Ashley Esarey | University of Alberta (original) (raw)
Books by Ashley Esarey
Journal of Contemporary China, 2021
This article examines Xi Jinping's utilization of state propaganda since his rise as General Secr... more This article examines Xi Jinping's utilization of state propaganda since his rise as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. Through a comparison of reportage on Xi and other national leaders and the consideration of case studies from the Mao and Xi periods, it argues that Xi has made more extensive use of propaganda in the People's Daily than any leader since the founding of the People's Republic, with the possible exception of Mao Zedong. By evaluating a 'Xi Jinping effect' in propaganda, this article suggests Xi has leant heavily on media power to project authority over the Party and beyond. Xi Jinping's ascent has also coincided with reduced emphasis on other leaders, providing evidence for the weakening of collective leadership in China.
Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown i... more Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown into a prosperous but widely unrecognized nation-state for which no uncontested sovereign space exists. Increasingly vigorous assertions of Taiwanese identity expose the fragility of relationships between the United States and other great powers that assume Taiwan will eventually unite with China.
Perhaps because of their precarious international position, the Taiwanese have embraced cosmopolitan culture and democratic institutions. The 2014 Sunflower Movement thrust Taiwan’s politics into the global media spotlight, as did the resounding electoral victory of the once-illegal Democratic Progressive Party in 2016.
Taiwan in Dynamic Transition provides an up-to-date assessment of contemporary Taiwan, highlighting Taiwan’s emergent nationhood and its significance for world politics. Taiwan’s path has important implications for broader themes and preoccupations in contemporary thought, such as consideration of why political transitions in the aftermath of the Arab Spring have sputtered or failed while Taiwan has evolved into a stable and prosperous democratic society. Taiwan serves as a test case for nation and state building, the formation of national identity, and the emergence of democratic norms in real time.
The Internet in China provides unique and much-needed historical background on the communications... more The Internet in China provides unique and much-needed historical background on the communications revolution and technological developments that have transformed Chinese society, creating new conflicts and new opportunities for the nation's half a billion netizens. The book covers the role of the Internet in business and economy, governance and politics, civil society, and social welfare. More than forty international experts, many of them Chinese, write about community-building and social networking, online dating and romance, government regulation, education and entertainment, and phenomenon specific to China, including the Great Firewall and microblogging.
Lu Hsiu-lien's journey is the story of Taiwan. Through her successive drives for gender equality,... more Lu Hsiu-lien's journey is the story of Taiwan. Through her successive drives for gender equality, human rights, political reform, Taiwan independence, and, currently, environmental protection, Lu has played a key role in Taiwan's evolution from dictatorship to democracy. The election in 2000 of Democratic Progressive Party leader Chen Shui-bian to the presidency, with Lu as his vice president, ended more than fifty years of rule by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party).
Taiwan's painful struggle for democratization is dramatized here in the life of Lu, a feminist leader and pro-democracy advocate who was imprisoned for more than five years in the 1980s. Unlike such famous Asian women politicians as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, India's Indira Gandhi, and Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Lu Hsiu-lien grew up in a family without political connections. Her impoverished parents twice attempted to give her away for adoption, and as an adult she survived cancer and imprisonment, later achieving success as an elected politician -- the first self-made woman to serve with such prominence in Asia.
My Fight for a New Taiwan's rich narrative gives readers an insider's perspective on Taiwan's unique blend of Chinese and indigenous culture and recent social transformation.
Lu Hsiu-lien (Annette Lu) is a graduate of National Taiwan University, the University of Illinois, and Harvard Law School. She was vice president of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008 and currently is president of Green 21 Taiwan Alliance. Ashley Esarey, a former journalist, held the An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University and currently is visiting assistant professor of political science and East Asian studies at the University of Alberta.
"It is rare to read a political memoir that is so self-aware and candid, and where the subject becomes such a striking individual to the reader. Lu's immense energy, organizing skills, and ability to twist arms come across very clearly. . . . [My Fight for a New Taiwan is] not only about Lu's gaining high office in a democracy, but also about how she mightily helped to found that democracy." - Ross Terrill, author of Mao: A Biography; The New Chinese Emperor; and Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon
"This is a highly personal, powerful, and at times moving self-portrait by a remarkable woman whose sheer personality, determination, and courage transformed her from the daughter of a shopkeeper in Taoyuan County to the first female elected vice president of Taiwan." - Steve Tsang, University of Nottingham
Reviews of My Fight for a New Taiwan by Ashley Esarey
This new memoir by the democracy activist and feminist leader Lu, who was Taiwan’s vice president... more This new memoir by the democracy activist and feminist leader Lu, who was Taiwan’s vice president from 2000 to 2008, is a welcome reminder of what is possible when political leaders set aside their own interests and follow the will of the people they claim to serve.
