Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China

Front matter

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China

Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC)

PART 1. Political discourse

Chapter 1 Disembodied words: The ritualistic quality of political discourse in the era of Jiang Zemin

Chapter 2 ‘Stability overwhelms everything’: Analysing the legitimating effect of the stability discourse since 1989

Chapter 3 A decade of change in China: A corpus-based discourse analysis of ten government work reports

Chapter 4 Its a small world after all? Simulating the future world order at the Shanghai Expo

PART 2. Media discourse

Chapter 5 Discourse of journalism and legitimacy in post-reform China Jingrong Tong

Chapter 6 China’s Road to Revival: “Writing” the PRC’s struggles for modernization Florian Schneider & Yih-Jye Hwang

VI

Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China

Chapter 7 China's soft power: Formulations, contestations and communication 171 Qing Cao

Chapter 8 Issues in discourse approach to social transformations in China: A synopsis 195 Hailong Tian & Paul Chilton

Author biography 209

Index 211

Legitimisation, resistance and discursive struggles in contemporary China

Durham University

‘Without legitimacy, words are invalid; invalid words lead man to nowhere’. (AF ENA, FRM SAR. Mingbuzheng zhe yanbushun; yanbushun zhe shibucheng) Confucius (‘The Analects)

‘Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statement.

‘Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it. A ‘regime’ of truth. Foucault (in Rabinow 1984: 74)

Two hundred years ago, Napoleon, referring to its potential power, allegedly called China ‘the sleeping dragon. Three and half decades after its economic reform, the ‘dragon’ is now fully awake. China has been transformed from one of the poorest countries in the late 1970s to the world’s second largest economy in 2010. The gravity of power has shifted to an economically and politically more dynamic Asia- Pacific region. Within this region, China is the single most important country and not only provides an engine for economic growth, but represents a challenge to Western assumptions of economic, political and cultural superiority (Jacques 2012; Shambaugh 2013). Within China, however, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life, in politics, economics, education, social structures, values, traditions and identities. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by various sources of authority (Liu & Tang 1993; Ji 2003; Chilton et al. 2012; Perry 2013). Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for political elites to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society (Shirk 2008, 2011). People have become, by and large, dependent upon a heavily regulated use of language for making sense of and interacting with the world they live in, using discursive resources confined to dominant interpretations. However, evolving discursive formulations on crucial socio-political issues reflect key aspects of the trajectory of change in China, and indicate the future direction of its development.

This volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences; all against a backdrop of China’s dynamic political, economic and sociocultural processes. The general questions this volume asks are how and to what extent language use contributes to the management of China’s transformations and to the formation of new identities; with what consequences; and what it can tell us about the nature, mode, tensions and significance of those transformations in China’s pursuit of a viable road to modernity. In conceiving this book, we have tried to include a range of disciplinary perspectives in examining various types of discourses. In particular, we focus on the interrelated domains of politics and media, but more importantly, place a particular emphasis on their increasingly complex interactions. As an authoritarian society, political discourse carries the highest order of importance and, despite the substantial retreat of politics from people’s lives in the post-reform era, still has a pervasive impact upon all aspects of society (Renwick & Cao 2003). Yet, due to transformations in a commercialised mass media, the mode and instruments of political communication have been radically altered (Lee 2009; Stockman 2012). The decline of traditional channels of propaganda and the rise of new media have rapidly changed both the landscape of political communication, and the relationships between politics, the mass media and society (Kluver & Powers 1999; Zheng 2007; Yang 2011). This volume attempts to capture key features of these changing relationships and assess their consequences by examining an array of dominant discourses. It includes both the established discourse of ‘the intellectual; ‘social stability’ and ‘national revival’ as well as emerging themes of ‘soft power’ and ‘world order. The operative concept of this volume is ‘transformation, with its breakneck speed of change coupled with rising socio-political tensions, contradictions and even a sense of national crisis (Davis 2007) - though crisis (#6 #L weiji) in Chinese means both ‘danger’ (# wei) and ‘opportunity’ (Wl ji) and transforming ‘danger’ into ‘opportunity’ has long been the delicate statecraft of Chinese ruling elites. The key interest in this volume, however, is how these transformations are managed and what identities are eroded, retained, renegotiated, constructed and reproduced; what discursive strategies are used; and what purposes they serve in the changing dynamics of Chinese society.

