Global Media News

Is China's Most Watched Television Show Sexist?

    Lunar New Year Gala, was an annual show that was aired on February 18 of this year. This show was aired on China Central Television Network. This show was watched by over 690 million people. During the show, there was a comedy skit that was mocking overweight unmarried  women. This comedy skit led Chinese Activists to sign a petition to cancel the annual Lunar New Year Gala. Unfortunately the petition was blocked and stopped by the Chinese Government. 

    China's , media is the largest market in the world. For Television, it is available for 418million households. China Central Television (CCTV) is a television network that is run by the State Government. CCTV is one of the largest media companies in China. At the end of 2014, china received over 648million internet users. 

    Wilfred Chan from CNN states,

"One sketch depicted an overweight woman in her late-20s complaining about being unmarried. The punchline? Her brothers bring out a tall, slim female "goddess" to help their less attractive sister understand why she's still single".

    This statement by Chan gives an explanation on how the Chinese Women were feeling that night. The overweight women were being compared to female goddess. Chinese Women felt disgraced and angered on the person that told this joke because they are being compared to a goddess that does not show any affection. 

    China's Central Television New Year's Gala is also known as the Spring Festival Gala. This show was aired on the eve of the Chinese New Year. When CCTV broadcasts this show live, the Gala gets over 700 million viewers. 

Simon Denyer and Xu Yangjingjing from the Washington Post states,

"An online campaign protesting against discrimination in the television show quickly garnered 1,300 signatures being before blocked by censors".

    This statement by Simon and Xu gives us an explanation that this discrimination was needed to be stop immediately. But the online censors spoiled the Chinese activists from getting this petition to go any further. 

Simon and Xu also state,

"It was “certainly embarrassing” for the censors at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the paper said in an editorial Wednesday, while the discrimination in the show should put the nation ”to shame.”"

    When Simon and Xu made this statement, the Chinese media realized that this Gala is ruining their reputation. 

    El Borromeo from Yibada.com states,

"However, the recent concern raised by this particular group has served as a reminder that the media should be sensitive in themes that touch the issue of gender equality".

    El Borromeo clarifies that since this discrimination was happening to the overweight women, CCTV should of been more aware of what was happening. When the discrimination started, CCTV should of automatically cancel the Gala and replaced it with another show. 

CCTV as China's Propaganda Tool

 

President Xi Jinping deployed a new campaign against the corruption, western influences and political enemies of China. Among the corrupt was CCTV which is a 24 hour English news channel, of China Central Television, based in Beijing. One of the news programs entailed by the CCTV were fake confessions by businessmen before they were even sent to trail.

 

 

According to the nytimes:

"The state-run China Central Television has shown suspects in high-profile cases with potential political sensitivities confessing on air, in some cases before they have been charged with wrongdoing or formally arrested."

 

CCTV is known to heavily monitor people and their online discussions." The best way to convince people in a communist state is to kill the conversation said Fu Hualing, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “Society is just so divided. They monitor the Internet so closely that sometimes they feel they have to end the debate.”

 

 

With Xi-Jinping cracking down on CCTV it has more 10,000 employees of the network on edge. It's common knowledge in Beijing and many areas of China that CCTV will take bribes for positive coverage. Managers and executives are timid to make any big decisions since the crackdown began. Major projects have been frozen and they noted that stopping  reporters who take bribes is their first priority. According to official news reports who are tracking the investigation ,15 senior employees have gone missing since the crackdown. Among them  "Rui Chenggang, 37 was noticeably absent last month from the annual conference of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, where he had been a fixture for years."

 

Other executives and producers are afraid to drive their luxury cars in fear they will make themselves conspicuous. CCTV is known as face of the nation of china. Now that it's filthy, China wants to do what it can to clean it up. CCTV is estimated to broadcast an estimated of 700 million Chinese viewers. 

 

China Makes It Difficult For Tech Companies to do Business

 China New Information Gathering Idea Rejected By the U.S 

Chinas new ideas promote gathering the information of tech companies users. The laws they are trying to in force require tech companies to turn over "snooping" mechanisms to the Chinese government.   The United States is against the act of China trying to enforce laws to collect user data. China's inquiries are mainly about tech companies encryption keys to their codes for personal data. The sharing of user data can threaten the U.S of economic cyber espionage.  In an interview Obama stated his concerns for China requiring tech companies to give personal data to their firms. 