My Fight for a New Taiwan is an enjoyable narrative that captures how education and other broaden... more My Fight for a New Taiwan is an enjoyable narrative that captures how education and other broadening opportunities enabled the career and prominence of a smart and ambitious woman navigating the dramatic social and political transformations attending the industrialization and democratization of one of the four Asian “tigers.” Lu’s experiences highlight the fragmentation and oppressiveness of Taiwan’s transitions, even as they offer hope that other Asian states might move further down the path of becoming more open societies.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=41507
My Fight for a New Taiwan is a standalone story that is limited in scope, with ambitions to be li... more My Fight for a New Taiwan is a standalone story that is limited in scope, with ambitions to be little more than an engrossing story of a life devoted to Taiwan, which regardless of its success in achieving its goals remains a remarkable journey.
"Hsiu-lien’s life story mirrors the story of Taiwan as a country. Both are trying to find their w... more "Hsiu-lien’s life story mirrors the story of Taiwan as a country. Both are trying to find their way in the world and break free — one from limiting gender expectations, the other from mainland China. Prior to this, I did not know much about Taiwan and its struggles, but “My Fight for a New Taiwan” had me cheering on Hsiu-lien and her compatriots as they fought for the country they loved so much."
Papers by Ashley Esarey
China Journal, 2009
Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. L... more Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. xiv + 231 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover). In a year of unprecedented media coverage of China, Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic by examining internal Party documents, conducting extensive interviews inside the propaganda system and providing a comprehensive literature review on political communication in China. Brady argues that, rather than leading to political liberalization, commercialization and conglomeration in the media industry have bolstered regime legitimacy by selling the merits of market reform, consumerism and a nationalist discourse that equates patriotism with support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Her work is thus an important corrective to scholarship by Daniel C. Lynch and Zhao Yuezhi, who have portrayed commercialization and media proliferation as weakening the Party's ability to guide public opinion. For Brady, Chinese media are principally Party mouthpieces, and watchdogs only for problems that are easily solved. In post-Mao China, the CCP reformed the propaganda system to adopt certain features of Western media. "In the years since 1989", Brady writes, "China has married old methodology such as using entertainment as a vehicle for political thought work, with new methodology and technology such as political PR and the Internet" (p. 87). Media reform reflected the CCP's desire to avoid the fate of Eastern European countries, where media supported democratization, and the Soviet Union, which fractured after Gorbachev encouraged media freedom under glasnost and perestroika. The book's most important contribution is to shed light on the institutions, laws and practices which trammel Chinese media. The Party's Central Propaganda Department appoints the heads of state bodies in charge of propaganda work, and determines who runs media conglomerates; Party cadres regularly instruct editors about media content to be highlighted or avoided; strict regulations control the tifa or political expressions for politically sensitive matters; senior Party cadres monitor all media content at central and provincial levels to ensure compliance. Prizes are given in recognition of the best works of propaganda, while journalists who test the limits of acceptable discourse risk punishment. Marketing Dictatorship attempts to "create a new theoretical paradigm to understand the nature of CCP rule in the contemporary era" (p. 6). Unfortunately, Brady's discussion of the paradigm does not come until the book's final pages, when she argues that the Party's use of propaganda to perpetuate its rule should be called "popular authoritarianism". This is a modest theoretical contribution to the literature on Chinese politics, in part because key aspects of the argument remain untested. True, China's rulers have persuaded "the population to accept the continuance of CCP rule". How much of this persuasion, however, should be attributed to propaganda and thought work as opposed to other factors, such as economic development, improvements in public security, pride in technological advancements, and China's rising prominence on the world stage? …
Social Science Research Network, 2010
During the reform era the Chinese state has modernized the way in which campaigns are conducted. ... more During the reform era the Chinese state has modernized the way in which campaigns are conducted. Today, the government focuses on public service advertising on television to actively shape people's attitudes and behavior on such issues as environmental protection and legal reform. More broadly, public service advertising is aimed at holding together an increasingly diverse and fragmented society. This paper examines the effects of public service advertising on people's opinions. Based on experiments we investigate the extent to which public service advertising is effective and why. As the first-ever study concerning the effects of public service advertising in the Chinese media, this paper employs multiple research methods to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between the Chinese state and society. The predominant view in Chinese politics is that reforms since the Mao era have weakened the coercive power of the state. Recently, however, scholars have begun to explore the mechanisms through which the Chinese state has been able to adapt and remake institutional forces for reinforcing national unity and integration. This study contributes to this debate by exploring the role of television propaganda in influencing people's views and behavior and finds that public service announcements can lead to negative views of the state, unless viewers recognize the messages as a state sponsored form of political communication. In the 21st century, Chinese remain surprisingly supportive of the state's efforts to guide public opinion through political advertising.