In current literature, some scholars emphasise the high-handed dominant power of the political establishment (Zhao 1998, 2000; Pei 2006; McGregor 2012), whilst others highlight the subversive capacity of popular resistance (Gries & Rosen 2004, 2010; Cai 2010). The case studies presented in this volume, however, seek to advance a balanced analysis of the complex, multifarious and constantly evolving situations and focuses on the processes of mediation, negotiation and adaption that take place within shifting power relations. As contributors to this volume reveal, an expanding space has emerged in China for a widening range of participants to engage in negotiation with dominant discourses. The volume problematizes the assumption of a monolithic centralised power in China, a power that is either in control of everything, or in an epic binary battle for democracy and political liberalisation. Rather, it explores the diffused political power and diverse producers of discourse, while delineating dominant discursive framings of key socio-political issues, events and developments. By looking at a wider range of social actors and agencies, expanding sites of communication, and new technologies and spaces for discursive engagement, the volume presents a picture of China that shows complexities and contradictions as well as progress and promise. This introductory text has three specific purposes. First, it explains the rationales, objectives and theoretical and methodological positions of the volume. Second, it provides a brief examination of the salient features of the Chinese discursive regime and its systems of power and regulations as a contextual background to the studies presented in the volume. Third, it presents a critical overview of current key developments in the study of shifting relationships between political power and socioeconomic changes in China. Finally, it introduces the structure of the volume and the contents of each chapter.

1. Critical discourse analysis and socio-political conditions in China

This volume is a critical study of the profound changes in post-reform China, focusing on formations of evolving identities from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA). It is important to establish from the outset what we mean by CDA and why it is useful for the study of Chinese society. CDA as an established methodological approach to social study (Wodak & Meyer 2009; Fairclough 2010) is, as van Dijk (2001:96) argues, a specific ‘perspective on doing scholarship’. It focuses primarily on social problems with concerns on the role of discourse and takes a critical standpoint (van Dijk 2001). It is critical, in the sense that the researcher does not take anything for granted, but opens up the complexities and contradictions, as well as interests and power relations that are embedded in texts, talks and related actions. It means the researcher challenges established doctrines, dogmatism and dichotomies, whilst maintaining distance from the data and developing a sense of self-reflection in research (Wodak 2007). The interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary nature of CDA enables researchers to benefit from theories, categories and methodologies from other disciplines, thus facilitating a multidimensional, multi-perspective account of the intricate, intertwined and dialectical relationships between discourse structures and social structures. Wodak, using empirical data from Austria, emphasises the importance of interactions between power, ideology and history that function in and through discourse and summarizes four types of ‘discursive macro-strategies’ in constructing national identity (Wodak et al. 1999); constructive (creating national identities), preservative (reproducing national identities), transformative (changing national identities) and destructive (dismantling identities). This largely discourse-historical approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2009) follows a Foucauldian tradition of discourse inquiry (Foucault 1972, 1984), and is a methodological approach that informs many of the studies in this volume (see the last section in this introduction). This is because our key concerns are strategies, structures and modes of identity construction in a contemporary China that is experiencing volatile though rapid socio-political transformations. Moreover, the volume is interested in how multiple identities are enmeshed inherently with knowledge shaped by particular power structures in Chinese society.

