Soft power of China

Introduction

China Central Television (CCTV) is a state-owned ministerial level institution of China, used to be called Beijing Television before 1978. China Central Television owns 50 television channels, and the broadcaster provides programming in six different languages. Among the 50 television channels, 16 of them are public while 21 are pay channels, and with 13 channels of foreign languages, which are English, French, Russian, Arabic as well as Spanish. It is one of the largest official mouthpieces of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and under the supervision of State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television of the People’s Republic of China (SAPPRFT), a department within the State Council. State Council is the main department that supervising and censoring the whole China’s television industry. SAPPRFT is an executive branch under the State Council. Its main task is the administration and supervision of state-owned enterprise engaged in the television, radio and film industries. It performs the actual daily oversight, including censorship of sensitive content. Government related media organizations like CCTV, Xinhua News Agency and China National Radio must have permissions from SAPPRFT to broadcast the new content to the public.

In June 2017, CCTV "relaunched and rebranded its stable of foreign-language TV channels. The six are now labeled as China Global Television Network (CGTN) with CGTN English as its flagship channel. "^[1]

Directors

The directors on CCTV also have positions in related government organizations and all of them are the members of Communist Party of China. Nie Chenxi, who is the main director of CCTV since 2015. He’s also the vice director of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC), main director of SAPPRFT as well as the director of the National Copyright Administration of the People’s Republic of China. Nie was born in 1957 and from Hebei Province. He worked for the local government since 1974. In the duration, he studied a master degree in management and engineering. In February 1993, He joined the Communist Party of China and worked towards to the CCP. During Nie’s time, the government has issued repeated orders telling television channels to focus on “uplifting, patriotic programs and screen out ‘base and vulgar’ content” (Reuters, 2015). Historically, directors of CCTV made cultural revolutions. In December 1991, Yang Weiguang was assigned as president of CCTV. With his peasant family background, it’s no doubt helped him secure a steady position in the government related broadcaster organizations. He left his CCTV post in 1999, and the ten years of his management of CCTV were considered as the best days. In Yang’s decade, CCTV was “unquestionably the network’s high point in terms of party approval, market position, and public sphere” (Zhu, 2012). It was the first decade of CCTV’s transformation from state-funded proselytizer to commercial broadcaster.

Income

The main financial support to CCTV is from advertising. In 2013, CCTV earned a total of 15.88 billion Yuan, and increased its revenues 11.4% each year. The graph (Figure 2) showing the most of the advertisers is liquor companies. Within those companies, liquor company JNC Group had spent the most money on advertising. The company spent 608 million Yuan by placing their logo on four daily slots on the news bulletins for eight months. Other liquor companies like Kweichow Moutai Co and Wuliangye Group Co also are the main advertiser of CCTV. Kweichow Moutai Co spent 352 million Yuan on placing their advertising on CCTV before Xinwen Lianbo (National News broadcasting, which airing the CCTV news in local channel everyday between 7pm to 7:30pm), and Wuliangye Group Co spent 499 million Yuan on the same time slots (China Daily, 2012). Those companies provided a steady financial support to CCTV. CCTV’s New Year’s Gala is popular and attracted among the country, even internationally. CCTV’s New Year’s Gala is on Chinese New Year’s Eve and it’s a tradition that nearly every family in China participates in to ring in the New Year. The tickets of Gala doesn’t open for the public, but CCTV sennd invitations to some celebrities, such as people who hold a high post in the government, annually influenced people like Jack Ma (CEO of Alibaba) as well as their family members. At the same time, CCTV will air the Gala on every local channel as well as in its foreign channels. People over the world will have a chance to watch this well-known performance. As a result, the advertisings during Gala are incredibly expensive but it still attracts a lot of companies to engage. CCTV also orients different kinds of event that open to the public, such as Skits, Xiangsheng, and Chinese Opera. (Mack, 2017), which tickets are available to the public. CCTV earns profits mainly through advertisements as well as its events.

Domestic Influence

China Central Television, China Radio International (CRI), Xinhua news agency, and The China Daily newspaper and website are the largest four state-owned media corporations. They all under control by SAPPRFT and rely on each other for producing news to the public. Xinhua News Agency is the main news source of CCTV. As they both are the official press agencies of the state, they have been tightly controlled and packaged by the government. In 2008, an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale hit Sichuan Province. China Central Television was reporting on the disaster within minutes of the quake and had reporters airing with the updates within half an hour. “Domestic disaster of any sort were too hot to handle without instruction from the state and could harm the national image” (Zhu, 2012). This earthquake was a milestone of China as the Olympics was opened in a few months later in Beijing. In the chaos of the disaster, the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China requested other Chinese news organizations not to broadcast their reports of the disaster, but instead only used information released by either CCTV or the Xinhua News Agency. This process reveals that the government controls the news.

International Policy

In 2001, a project called “Going Out” came up by president Jiang Zemin and launched by Xu Guangchun, who was the deputy head of the Propaganda Ministry and the head of SAPPRFT. This was a new start for CPC develop its power overseas. The project aims to bring China’s voice to the world. “Going Out” program was proposed to “land China’s TV and radio channels overseas within five years and provide multi languages and regionalized broadcasting and coverage by 2011” (Zhu, 2012). The image of China globally was misrepresent and misunderstand by other international medias like BBC, as result CPC wishes to erase its national image and present its voice to the world.

At the beginning of the “Going Out” Program CPC realized CCTV would meet some obstacles in western countries, because media organizations like CNN and BBC are dominants in western world while CCTV is an Asian broadcaster. Besides, westerners have some kind of stereotyped opinions to Asian, especially to Chinese. It is not an easy job to change their perspective to Chinese, as a result China moved to Africa, where western medias did not cover too much. That’s why CCTV moved their attention to Africa in 2012. As Zhang mentioned that “the Africa-oriented ‘channel’ is a ‘testing ground’ for the construction of an expand state-centered Sino centric media discourse aimed at showcasing China’s soft power and challenging the perceived Western-centric world order” (Zhang, 2013). China understands that the Africans are facing the same problem, which is the misrepresenting image in the world, so it is much easier for CPC to bring the voice there. It is an essential as well as a significant step that push Chinese media steps to global.