China Journal, 2009
Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. L... more Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. xiv + 231 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover). In a year of unprecedented media coverage of China, Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic by examining internal Party documents, conducting extensive interviews inside the propaganda system and providing a comprehensive literature review on political communication in China. Brady argues that, rather than leading to political liberalization, commercialization and conglomeration in the media industry have bolstered regime legitimacy by selling the merits of market reform, consumerism and a nationalist discourse that equates patriotism with support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Her work is thus an important corrective to scholarship by Daniel C. Lynch and Zhao Yuezhi, who have portrayed commercialization and media proliferation as weakening the Party's ability to guide public opinion. For Brady, Chinese media are principally Party mouthpieces, and watchdogs only for problems that are easily solved. In post-Mao China, the CCP reformed the propaganda system to adopt certain features of Western media. "In the years since 1989", Brady writes, "China has married old methodology such as using entertainment as a vehicle for political thought work, with new methodology and technology such as political PR and the Internet" (p. 87). Media reform reflected the CCP's desire to avoid the fate of Eastern European countries, where media supported democratization, and the Soviet Union, which fractured after Gorbachev encouraged media freedom under glasnost and perestroika. The book's most important contribution is to shed light on the institutions, laws and practices which trammel Chinese media. The Party's Central Propaganda Department appoints the heads of state bodies in charge of propaganda work, and determines who runs media conglomerates; Party cadres regularly instruct editors about media content to be highlighted or avoided; strict regulations control the tifa or political expressions for politically sensitive matters; senior Party cadres monitor all media content at central and provincial levels to ensure compliance. Prizes are given in recognition of the best works of propaganda, while journalists who test the limits of acceptable discourse risk punishment. Marketing Dictatorship attempts to "create a new theoretical paradigm to understand the nature of CCP rule in the contemporary era" (p. 6). Unfortunately, Brady's discussion of the paradigm does not come until the book's final pages, when she argues that the Party's use of propaganda to perpetuate its rule should be called "popular authoritarianism". This is a modest theoretical contribution to the literature on Chinese politics, in part because key aspects of the argument remain untested. True, China's rulers have persuaded "the population to accept the continuance of CCP rule". How much of this persuasion, however, should be attributed to propaganda and thought work as opposed to other factors, such as economic development, improvements in public security, pride in technological advancements, and China's rising prominence on the world stage? …
Political Change in China
The China Quarterly, 2015
The Chinese Historical Review, 2021
Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown i... more Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown into a prosperous but widely unrecognized nation-state for which no uncontested sovereign space exists. Increasingly vigorous assertions of Taiwanese identity expose the fragility of relationships between the United States and other great powers that assume Taiwan will eventually unite with China. Perhaps because of their precarious international position, the Taiwanese have embraced cosmopolitan culture and democratic institutions. The 2014 Sunflower Movement thrust Taiwan’s politics into the global media spotlight, as did the resounding electoral victory of the once-illegal Democratic Progressive Party in 2016. Taiwan in Dynamic Transition provides an up-to-date assessment of contemporary Taiwan, highlighting Taiwan’s emergent nationhood and its significance for world politics. Taiwan’s path has important implications for broader themes and preoccupations in contemporary thought, such as consideration of why political transitions in the aftermath of the Arab Spring have sputtered or failed while Taiwan has evolved into a stable and prosperous democratic society. Taiwan serves as a test case for nation and state building, the formation of national identity, and the emergence of democratic norms in real time.