In recent years, scholars have drawn increasingly on discourse analysis in the study of China’s fast-changing society. Monographs (Lin & Galikowski 1999; Tian 2009a; Shi-xu 2010; Zheng 2011), new journals,! special journal issues (Kuo & Wu 2009; Tian 2009b; Wu & Mao 2011; Chilton, Tian & Wodak 2012), edited volumes (Shi-xu 2007a; Wu 2008; Tian & Cao 2012), conferences, research projects and centres have appeared that are devoted to discourse studies on China and China- Western relations. Though taking different epistemological and ontological positions, they focus broadly on the two interrelated domains of conceptual frames for studying Chinese communication styles? and of empirical discourse analysis. In the former, some emphasise indigenous concepts rooted in China’s intellectual traditions (e.g. Chen 1994, 2006, 2009; Shi-xu 2008, 2010)? while others focus on a hybrid approach combined with Western theories (Wang 2009; Tian 2009a). However, most studies focus on Chinas specific issues by applying a plethora of discourse analysis methods. Transposed to the Chinese context, discourse analysis as a methodological tool has to be innovative in decoding the indigenous forms of communication, language, history, tradition and complex situational and institutional contexts.

However, the positions, presumptions and perspectives applied to the Chinese situation needs to be considered carefully. Some scholars contend that discourse as conceptualised and understood in Anglo-American intellectual traditions may not be a natural vehicle through which people in other societies experience the world and articulate their feelings and visions (Hall 1992; Said 1993; Shi-xu 2007b, 2009). This adds to the complexities of reading non-Western discourses, and also points to the imperative of understanding discourse as a culturally differentiated, mutually competitive and epistemologically diverse socio-cultural practice. It is in this sense that cultural critics (De Bary & Tu 1998; McQuail 2005; Shi-xu 2009)

argue for a non-universalist, culturally inclusive diversification of discourse in communication across cultures. Others (Zhao 1998, 2000; Pei 2006), however, see China as facing similar problems to other societies in terms of the challenges of a fair distribution of wealth and the protection of citizens’ basic rights. As China manages the transformation from orthodox socialism to pragmatic developmentalism, from conservatism to some forms of liberalism and from tradition to modernity, various perspectives have been applied in studying different dimensions of this metamorphosis. Typical of these perspectives is a combined liberalpluralist and radical-Marxist standpoint (Lee 2000, 2001). The former focuses on a critique of the authoritarian state while the latter concentrates on evaluating the increasingly pervasive power of capital in China. Lee (2001) argues that perspectives and methods are merely tools; it is how one applies them that matters.

The current volume studies discursive structures of a Chinese polity and media embedded in a market economy under an authoritarian one-party system (Gries & Rosen 2010). It approaches the topics under investigation with a largely empirical-based examination of discursive construction of identities rather than proceeding from fixed presumptions. CDA is applied in conjunction with other approaches, mainly as an analytical method. Studies in this volume seek to unravel the ‘infinitesimal mechanisms of power’ (Foucault 1972) at play in the use of language that is shaping the construction of key discursive formations and practices, and endeavours to understand its wider roles in mediating socio-political transformations in China. In particular, the volume aims to examine the characteristics of language use in politics (Chilton 2004) and the mass media (Fairclough 1995), together with the key terms, slogans, catchphrases, mantras, and their history, evolution, purposes, recontextualization, and consequences. In this volume, what gives rise to the characteristics of language use and how it is communicated, negotiated and contested through the mass media is conceived as the critical site of discursive struggle in contemporary China. It is critical because the mass media remains the most important domain through which China’s socio-political transformation is managed, stability is maintained, identity is constructed and, crucially, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy is sustained.

However, this is a highly dynamic but volatile process. This volume is thus interested in investigating how changes in language use reflect socio-political transformations, focusing on the productive function of discourse in both its conservative and transformative dimension (Fairclough 1989: 37-9). Conservative discourse in China is characterised predominantly by the political elites’ attempt to maintain continuities with its revolutionary past, and the intellectual elites’ efforts to preserve China's cultural heritage. Transformative discourse is driven mostly by the imperative of innovative, imaginative discursive strategies in managing social change through language use. Though contributors to this volume come from different disciplines, they take a broad discourse-historical approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2009) that integrates knowledge from historical sources and from the social, political and economic background in which the ‘discursive events’ under investigation occur. This volume is interested in exploring the historical dimension of discursive formations and actions by investigating the evolution of various ‘genres. A shared focus on the historical dimension of discourse allows flexibility in combining with perspectives from various disciplines. Throughout the book, central focus is placed on the interplay between language, discourse and socio-political practices. Before moving to delineating broad features of current Chinese communication, it is useful to examine briefly the unique roles the Chinese language plays in history and society that underpins much of the discursive practices in contemporary China.

