China's Contentious Journalists: Reconceptualizing the Media

Examines Chinese journalists as increasingly contentious actors, presenting three cases representing conservative incidents for the purpose of building theory. After providing some historical background on changes to Chinese news media, prior scholarship is summed up, asserting that the news media is viewed as either an arm of the party state or an advocate for citizen needs. Attention is then given to the three cases involving the China Youth Daily, the Xin Jing Bao (Beijing News), & the Chengdu newspaper boycott of Chen Kaige's film Wu Ji (The Promise [2005]). The theoretical significance of this contentious journalism is explained before considering a theory of grievance that sheds light on the motivation underlying the contentious collective action of the journalists despite the lack of a political opening & why these protests looked the way they did. D. Edelman