Journal of Contemporary China, 2021
ABSTRACT This article examines Xi Jinping’s utilization of state propaganda since his rise as Gen... more ABSTRACT This article examines Xi Jinping’s utilization of state propaganda since his rise as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. Through a comparison of reportage on Xi and other national leaders and the consideration of case studies from the Mao and Xi periods, it argues that Xi has made more extensive use of propaganda in the People’s Daily than any leader since the founding of the People’s Republic, with the possible exception of Mao Zedong. By evaluating a ‘Xi Jinping effect’ in propaganda, this article suggests Xi has leant heavily on media power to project authority over the Party and beyond. Xi Jinping’s ascent has also coincided with reduced emphasis on other leaders, providing evidence for the weakening of collective leadership in China.
Political Psychology, 2018
Journal of Contemporary China, 2016
This article examines Chinese perspectives of, and support for propaganda, relying on television ... more This article examines Chinese perspectives of, and support for propaganda, relying on television public service advertisements as a means of tapping into citizens' beliefs. Through the analysis of data from focus groups conducted in Beijing and public opinion survey data from 30 cities, this study argues that Chinese people are generally supportive of state efforts to guide public attitudes through television advertisements, although levels of support vary by age, education and gender. The study suggests that considerable popular support for state propaganda contributes to the regime's capacity to guide public opinion and helps to explain the persistence of popular support for authoritarian rule.
The China Quarterly, 2008
An earlier generation of scholars paid a great deal of attention to the workings of the Chinese C... more An earlier generation of scholars paid a great deal of attention to the workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A. Doak Barnett's study of Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China, Robert Scalapino's Elites in the People's Republic of China, and ...
Asian Journal of Communication, 2012
Johan Lagerkvist's new volume on the impact of the internet in China revolves around... more Johan Lagerkvist's new volume on the impact of the internet in China revolves around some familiar themes, but within a framework that considers the much larger issue of media evolution within the nation. By focusing on the impact of technology on evolving norms in society, his consideration of the future of China's political and social evolution is a more nuanced and subtle offering to this body of literature, and offers an interesting perspective by which to understand the role of the internet within an overall ecology of the media. ...
Journal of Contemporary China, 2021
This article examines Xi Jinping's utilization of state propaganda since his rise as General Secr... more This article examines Xi Jinping's utilization of state propaganda since his rise as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. Through a comparison of reportage on Xi and other national leaders and the consideration of case studies from the Mao and Xi periods, it argues that Xi has made more extensive use of propaganda in the People's Daily than any leader since the founding of the People's Republic, with the possible exception of Mao Zedong. By evaluating a 'Xi Jinping effect' in propaganda, this article suggests Xi has leant heavily on media power to project authority over the Party and beyond. Xi Jinping's ascent has also coincided with reduced emphasis on other leaders, providing evidence for the weakening of collective leadership in China.
Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown i... more Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown into a prosperous but widely unrecognized nation-state for which no uncontested sovereign space exists. Increasingly vigorous assertions of Taiwanese identity expose the fragility of relationships between the United States and other great powers that assume Taiwan will eventually unite with China.
Perhaps because of their precarious international position, the Taiwanese have embraced cosmopolitan culture and democratic institutions. The 2014 Sunflower Movement thrust Taiwan’s politics into the global media spotlight, as did the resounding electoral victory of the once-illegal Democratic Progressive Party in 2016.
Taiwan in Dynamic Transition provides an up-to-date assessment of contemporary Taiwan, highlighting Taiwan’s emergent nationhood and its significance for world politics. Taiwan’s path has important implications for broader themes and preoccupations in contemporary thought, such as consideration of why political transitions in the aftermath of the Arab Spring have sputtered or failed while Taiwan has evolved into a stable and prosperous democratic society. Taiwan serves as a test case for nation and state building, the formation of national identity, and the emergence of democratic norms in real time.
The Internet in China provides unique and much-needed historical background on the communications... more The Internet in China provides unique and much-needed historical background on the communications revolution and technological developments that have transformed Chinese society, creating new conflicts and new opportunities for the nation's half a billion netizens. The book covers the role of the Internet in business and economy, governance and politics, civil society, and social welfare. More than forty international experts, many of them Chinese, write about community-building and social networking, online dating and romance, government regulation, education and entertainment, and phenomenon specific to China, including the Great Firewall and microblogging.