2. Discursive regime in China: A brief genealogy

As one of the oldest surviving languages, Chinas 3000-year-old writing system has been an enduring force in keeping Chinese society and culture intact. In the vast Chinese Empire, people lived thousands of miles apart and spoke hundreds of dialects, but they shared the same set of cultural norms by having access to the same written language (Tu 2010). A small pool of canonical texts like Confucius’s Analects (i¢i% Lunyu) that children had to learn to gain literacy encoded Chinese values, assumptions and worldview. Transmitted through the two enduring institutions of sishu (44% a traditional form of schooling) and keju (4+ a state examination system to select bureaucrats across the Chinese empire),* these classics contributed to the integration of literacy, values and identity, and even the survival of the Chinese empire until the early 20th century when the imperial order crumbled under external pressures (Tu 1995; Spence 2012). However, this tradition of revering canonical texts and of seeking legitimacy and deriving moral claims and political power from them persists in modern times. The hierarchical structure of the texts, to some extent, mirrors a pyramid-shaped political order. Throughout history, traditional scholarship on textual studies and interpretations of classics within established norms has been integral to the operation of discursive power (Davis 2007). In a Confucian tradition, words are invalid without legitimacy (RKI EN FAR Mingbuzheng ze yanbushun); though paradoxically, legitimacy derives from words these established texts hold as indisputable. Textual authority confers moral power that can be translated into political entitlement and command. Truth is thus largely produced in and through authoritative texts. “Truth” is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements’ (Foucault, in Rabinow 1984: 74).

Inheriting deep-seated discursive structures, socialist China created a new type of linguistic revolution to instigate an ideological transformation with new canons, imageries, vocabulary and meanings in order to engender new beliefs, convictions and worldview (Ji 2003; Lin 2007; Liu 2010). The iconoclastic cultural vandalism on traditions, however, altered the ideologies, tenets, identities and subjectivities, but not politics and poetics of the established discursive regime. Not surprisingly, in reversing Maoist extremities, and to break away from the entrenched communist orthodoxy, Deng Xiaoping drew legitimacy from ‘seeking truth from facts’ (2+ shi shi qiu shi). This was a bold nihilistic move that nonetheless retained the political legitimacy of the CCP. Economic success, however, has quickly swept this ‘facts-based’ pragmatism into a new position of orthodoxy that has legitimised post-Deng reform, leadership and policies. Nevertheless, meanings in political language are understood by the producer and audience alike to be embedded in a parallel though hierarchical structure of power. Chinese is rich in metaphor and allusion; metaphoric references often trigger formulaic memories of the grand narrative of the day (Hodge & Louie 1998; Lu 2004). Though less essentialist and patriarchal in post-reform China, the current political language is nevertheless charged with symbolic signposts of a revolutionary past, a reformed present, and a future of cultural revival. The teleological journey accentuates a new set of priorities, imperatives and values that prioritise growth and stability, harmony and peace and prosperity and rise.

The CCP’s politically-dominated discourse has been characterised by three broad features, or ‘discursive strategies, that have survived the reform era (Renwick & Cao 1999) These are consensus building (4474 gongshi), a drive for unity (#24 tuanjie) and a focus on education (# # jiaoyu). As the highest order of priority, consensus refers to the agreement reached among top leaders on long-term strategic objectives with corresponding policy prescriptions. Such consensus is promoted as deriving from a ‘scientific understanding’ of national conditions, historical legacies and future promise. Constructing political truth as historical truth is central to consensus-building and establishing legitimacy, authority and political power. ‘Unity’ is organisational-driven and goal-oriented, and aimed at reducing internal frictions and external contestations through discursive closure at a textual level, persuasion at an institutional level and propaganda at the public level. Such exclusionary practice is deemed necessary and legitimate, given the high value placed upon stability and order in a rapidly changing society. It is the first step in mobilising the Party and the public towards the strategic goals of the political elites. ‘Education’ is the principal mechanism through which the discursive consensus is promoted, transmitted, sustained and reproduced, both within the CCP membership and wider public. A range of institutional instruments are deployed for education, including training courses organised by CCP

Party schools, publicity campaigns through state-run media, and incorporating the consensus into the educational curriculum in schools and universities (Kennedy 2009).

