World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

Over the last couple of years, the economic success story of the Chinese newspaper press has started to fade. In various forms, the new media have begun to erode the readership of many newspapers and to take an increasing share of advertising revenue. This pattern is familiar from many developed countries and this paper asks how far we can learn from their experiences to understand the current and future state of Chinese newspapers. It reviews the main features of the economic and journalistic impact of the development of the internet in the USA and other developed countries. It then considers how far the factors identified there are relevant in the Chinese context, in which the impact of politics on economic issues is much more significant than in the West (Lee, 2000). While some of the negative factors appear to be relevant, the different economic, social and political structures in China mean that the response to these changes is, and will continue to be, different from that in the developed world. In particular, the possibility of state support, which is ideologically very problematic in western countries, experiences no such obstacles in China. The paper traces some of the distinctive policies designed to support the transition to a digital world that the government has pursued in the past few years but also demonstrates how this renewed dependence upon government subsidy has been accompanied by the closure of some of the few spaces for critical journalism that were present in the preceding period.