Lu Hsiu-lien's journey is the story of Taiwan. Through her successive drives for gender equality,... more Lu Hsiu-lien's journey is the story of Taiwan. Through her successive drives for gender equality, human rights, political reform, Taiwan independence, and, currently, environmental protection, Lu has played a key role in Taiwan's evolution from dictatorship to democracy. The election in 2000 of Democratic Progressive Party leader Chen Shui-bian to the presidency, with Lu as his vice president, ended more than fifty years of rule by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party).
Taiwan's painful struggle for democratization is dramatized here in the life of Lu, a feminist leader and pro-democracy advocate who was imprisoned for more than five years in the 1980s. Unlike such famous Asian women politicians as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, India's Indira Gandhi, and Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Lu Hsiu-lien grew up in a family without political connections. Her impoverished parents twice attempted to give her away for adoption, and as an adult she survived cancer and imprisonment, later achieving success as an elected politician -- the first self-made woman to serve with such prominence in Asia.
My Fight for a New Taiwan's rich narrative gives readers an insider's perspective on Taiwan's unique blend of Chinese and indigenous culture and recent social transformation.
Lu Hsiu-lien (Annette Lu) is a graduate of National Taiwan University, the University of Illinois, and Harvard Law School. She was vice president of the Republic of China from 2000 to 2008 and currently is president of Green 21 Taiwan Alliance. Ashley Esarey, a former journalist, held the An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University and currently is visiting assistant professor of political science and East Asian studies at the University of Alberta.
"It is rare to read a political memoir that is so self-aware and candid, and where the subject becomes such a striking individual to the reader. Lu's immense energy, organizing skills, and ability to twist arms come across very clearly. . . . [My Fight for a New Taiwan is] not only about Lu's gaining high office in a democracy, but also about how she mightily helped to found that democracy." - Ross Terrill, author of Mao: A Biography; The New Chinese Emperor; and Madame Mao: The White-Boned Demon
"This is a highly personal, powerful, and at times moving self-portrait by a remarkable woman whose sheer personality, determination, and courage transformed her from the daughter of a shopkeeper in Taoyuan County to the first female elected vice president of Taiwan." - Steve Tsang, University of Nottingham
This new memoir by the democracy activist and feminist leader Lu, who was Taiwan’s vice president... more This new memoir by the democracy activist and feminist leader Lu, who was Taiwan’s vice president from 2000 to 2008, is a welcome reminder of what is possible when political leaders set aside their own interests and follow the will of the people they claim to serve.
My Fight for a New Taiwan is an enjoyable narrative that captures how education and other broaden... more My Fight for a New Taiwan is an enjoyable narrative that captures how education and other broadening opportunities enabled the career and prominence of a smart and ambitious woman navigating the dramatic social and political transformations attending the industrialization and democratization of one of the four Asian “tigers.” Lu’s experiences highlight the fragmentation and oppressiveness of Taiwan’s transitions, even as they offer hope that other Asian states might move further down the path of becoming more open societies.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=41507
My Fight for a New Taiwan is a standalone story that is limited in scope, with ambitions to be li... more My Fight for a New Taiwan is a standalone story that is limited in scope, with ambitions to be little more than an engrossing story of a life devoted to Taiwan, which regardless of its success in achieving its goals remains a remarkable journey.
"Hsiu-lien’s life story mirrors the story of Taiwan as a country. Both are trying to find their w... more "Hsiu-lien’s life story mirrors the story of Taiwan as a country. Both are trying to find their way in the world and break free — one from limiting gender expectations, the other from mainland China. Prior to this, I did not know much about Taiwan and its struggles, but “My Fight for a New Taiwan” had me cheering on Hsiu-lien and her compatriots as they fought for the country they loved so much."