At the content level, political consensus is constructed primarily in the two interrelated domains of historical and theoretical. Creating a coherent linkage between historical mission, political actions and national goals is indispensable to establishing political legitimacy. Using designating and renaming strategies, the political elites have reimagined and redefined historical events as in accord with present imperatives. In a speech to celebrate the CCP’s 90th anniversary on Ist July 2011, Hu Jintao (2011) summarised the CCP’s three historical achievements of national independence (1921-1949), a socialist system (1949-1976) and a reform and opening-up programme (post-1978). In this speech each classificatory stage is historically positioned by a particular mission; namely a ‘new democratic revolution, ‘socialist revolution’ and ‘socialist modernisation. Thus, by discursive renaming and repositioning, meanings are established as historical truth in relation to the progressive role of the political elites in moving the society forward. Nonetheless, theoretical underpinnings for historical truth are still bolstered by a Marxist dialectical materialism that posits a progressive view of history (Ji 2003). The agent of change is conceptualised as ‘material’ in the form of productivity (technology) that the post-reform leadership has tried to enhance by unleashing capitalist market forces under the auspices of a socialist state. Despite increasing Confucian political philosophy in Hu-Wen's policies (Cao 2007), the dominant political discourse is nevertheless confined to the ‘socialist market economy’ or market socialism - a concept being pulled in the different directions of Marxism and capitalism. Thus, intersecting history and politics is the ‘scientific truth’ of advancing human society, and can be seen as a mixture of Marxist progress and Confucian revival. The discursive regime, undergoing profound changes, has proved resilient and retained much of its structural features and essential functions.

3. Changing political communication: from control to negotiation

Foucault (1972) sees discourse as actively constituting and constructing society, rather than passively reflecting what happens in it, and emphasises a form of interdependency within discursive practice as texts draw upon other historical or contemporary texts. Following Foucault, Fairclough (1989:37-9) underlines the dialectic relationship between discourse and social structures, and views the dynamics of social change as derived from two modes of reproductive discourse, the conservative and the transformative. The former sustains continuities and indicates stable social structures and power relations; while the latter orients towards change through discursive innovations. The transformative reproduction often occurs at a time when a society experiences radical changes, pressing socio-political problems or a crisis. The bewildering rate of transformation in China in recent decades has determined the highly volatile nature of Chinese society and the historical condition of a Party-state managing the world’s fastest-growing economy. Inevitably, the ‘transformative’ mode of discourse is not only pervasive, but vital for sustaining changes and crucial for shaping the future direction favoured by the political elites. It is not enough, however, to point to the ‘transformative’ mode of discursive change; we must understand how and why those changes have occurred in specific historical, cultural and socio-political conditions.

As an authoritarian society, China is characterized by a largely top-down pattern of political communication. The political elites govern on the one hand with an administrative apparatus with penal power; and on the other, though with increasing difficulties and challenges, with sustained discursive campaigns conditioning the country to uniform thinking, (Renwick & Cao 2003). Many scholars (e.g. Huang 2007; Zhang 2011) observe a growing tendency in the political elites to engage with the public in formulating policies, as society has become diversified, fragmented and decentralised due to the forces set in motion by the reform programme. Despite the potency of a discursive power facilitated by state-controlled instruments of communications, the political elites no longer monopolize the right to speak in the realm of public communication (Zhang and Zheng 2009), but have to grapple with challenges posed by a decentralised media industry (Tong 2010; Shirk 2011; Chin 2012) and a diverse array of voices. A continuing discursive colonization on many fronts is crucial for maintaining control over a fast-changing society. A few developing trends are worth noticing.

