"As the United States and China increasingly come together, and while convergence is bringing together communication technologies, people, and platforms in new ways, it also raises key questions in terms of information flows, control, and regulation-and hence the future of US-Chinese relations. The case studies that comprise this book document the ongoing changes, challenges, and transformations within these processes, offering readers informative snapshots of how US-Chinese relations are changing on theground, in the lived realities of daily communication habits"--
In a speech opening the nineteenth Chinese Communist Party Congress meeting in October 2017, President Xi Jinping spoke of a “New Era” characterized by new types of communication convergence between the government, Party, and state media. His speech signaled that the role of the media is now more important than ever in cultivating the Party’s image at home and disseminating it abroad. Indeed, communication technologies, people, and platforms are converging in new ways around the world, not just in China. This process raises important questions about information flows, control, and regulation that directly affect the future of US–China relations. Just a year before Xi proclaimed the New Era, scholars had convened in Beijing at a conference cohosted by the Communication University of China and the US-based National Communication Association to address these questions. How do China and the United States envision each other, and how do our interlinked imaginaries create both opportunities for and obstacles to greater understanding and strengthened relations? Would the convergence of new media technologies, Party control, and emerging notions of netizenship in China lead to a new age of opening and reform, greater Party domination, or perhaps some new and intriguing combination of repression and freedom? Communication Convergence in Contemporary China presents international perspectives on US–China relations in this New Era with case studies that offer readers informative snapshots of how these relations are changing on the ground, in the lived realities of our daily communication habits.
In a speech opening the nineteenth Chinese Communist Party Congress meeting in October 2017, President Xi Jinping spoke of a “New Era” characterized by new types of communication convergence between the government, Party, and state media. His speech signaled that the role of the media is now more important than ever in cultivating the Party’s image at home and disseminating it abroad. Just a year before Xi proclaimed the New Era, scholars had convened in Beijing at a conference cohosted by the Communication University of China and the US-based National Communication Association to address questions about information flows, control, and regulation that directly affect the future of US–China relations. Communication Convergence in Contemporary China presents international perspectives on US –China relations in this New Era with case studies that offer readers informative snapshots of how these relations are changing on the ground, in the lived realities of our daily communication habits.