China Journal, 2009
Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. L... more Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. xiv + 231 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover). In a year of unprecedented media coverage of China, Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic by examining internal Party documents, conducting extensive interviews inside the propaganda system and providing a comprehensive literature review on political communication in China. Brady argues that, rather than leading to political liberalization, commercialization and conglomeration in the media industry have bolstered regime legitimacy by selling the merits of market reform, consumerism and a nationalist discourse that equates patriotism with support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Her work is thus an important corrective to scholarship by Daniel C. Lynch and Zhao Yuezhi, who have portrayed commercialization and media proliferation as weakening the Party's ability to guide public opinion. For Brady, Chinese media are principally Party mouthpieces, and watchdogs only for problems that are easily solved. In post-Mao China, the CCP reformed the propaganda system to adopt certain features of Western media. "In the years since 1989", Brady writes, "China has married old methodology such as using entertainment as a vehicle for political thought work, with new methodology and technology such as political PR and the Internet" (p. 87). Media reform reflected the CCP's desire to avoid the fate of Eastern European countries, where media supported democratization, and the Soviet Union, which fractured after Gorbachev encouraged media freedom under glasnost and perestroika. The book's most important contribution is to shed light on the institutions, laws and practices which trammel Chinese media. The Party's Central Propaganda Department appoints the heads of state bodies in charge of propaganda work, and determines who runs media conglomerates; Party cadres regularly instruct editors about media content to be highlighted or avoided; strict regulations control the tifa or political expressions for politically sensitive matters; senior Party cadres monitor all media content at central and provincial levels to ensure compliance. Prizes are given in recognition of the best works of propaganda, while journalists who test the limits of acceptable discourse risk punishment. Marketing Dictatorship attempts to "create a new theoretical paradigm to understand the nature of CCP rule in the contemporary era" (p. 6). Unfortunately, Brady's discussion of the paradigm does not come until the book's final pages, when she argues that the Party's use of propaganda to perpetuate its rule should be called "popular authoritarianism". This is a modest theoretical contribution to the literature on Chinese politics, in part because key aspects of the argument remain untested. True, China's rulers have persuaded "the population to accept the continuance of CCP rule". How much of this persuasion, however, should be attributed to propaganda and thought work as opposed to other factors, such as economic development, improvements in public security, pride in technological advancements, and China's rising prominence on the world stage? …
Social Science Research Network, 2010
During the reform era the Chinese state has modernized the way in which campaigns are conducted. ... more During the reform era the Chinese state has modernized the way in which campaigns are conducted. Today, the government focuses on public service advertising on television to actively shape people's attitudes and behavior on such issues as environmental protection and legal reform. More broadly, public service advertising is aimed at holding together an increasingly diverse and fragmented society. This paper examines the effects of public service advertising on people's opinions. Based on experiments we investigate the extent to which public service advertising is effective and why. As the first-ever study concerning the effects of public service advertising in the Chinese media, this paper employs multiple research methods to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between the Chinese state and society. The predominant view in Chinese politics is that reforms since the Mao era have weakened the coercive power of the state. Recently, however, scholars have begun to explore the mechanisms through which the Chinese state has been able to adapt and remake institutional forces for reinforcing national unity and integration. This study contributes to this debate by exploring the role of television propaganda in influencing people's views and behavior and finds that public service announcements can lead to negative views of the state, unless viewers recognize the messages as a state sponsored form of political communication. In the 21st century, Chinese remain surprisingly supportive of the state's efforts to guide public opinion through political advertising.
China Journal, 2009
Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. L... more Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China, by Anne-Marie Brady. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. xiv + 231 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover). In a year of unprecedented media coverage of China, Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic by examining internal Party documents, conducting extensive interviews inside the propaganda system and providing a comprehensive literature review on political communication in China. Brady argues that, rather than leading to political liberalization, commercialization and conglomeration in the media industry have bolstered regime legitimacy by selling the merits of market reform, consumerism and a nationalist discourse that equates patriotism with support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Her work is thus an important corrective to scholarship by Daniel C. Lynch and Zhao Yuezhi, who have portrayed commercialization and media proliferation as weakening the Party's ability to guide public opinion. For Brady, Chinese media are principally Party mouthpieces, and watchdogs only for problems that are easily solved. In post-Mao China, the CCP reformed the propaganda system to adopt certain features of Western media. "In the years