First, ideology has become pragmatic, fractured and ineffectual despite the overarching narrative of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics. Displacing Marxist orthodoxy with developmentalism means that official ideologies are practical, flexible and adaptable. The belief system is driven by the imperatives of maintaining control over the large, fast-changing and complex society and motivated by its instrumental value of legitimising political authority and government policy and cementing a ruptured society (Brown 2012). Ideology as a general set of beliefs is promoted by the political elites to construct fresh socio-political truths. They require a convergence of ideas, if not a consensus, on key issues that China faces today. Constructing political truth is realised largely through specific use of language. Chilton (2004: 199) argues the importance of political language is to indicate to members of a community what is good and evil, just or unjust. It is precisely the sharing of a common view on these basic issues that helps constitute a political community. Unlike Mao’s Marxist orthodoxy, post-reform ideologies are goal-oriented and policy-driven. Examples are, Deng Xiaoping’s ‘development as priority (X RÆ% #2 fazhan shi ying daoli), Jiang Zemin’ ‘three represents’ (=“¢4.# sange daibiao) and Hu Jintao’s ‘scientific development’ (#44 £ JR ML kexue fazhan guan). Each addresses specific crucial issues of the day; those of poverty in the late 1970s, co-opting the entrepreneurial class in the 1990s and bridging the rich/poor gap in the 2000s. Though the fifth generation of ‘Xi-Li (The Party’s Secretary General Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang) leadership assumed power in early 2013, they have already launched the ‘Chinese dream’ (7 El #, zhongguo meng) slogan, aiming at inspiring new generations of Chinese to realise their full potentials in an increasingly prosperous society (Zhongxuanbu lilunju, 2013). These ideologies launch a fresh system of classification that assigns specific values to different social groupings, objects, places and events (Xiao 2012; Ma 2012). The associated taxonomies however are not expected to be immaculate, static or enduring. Discursive clusters comprise a practical but self-contained system of values, slogans, objectives and policy prescriptions. The 1980s ‘getting rich is glorious, for instance, contrasts to the 2000s ‘harmonious society. Few question the tension between the two doctrines, not because both are subsumed under the grand socialist narrative (‘poverty is not socialism’; ‘socialism is harmonious), but because of the recognisable intent of pragmatic solutions to the socio-political problems.

Second, since the early 2000s, an ideological ‘duality’ has emerged of an abstract socialist rhetoric and pragmatic minsheng (RÆ people’s livelihood) discourse which has characterised much of the current political language. This duality has arisen out of a widening rich/poor gap, moralistic claims by the political elites and the entrenched practice of power-holders constructing a subjective position for the masses (Pei 2006). The divorce between socialist spirituality and capitalist reality has necessitated an innovative discourse that co-opts the public into an ideological package that allows maximum flexibility in incorporating invariable abstract rhetoric and variable policy prescriptions. Such ideological duality parallels what Hodge and Louie (1998: 48) describe as the P-ideology and the S-ideology. The former refers to the ideology of the powerful; the latter is the ideology of ‘solidarity’ that the powerful try to secure from the public. Due to the conflicting ends this duality serves, a constant tension occurs between expressing the power of authority and soliciting voluntary compliance (rather than coerced submission). A shift however has recently emerged, and the gravity is tipping increasingly toward the S-ideology as the political elites grapple with a power diffusion that is due to large sections of Chinese society becoming progressively depoliticised amidst economic liberalisation (Lee 2009). Extensive political retreat from ordinary people's lives means that the capacity for political control has largely been constrained (Zheng & Fewsmith 2009); and at the same time official channels of propaganda have gradually declined.