"This is something that I’ve raised directly with President Xi," Obama said. "We have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going to have to change if they are to do business with the United States." (BBC)

Obama spoke on cyber security and consumer protection at Stanford University. Obama felt it would be critical for any international company to prosper while collects data to keep track of user data. He stated, "I don't think there's any U.S or European firm, international firm that can get away with that whole sale turning over of data".

China is concerned with any possible threats from religious extremist or separatists. "Beijing has argued the need to quickly ratchet up its cybersecurity measures in the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations of sophisticated U.S. spying techniques." (reuters.com) 

 

China's Largest Internet Firm seeks to gives its users better internet access

    According to china.org, Tencent, which is China's largest internet firm is attempting to lower China's strict access to the internet. As stated in the previous article, China is known for having a strict internet policy and looking over their citizen's internet habits. China's constitution "affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, but the opacity of Chinese media regulations allows authorities to crack down on news stories by claiming that they expose state secrets and thus endanger the country."

    In the article Ma Huateng, chief executive officer of Tencent Holdings, spoke of how Tencent Holdings Ltd.  is working on a barrier-free technology standard that will allow its Internet-related products on mobile devices to benefit disabled people and the elderly. China has about 85 million disabled people and nearly 200 million elderly people, many of whom have limited Internet access.

    This shows a classic example of how the media can be changed for the greater good. 

    

 

 

 

The Severity of Internet censorship in China

Since its foundation the Chinese government has shown to keep a tight grip on the content of its media. The media regulations endorsed by its laws allows the government to censor what China deems as a threat to their national security or reveal state secrets.

Additionally the law dictates they can censor anything that deems harmful to their political or economic interests. Seemingly these laws are extremely vague and allow the government to facilitate censorship at their own discretion. 

Internet censorship  in China has become increasingly obvious over the decade. Sites that contain sensitive phrases and violate China law have been blocked from the country entirely. 

According to abcNEWS: "If an Internet user in China searches for the word "persecution," he or she is likely to come up with a link to a blank screen that says "page cannot be displayed."The same is true of searches for "Tibetan independence," "democracy movements".

OpenNet Initiative, an academic cooperative that tracks censorship issues says that China has the world's "most sophisticated" Internet filtering system. 

Another form of internet censorship used by the Chinese government is banning access from websites around the world. They even issued an order stating that "the internet users of china including foreign organizations and individuals must abide by Chinese law and regulations". 

 

Hackers weaken Great Firewall of China

 "According to abcnews.com, an army of self described hacktivists are engaged in a kind of technological arms race, inventing software and using other tactics to allow ordinary Chinese to beat the "Great Firewall of China" and access information on sensitive subjects such as Chinese human rights and Tibet, the province where pro-independence sentiment has boiled over in recent months."

    China is infamous for is strict and private media and how censored the internet is in China. According to wikipedia.com, China has been censored since the 1980's. China and many other Asian countries are known to be private and they feel if their internet and press is open many other countries they might by nosy and spy on China. 

    In the article China has the world's "most sophisticated" Internet filtering system, according to the OpenNet Initiative, an academic cooperative that tracks censorship issues. Also China is not as strict as Russia or North Korea in that it allows its citizens to use the internet but it regulates what they can or cannot view. 

    Also the punishment for breaking censorship rules can be fines or jail time depending on the crime. The most basic tool at the Chinese government's disposal — and, perhaps, the one most easily circumvented by dissidents — is to ban access within China to websites

Japanese Pornography becomes Popular in China

It's no secret that Japan and China have a very brutal and bloody history . China's malice towards Japan  goes back ages, some of the most prominent conflicts between them being the Nanjing Massacre and the Japanese atrocities of World War II. China's hate for everything Japanese is prevalent, especially in 2012 when anti-Japanese protests resulted in the vandalizing and destruction of any Japanese stores or stores selling Japanese goods; during these acts of violence protesters were met with no resistance from Chinese law enforcement.

So keeping in mind how much distaste the Communist-run country holds for Japan, it becomes even more of a point to note that one of the hottest commodities in China is Japanese Pornography. The Chinese Communist Party does not allow porn in the country, they've even gone to such lengths as to hire officers to keep track of and censor pornography in China. Still, where there's a will there's a way. From bootlegged DVD's to torrent downloading, Japanese porn is one of the many vices that has found its way into the Chinese underground culture.