since 1989", Brady writes, "China has married old methodology such as using entertainment as a vehicle for political thought work, with new methodology and technology such as political PR and the Internet" (p. 87). Media reform reflected the CCP's desire to avoid the fate of Eastern European countries, where media supported democratization, and the Soviet Union, which fractured after Gorbachev encouraged media freedom under glasnost and perestroika. The book's most important contribution is to shed light on the institutions, laws and practices which trammel Chinese media. The Party's Central Propaganda Department appoints the heads of state bodies in charge of propaganda work, and determines who runs media conglomerates; Party cadres regularly instruct editors about media content to be highlighted or avoided; strict regulations control the tifa or political expressions for politically sensitive matters; senior Party cadres monitor all media content at central and provincial levels to ensure compliance. Prizes are given in recognition of the best works of propaganda, while journalists who test the limits of acceptable discourse risk punishment. Marketing Dictatorship attempts to "create a new theoretical paradigm to understand the nature of CCP rule in the contemporary era" (p. 6). Unfortunately, Brady's discussion of the paradigm does not come until the book's final pages, when she argues that the Party's use of propaganda to perpetuate its rule should be called "popular authoritarianism". This is a modest theoretical contribution to the literature on Chinese politics, in part because key aspects of the argument remain untested. True, China's rulers have persuaded "the population to accept the continuance of CCP rule". How much of this persuasion, however, should be attributed to propaganda and thought work as opposed to other factors, such as economic development, improvements in public security, pride in technological advancements, and China's rising prominence on the world stage? …
Political Change in China
The China Quarterly, 2015
The Chinese Historical Review, 2021
Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown i... more Following a remarkable transition from authoritarian rule to robust democracy, Taiwan has grown into a prosperous but widely unrecognized nation-state for which no uncontested sovereign space exists. Increasingly vigorous assertions of Taiwanese identity expose the fragility of relationships between the United States and other great powers that assume Taiwan will eventually unite with China. Perhaps because of their precarious international position, the Taiwanese have embraced cosmopolitan culture and democratic institutions. The 2014 Sunflower Movement thrust Taiwan’s politics into the global media spotlight, as did the resounding electoral victory of the once-illegal Democratic Progressive Party in 2016. Taiwan in Dynamic Transition provides an up-to-date assessment of contemporary Taiwan, highlighting Taiwan’s emergent nationhood and its significance for world politics. Taiwan’s path has important implications for broader themes and preoccupations in contemporary thought, such as consideration of why political transitions in the aftermath of the Arab Spring have sputtered or failed while Taiwan has evolved into a stable and prosperous democratic society. Taiwan serves as a test case for nation and state building, the formation of national identity, and the emergence of democratic norms in real time.
Journal of Contemporary China, 2021
ABSTRACT This article examines Xi Jinping’s utilization of state propaganda since his rise as Gen... more ABSTRACT This article examines Xi Jinping’s utilization of state propaganda since his rise as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. Through a comparison of reportage on Xi and other national leaders and the consideration of case studies from the Mao and Xi periods, it argues that Xi has made more extensive use of propaganda in the People’s Daily than any leader since the founding of the People’s Republic, with the possible exception of Mao Zedong. By evaluating a ‘Xi Jinping effect’ in propaganda, this article suggests Xi has leant heavily on media power to project authority over the Party and beyond. Xi Jinping’s ascent has also coincided with reduced emphasis on other leaders, providing evidence for the weakening of collective leadership in China.
Political Psychology, 2018
Journal of Contemporary China, 2016
This article examines Chinese perspectives of, and support for propaganda, relying on television ... more This article examines Chinese perspectives of, and support for propaganda, relying on television public service advertisements as a means of tapping into citizens' beliefs. Through the analysis of data from focus groups conducted in Beijing and public opinion survey data from 30 cities, this study argues that Chinese people are generally supportive of state efforts to guide public attitudes through television advertisements, although levels of support vary by age, education and gender. The study suggests that considerable popular support for state propaganda contributes to the regime's capacity to guide public opinion and helps to explain the persistence of popular support for authoritarian rule.
The China Quarterly, 2008
An earlier generation of scholars paid a great deal of attention to the workings of the Chinese C... more An earlier generation of scholars paid a great deal of attention to the workings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A. Doak Barnett's study of Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China, Robert Scalapino's Elites in the People's Republic of China, and ...
Asian Journal of Communication, 2012
Johan Lagerkvist's new volume on the impact of the internet in China revolves around... more Johan Lagerkvist's new volume on the impact of the internet in China revolves around some familiar themes, but within a framework that considers the much larger issue of media evolution within the nation. By focusing on the impact of technology on evolving norms in society, his consideration of the future of China's political and social evolution is a more nuanced and subtle offering to this body of literature, and offers an interesting perspective by which to understand the role of the internet within an overall ecology of the media. ...