One example of this is the shift of emphasis from the ‘Party’s character’ (%1 dangxin) of Chinese journalism to the ‘People’s character’ (A Rt renminxing). The former articulates the ideology of the CCP (P-ideology) while the latter reflects the ‘interests’ of the people (S-ideology). Moreover, indoctrinating the younger generations is proving to be hard to achieve. Young people grow up in a more relaxed and much wealthier post-reform China and are better educated, better informed and, facilitated by the rapid growth of information and communications technology, more exposed to the wider world. They are attuned to what is happening around them through easy access to new media, rather than to officially-propagated messages of the traditional state channels (Zhang 2011). A recent episode epitomises the change of ‘Party vs. people’ dynamics in journalistic duality. When an irritated party official criticised a probing journalist ‘are you representing the interests of the Party or of the people, the offcial was instantly ridiculed in internet chat rooms as a political dinosaur. Recent socio-economic transformations have led to rapidly altered modes of communication. The shifting balance within the P vs. S ideological duality points to the volatility, intricacy, and infinite imperatives for innovative ideological management. Third, the official discourse continues to produce ‘closed texts’ as a dominant discursive strategy, transmitted through state communication apparatus like the Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily and China Central Television (CCTV).

Consisting of editorials, speeches, policy papers and slogans, these texts provide official rationales, positions, guidelines and principles that offer to the public certainties and assurances as well as a closure to ambiguities, debates, contentions or alternatives. The ritualised, rigid and almost fossilized discursive conventions reflect deeper inherent difficulties and complexities and a fear of fundamental institutional changes that may set in motion a chain of transformations beyond the CCP’s control (Lu & Chu 2012). Thus, both content and form of discursive norms in official communication constitute part of the conservative mode of discourse reproduction. This being a mode maintaining stability and continuity with the past, though such a past is constantly being rewritten. As part of the party-state apparatus to exercise authority, the conservative mode of discourse wields a dominant power through ‘phantasmatic representation’ (Foucault 1972:68) - an element of symbolisation and of the forbidden. The canonical status of key official texts has become an integral part of the ‘procedures’ or ‘technologies’ that constrain what can be said, by whom, when, how and on what occasions. “Discourse is not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but is the thing for which and by which there is struggle; discourse is the power which is to be seized’ (Foucault 1984:110). Implicit in everyday socio-political practice, the discursive power of official texts is distributed and engaged in key domains of public life. However, such power does not work by forcing itself onto its subjects;

rather, paradoxically it progressively incorporates them by allowing a larger space for participation in bottom-up discourse through an emerging pattern of communication by ‘public participation’ For example, key state media like the People’s Daily operate a website where readers can engage in particular issues by contributing to discussions.

On the other hand, a de-centred, spontaneous, heterogeneous, potentially subversive, but rapidly expanding ‘open form discourse has started to proliferate as bottom-up societal voices. Multifarious, diverse, relaxed and individualistic, the societal ‘open form’ discourse operates to generate diverse views, interpretations, debates, contestations as well as dissent (Shirk 2011). More importantly, this bottom-up discourse complicates, problematizes and interrogates official formulations of key sociocultural, economic, and political issues. As a dynamic discursive force in the participation of public affairs it is constantly pushing boundaries (Yang 2011). It constitutes the transformative form of discourse reproduction, bringing about possibilities of change, innovation and promise. Whilst channels for official discourse, though dominant and well-financed, have declined in the post-WTO environment (Xin 2008), thanks to the growth of new media; vehicles for societal voices have expanded exponentially. In the meantime, disengaged from state-sponsored channels of communication, large sections of the population have turned to the internet in search of information. The number of ‘netizens’ (citizens that sign up onto the Internet) in China reached 564 million by the end of 2012, double the number in the U.S. At the same time mobile internet users grew to 420 million and 74.5% of netizens used mobile phones to access the Internet. In 2011, 367 million users subscribed to a highly diverse range of internet news services. It is the social media however that has enjoyed the fastest growth and 309 million netizens used MicroBlogs in 2012 (ZHWXZ 2013). It has proved to be the freest and most-favoured mode of communication for ordinary people. Web publishing is also booming in China more than anywhere else in the world. There are also currently 200 million ‘e-readers’ consuming online fictions posted by self-publishing authors, and this has posed a direct challenge to the straightjacketed conventional book business (Beech 2012). Information technology has moved China closer to a level playing field of communication thus empowering bottom-up societal voices.