wenhong Chen

Wenhong Chen is an associate professor of media studies and sociology, the co-director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries, and a Distinguished Scholar in the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at UT Austin. Dr. Chen has more than 100 publications, including articles in top-ranked journals in the fields of communication and media studies, sociology, and management.