Dwelling Narrowness: Chinese media and their disingenuous neoliberal logic

Abstract

This article uses a Chinese television drama Dwelling Narrowness to illustrate the inherent tensions and pitfalls of Chinese neoliberal developmentalism. It examines its production, circulation and popular consumption in order to illuminate the interplay of the Chinese state, capital and popular aspirations in the restructuring of Chinese media and communication industries. In such interplay, neoliberal strategies are enwrapped in socialist legacies, traditional values, post-socialist dilemmas, and prosumer desires. Neoliberal techniques and practices, which are sometimes sincerely and sometimes disingenuously applied in the Chinese case, create a hybrid political-economic structure that is non-liberal, anti-liberal and neoliberal, all in one. To affix a‘post-’ to neoliberalism would both overestimate the neoliberal logic and underestimate its continued agency in China's transformations.

Notes

1. Nail house is a Chinese neologism referring to households that refuse to make room for urban development, just like nails that are hard to pull out. See Toy (2007) for a report of the so-called ‘coolest nail house in history’.

2. More and more Chinese youths are living off their parents, thus becoming Neets (Not in Education, Employment or Training) or boomerang kids. Some are laid-off workers; some are graduates from universities who are supported by parents to prepare and pursue postgraduate studies, or search and wait for jobs.

3. ‘Human flesh search’ is a Chinese term to refer to cyber vigilantism that involves anonymous Internet users working together as self-styled detectives to track down, shame and harass people whose behaviours or words have attracted their wrath. See Herold (2011) for a review of the phenomenon in China.

4. By the end of 2003, China had established 85 media conglomerates, including 39 newspaper groups, 18 broadcasting groups, 14 publishing groups, 8 distribution groups, and 6 film groups (Anon. 2010).

5. Personal communication via telephone and email, 2010.

6. Personal communication via telephone and email, 2010.

7. E'gao, or spoof, is a multimedia expression through Photoshopping, flash and digital remix of Chinese and non-Chinese elements to poke fun at an original work, concept, or person. See Meng (2009) on e'gao as a decentralized form of communication in Chinese cyberspace.

8. The director of CCTV is also deputy director of SARFT. This makes it easier for CCTV to ensure its dominance in the Chinese media industry through policies issued by SARFT to limit the powers of other broadcasters. This has been demonstrated through numerous cases, as any insider from the Chinese media industry can tell.

9. ‘Ant tribe’ (yizu) is a term coined by Chinese sociologists to describe young (post-1980s generation), educated (with university degrees) migrants from rural China who struggle to stay in big cities with low-paying jobs and poor living conditions (often on the city outskirts in shared living compounds) in order to fulfil their dream of a better life. See Chen and Li (2010).