TRANSNATIONAL CAPITAL, THE CHINESE STATE, AND CHINAS COMMUNICATION INDUSTRIES IN A FRACTURED SOCIETY YUEZHI ZHAO Abstract Chinas accession to the World Trade Organisation has Yuezhi Zhao is significantly accelerated the countrys integration with Associate Professor of global capitalism through its bureaucratically-controlled Communication at Simon and market-driven communication industries. The speci- Fraser University, email: fic terms and conditions of this integration has meant that
[email protected]. a newly reconstituted power bloc consisting of the bureaucratic capitalists of a reformed Party state, transna- tional corporate capital, and an emerging urban middle class, whose members are the favoured consumers of , 53 - 74 both domestic and transnational capital has assumed hegemonic dominance of the communicative processes both in and out of China. At the same time, this process has been highly contentious, and continues to be media- ted by both nationalistic and leftist ideolo/gical legacies of the Chinese state and emerging forms of social and cul- tural contestation. This paper examines this integration (2003),4 Vol.10 from a transnational and transcultural political economic perspective. It begins with a critique of the Chinese nationalist and democracy frameworks in analyzing this integration, and then moves on to analyze the structural and ideological dimensions of Chinas semi-integrated communication industries and markets and identify new patterns of inclusion and exclusion in the distribution of communicative power. At the centre of this analysis lie tensions between national and class interests; between the imperatives of capital accumulation and the commu- nication needs of an increasingly fractured society; and, between horizontal and vertical communication among different social groups in a globalising context.