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2015
China's local governments are facing a crisis of public confidence and have struggled to hand... more China's local governments are facing a crisis of public confidence and have struggled to handle political dissent and popular protests. In an attempt to promote political stability, local officials around the country have utilized Twitter-like microblog sites ([Formula: see text], weibo) to upgrade their capability to influence citizens and engage in rapid information management. Through the analysis of microblogging by prominent propagandists whose identities and professions are known to the public, this article finds some evidence that microblogging could be helping cadres to win hearts and minds, although such microblogging poses new risks to the state as netizens challenge propagandists and state policies in exchanges that reveal political pluralism and disapproval of state policies. While venting on weibo may enable people to blow off steam, the reluctance (or inability) of official microbloggers to engage their critics in meaningful dialogue suggests the limited utility of...
Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to... more Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to expressions of extreme incivility that violate the etiquette and norms of interpersonal and online communication. Moving beyond definitions of civility (or incivility) based on democratic norms of deliberation and reciprocity, this article argues that civility should be reconceptualized as respect for others’ communicative rights, including the right to self-expression in pursuit of social justice. This theoretical modification affirms that civility differs from politeness and allows for contextualized and comparative studies of civility and incivility across regions and polities. In China’s authoritarian online spaces, the state tacitly encourages incivility as a divide-and-rule strategy while masking its uncivil purposes with “civil” appeals for rationality and order in a society characterized by pluralism, fragmentation, and visceral conflict. The result, as contributions to this Spe...
This paper utilizes focus groups conducted among Beijing residents to examine perspectives of pub... more This paper utilizes focus groups conducted among Beijing residents to examine perspectives of public service advertisements on television. Beijing residents see public Service advertisements, a common form of propaganda, as more trustworthy than commercial advertisements, and are surprisingly supportive of state efforts to guide public attitudes. Public opinion survey data from thirty Chinese cities confirm key findings emerging from the focus groups.
International Journal of Communication, 2018
Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to... more Once believed to empower a range of Chinese social actors, the Internet is increasingly linked to expressions of extreme incivility that violate the etiquette and norms of interpersonal and online communication. Moving beyond definitions of civility (or incivility) based on democratic norms of deliberation and reciprocity, this article argues that civility should be reconceptualized as respect for others’ communicative rights, including the right to self-expression in pursuit of social justice. This theoretical modification affirms that civility differs from politeness and allows for contextualized and comparative studies of civility and incivility across regions and polities. In China’s authoritarian online spaces, the state tacitly encourages incivility as a divide-and-rule strategy while masking its uncivil purposes with “civil” appeals for rationality and order in a society characterized by pluralism, fragmentation, and visceral conflict. The result, as contributions to this Spe...
The Internet in China provides unique and much-needed historical background on the communications... more The Internet in China provides unique and much-needed historical background on the communications revolution and technological developments that have transformed Chinese society, creating new conflicts and new opportunities for the nation's half billion """"netizens."""" This convenient handbook covers the role of the Internet in business and economy, governance and politics, civil society, and social welfare. More than forty international experts, many of them Chinese, write about community-building and social networking, online dating and romance, government regulation, education and entertainment, and phenomena specific to China, including the Great Firewall and microblogging.
Based on an experiment with 210 adult Beijingers we investigate the extent to which public servic... more Based on an experiment with 210 adult Beijingers we investigate the extent to which public service advertising (PSAs) and their source labels lead to priming of affect toward the central government and attitudinal change concerning political trust. Results show that affect towards the Chinese central party-state is automatically activated upon mere exposure to the concept, leading to reporting of higher levels of political trust. At the same time, elements of humoristic surprise contained in PSAs motivate viewers to reconsider political attitudes, thus undermining rather than promoting support for the government. These finding suggest that exaggerated survey responses to questions on political trust in China may not be caused by political sensitivity but by other sources of bias. Moreover, by specifying the features contained in PSAs that undermine political trust this study contributes to a more complete picture of the effectiveness of propaganda by means of the mass media in China.
The University of Alberta’s China Institute invites paper proposals for the 13th annual Chinese I... more The University of Alberta’s China Institute invites paper proposals for the 13th annual Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) to be held in Edmonton, Canada on May 27-28, 2015. While following the CIRC tradition of welcoming a wide range of general submissions, this year’s conference will highlight the themes of “(un)civil society” and “Chinese internet or internet in China?”