Japanese adult film Actresses have shown interest in helping to aid the relief of China's citizens in more ways than one. Japanese porn stars such as Sora Aoi (now retired, right) have joined Chinese social media sites, visited the country, and helped raise money for Chinese charities and disaster reliefs. Capitalizing on their fame in China, these actresses seem to have become
unofficial ambassadors who are subtly smoothing over tensions in their rival countries.

    China's official news agency Xinhua  has perhaps inadvertently shown support for the Japanese adult industry by listing the twitter page "Absolute JP Porn" as one of the pages it follows. This seems like too much of a publicity nightmare to be true, but there is visual evidence  showing Xinhua as a follower of a site that they should have no part in. There were also rumors that a Chinese company called "Qihoo 360" offered a night with Japanese porn star Julia Kyoka (left) to its male employees as an incentive award for successful employees come Chinese New Year. Qihoo 360 has since denied that there ever was such an award, probably to the dismay of many a lonely worker of the firm.

It's hard to take the idea seriously, that Japanese pornography might be the one way to link two cultures that have been at odds for decades. Japanese porn thriving in a country where there would normally be zero demand for such entertainment is another example of media making the world a little bit smaller by bridging cultural gaps. Perhaps the presence of a genre that many consider to be filth has begun to extinguish a fire that has been burning for too long.

China Uses Media to Shine Light on Malaysian Kidnapping

Malaysia is not being reflected in the best of media lights lately according to the BBC. A Chinese tourist along with a Chinese hotel employee were recently captured from the Singamata Reef Resort in Malaysia at gunpoint, and taken on a boat against their will. The kidnapping was caputured by resort stayers.  
 The ties between the two countries had been strong until recently when the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 became missing. In a recent article in the Malaysian Insider  the Chinese Ambassador also supported that Chinese relations with Malaysia was strong and that Western Media was to blame for the hype in the disappearance of the flight, and the angry reactions.  

The South China Morning Post news which is a Chinese media outlet, states that neither country has seen the described victims or kidnappers since the incident. They also maintain that Chinas ultimate concern is for the safety of its citizens. Several photographs have been released from citizen journalists to promote the safe return of the victims.

 

 

 

Chinese Film vs Chinese Literature: Government Controlled?

        Why are movies banned when the printed version is not? In China this is not unusual. The Chinese government will ban a movie but allow for the book to sell on stores. Why does the government feel that the movie is worse? According to Yu Hua of the New York Times, the reason for this is there are many publishing houses in China so the book has multiple chances to be picked up and published where as all of the movies have to pass through the government for approval before being approved.

        However, television is less closely monitored until it comes to new broadcasts. News broadcasts are the most monitored because this is real information that the Chinese government may not want their citizens to know about. Even though the government has a lot of control over their citizens even down to what movies they can view, believe it or not the control is about economics not politics. According to Hua, "When it comes to censorship in China, the primary factors are often economic, not political.

        Publishing houses that were once government financed have operated as commercial enterprises for years now. Editors are under pressure to make the biggest profit they can. Even if a book carries some political risks, a daring editor will take the gamble if there’s a chance it will be a best seller." The reason the Chinese government does not have as much control over the books that are printed is because each of the printing houses are individually owned and not state owned. Individually owned printing houses do still have certain rules they need to abide by but the government does not see a book before it is printed. The Chinese government is becoming less invasive, however they still have a long way to come for their citizens to have the freedom that we in the United States have.

Global Media News Webcast #6: March 7, 2013

Media News from China, Cambodia and South Korea!

Global Media News for March 7, 2013

Global Media News is a weekly webcast covering media news from around the world.  GMN is a production of  Media Studies students from the SUNY College @ Old Westbury. 

This week on Global Media News:   "Media Made in China, Cambodia and Vietnam"

• Why Are Chinese Hackers Cracking the Servers of the New York Times?
• How Did the BBC World Service Get Jammed Up in China?
• Chinese Bloggers Protesting Censorship
• Vietnam Puts Bloggers on Trial
• Social Media Showdown: Sina Weibo vs. Tencent's WeChat
• Cambodian Lawyers Gagged by New Censorship Law
• Chinese Censors:  Are the Cuts deeper for Film or Print?
• Blocking Luxury Marketing for Cultural Purity?

Next week on GMN:   Media News from India, Pakistan and South Asia.

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