Very questionable, KT. Television is here to torture the audience, not people in front of a camera. Besides, does the Vatican change its message just because the heathens don’t believe? Nor will the central committee.

Everybody enjoys giving the finger to a bully who strays beyond their home turf.

A Beijing financed version of Al Jazeera. Are you currrent with Al Jazeera’s reporting today? Replacing that sewer CNN as the global news feed of choice, and rightly so.

@t_co. Be realistic and put your money on China’s Sports Lottery instead.

Chinese diplomacy at the mo. Whinging victimhood, Tarzan-like chest thumping or dangling the financial carrot to shit poor Pacific nations.

The larger neighbours snigger, smirk and quietly plan their alliances.

Diplomatic autism, I think was latest descriptor.

The twin pronged approach noted above should be abandoned for the Page Three approach to ‘journalism’ and lots of news programs using hot babe stripper anchors. Murdoch and Berlusconi. That’s the only viable future.

Court TV also has a lot of potential and the Party’s central disciplinary apparatus could turn out a pretty decent Cops-type program. And its not as if they lack domestic experience here, since a few provincial city TV stations had these types of shows up and running in 2001. Tracking down and SWAT arresting low level perps such as drug dealers.

Crikey, you don’t need high priced consultants from New York to come up with this media policy reset. Its staring them in the face. Human flesh search engines. Weibo. The popularity of porn. Celebrity gossip. The strength of rumor.

And best of all, lots and lots of targets.

And to kick off this new direction, I’m issuing a call for non-chemical Ottoman style castration for Bo’s trysting with bimbos outside his marriage vows.

Since most commenters on this and similar sites take care to distinguish between the govt and the Chinese people, there should be lots of support for my policy media shift, since it would truly reflect the nature of China’s existing ‘civil society’.

t_co, from my (fragmentary, of course) observation, China’s foreign-audience media are shifting away from creating a parallel universe which would be totally different from what you get to read in domestic media. They now seem to be more in tune with the domestic Chinese-language media. That’s by far not always the case, but it looks like a growing trend.

Hu Xijin, Huanqiu Shibao‘s chief editor, has discussed with his readers why censorship, propaganda etc. should be tolerated, or even appreciated, given China’s persisting “cultural weaknesses” (or vulnerability – something of that sort), earlier this year. Obviously, you can’t convince truly liberal readers of that kind of practice, but then, that’s probably not the goal.

China Radio International emulates a (mostly, not always) liberal editorial line in English, but cultivates a small, but devoted number of German listeners with its German-language service. I like to refer to these listeners as “early Christians”. They don’t mind to be a (so far) rare species, and CRI doesn’t mind to broadcast for a few faithful listeners only. The budget doesn’t appear to be in danger.

My take is that the top leadership has abandoned the apparent general approach to “sell” its brand to other countries by camouflaging its domestic realities. The emphasis is shifting to buying people (both Chinese and foreign liberals with a stake in China’s economy), by intimidating them if need be, and by encouraging the believers.

As far as I can see, it works quite well (for them), and it is what the CCP has practised during most of the time. So they are very familiar with it. And as this has worked on a Chinese public for some decades now, why shouldn’t it work on a global public, too?

When it came to emulating a nicer outside “face”, it often went quite wrong – tries by the propaganda department to be more subtle weren’t too successful anyway. By their logic, they are doing the right thing – probably.

The world and especially the East Asian region has gotten a great taste of “the Chinese power structure” in the past year or so and, frankly, only desperate cases like Pakistan, North Korea and Laos are buying into any of it. And the non-transparency surrounding cases like Bo/Gu and even Xi Jinping’s backache shows everyone just how lucky they are to live in more democratic places.

“Failing that, the Chinese government should at least devote some of that state stimulus money towards subsidizing its own slick Asian version of Al-Jazeera; nominally independent, based in Hong Kong or Singapore or something; use that to co-opt a majority of Western media elites.”

They’ve been trying and spending billions for the last several years — Xinhua at Times Square, CCTV global, even the Global Times — with very limited returns so far. Soft Power fail so far. Phoenix TV is close to
the “nominally independent, based in Hong Kong or Singapore or something” model, and it has to pull a lot of punches to serve the PRC audience. It’s better than mainland fare, but a good bit short of world class.