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Selections from Alina Diaz, Kuek Young Kim, Orlando Sanchez and David Coffey 
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Diaz, Alina 

 Throughout history, governments have used mass media to influence society.  In the case of communist governments, media has been used to disseminate their agenda to the public. Now with the collapse of the old Soviet Union, some believe that communism has been eradicated. Can this assumption be true?  In Robert L. Stevenson’s chapter 8 “Communist Media” and Kurt Knutsson’s “CyberGuy Commies Online”, both sources deal with communism and the media. 
 In chapter 8 “Communist Media,” Stevenson agues that communism has come to an end.  He predicts that, “Nothing will have a greater impact on the twenty-first century than the collapse of communism at the end of the twentieth” (185).  Stevenson’s provides an overview of communism from the time of Karl Marx to Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He starts his timeline with Marx’s five stages of evolution of a society. Lenin who created the first Marxist-inspired state follows Marx.  Beyond creating the first Marxist state, Lenin used media as a source of government control. Lenin believed that the press should be used as a propagandist, agitator, organizer and controller. Several decades later, Gorbachev uses the media to reform Russia and later restricts the media to prevent his demise.  Stevenson argues, “Gorbachev will be known in history as the man who recognized communism’s terminal illness and arranged for its death with dignity” (190).  As to communist media, Stevenson states that the system never worked.  After finishing his discussion on Russia, Stevenson examines China’s past and present.  According to Stevenson, China is a country of extremes. At one end, China is one of the oldest and most sophisticated countries in the world. 
The other end reveals a country that accounts for every fifth person in the world and one that is largely illiterate according to Stevenson. China’s isolation from the rest of the world has been by choice states Stevenson.  Stevenson credits Mao with creating a media system much like the Soviet Union. This media system was based on radio for two reasons, states Stevenson. The first reason was radio’s ability to spread information quickly. Secondly, radio solved the problem of communicating in print to a largely illiterate population. At the end of the chapter, Stevenson leaves the reader with the following thought, “Whether communism as a political system can survive even in a handful of isolated countries against the force of global information age is a question that remains unanswered” (205). 
 The answer to the above questions that ends Stevenson’s chapter 8 “Communist Media” can be found at Kurt Knutsson’s web site appropriately named “CyberGuy Commies Online.”  This web site is living proof that communism is alive and thriving all over the world.  It also refutes Stevenson’s claim that communism died when the old Soviet Union collapsed in the 1980’s.  This web sites also contradicts Stevenson assertion that communism is concentrated in a handful of countries. “CyberGuy Commies Online” features numerous links to communist countries and communist parties all around the world. One of the communist countries offered is Cuba.  Under Cuba, the user can choose from Granma Internacional, Juventud Rebelde and Prensa Latina.  Upon viewing Granma Internacional homepage, one immediately notices the use of media by the government to their benefit.  Granma Internacional is full of government interest articles.  The main focus of these articles is to glorify the government, criticize the enemy and explain how the government works for the people.  Granma Internacional follows Lenin’s principles of the press: propagandist, agitator, organizer and controller.  Several articles featured on Granma illustrate this point: “The 1998 Nobel laureate in literature is with the Cuban Revolution”, Cuba is stronger than a rock”, Nuclear program benefits the economy” and “Crushing defeat for U.S. at UN”.  More than ten years after the collapse of the old Soviet Union, communism and communist media is thriving despite Stevenson’s assumption that it had died with the collapse of the former USSR 
  Stevenson’s assumption that communism has been basically extinguished is an overstatement on his behalf.  He ignores the fact that communism is alive and doing quite well in China, N. Korea and Cuba. 
He also fails to mention the existence of communist parties all around the world today.  “CyberGuy Commies Online” is a great example of how communist countries are taking to the Internet to spread their beliefs.  This web site also refutes Stevenson’s claim that communism is isolated to just a handful of countries. Communism is in fact found in every corner of the globe.  Furthermore, the odds of communism being eradicated by the turn of this century aren’t supported by any facts given by Stevenson.  Communism will probably continue to exist until the end of mankind. 

Citations 
Knutsson, Kurt.  www.cyberguy.com/content/commie.html. “Granma Internacional.”  CyberGuy Commies 
         Online.  30 Oct. 1998. 
Stevenson, Robert L.  Global Communication In The Twenty-First Century.  New York: Longman, 1994. 
         185-208. 
 
 

Keuk Young Kim 

  In his chapter Communist Media, Stevenson talks about the recent history of Chinese media system and the government’s intervention on information flow.  He extends his exposition further under a sub-section called “Post-Mao China,” but I found that a particular statement in the section somewhat misleading. 
The statement by Stevenson that reads, “teenagers in China, Cuba, and North Korea knew as much about the latest Western rock stars and movie idols as their counterparts in the West—even more, in some cases,” should be examined briefly. This may be true in case of China due to recent introduction of limited West-originated information and STAR TV of Hong Kong.  However, as far as I know, it is impossible for average North Korean teenagers to “know” about the latest Western rock stars and movie idols, subject to the political and economical situations in North Korea, along with severe governmental restriction on such information.  New technologies such as satellite TV and the Internet are in the hands of a few officials who probably ranked high in the People’s Party, not available to the mass.   The country also is desperately poor, with primitive communications infrastructure, and in fact there is no service providers for the Internet in North Korea (Campbell 59).  My guess is that the statement by Stevenson is presented to symbolize the influence of Western media, but anyway it should be regarded as an overstatement. 
The entire section by Steveson led me to wander how the Chinese government has been reacting to the invasion by new technologies such as the Internet and satellite TV.  I think the discussion of these should be included when discussing Chinese media, because they will be factors that would change the picture of mass media, society, and people of China, and also because they have unique characteristics and influences. 
The Chinese government has worried about the power of the Internet recently.  “Perhaps most worrisome to the authorities, young Chinese are using the Net to coordinate political campaigns” (Fang  47).  China’s wired population has grown to 1,175 million (Fang 47), and “officials at China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication say they hope to have 4 million Chinese connected by the  year 2000” (Ramo 53). ).  As a consequence of the Internet, “free speech also is proliferating,” Fang say, “[for example] a political journal called Tunnel is said to be edited secretly in China and sent by E-mail each week to an address in the United States, where it is then E-mailed anonymously back to thousands of Chinese readers.  Big Reference is another online challenge to the authorities” (47). 
Restrictions, however, have been imposed, even though the numbers of the Internet users and pro-democracy voices have been increased. According to Ramo, “The Chinese government may still try to build the electronic equivalent of the Great Wall around its country…Chinese citizens would have easy access to domestic websites, but sites outside the mainland—cnn.com, for instance—might be blocked. China would became one big, self-contained Internet—what techies like to call an intranet—sealed off form the rest of the world” (54).  Also, the Chinese government’s ambiguity and inconsistency in its policy on the Internet has puzzled Western companies such as Yahoo.  According to Jerry Yang the president of Yahoo, Inc., mainland officials have told Yahoo that as long as the company provides access to but doesn’t host controversial Web sites, Yahoo wouldn’t be banned. However, the mainland China’s Internet policy on what is sensitive or controversial is still unclear, and enforcement is arbitrary (Lemon 49).  However, it seems that, in China, progress in term of freedom of information is greatly aided by technology and the economical situation.  According to Bill Gates, “even though China once looked at filtering the Internet, they are saying now that such an effort impedes the commercial benefits” (Gates 18). 
The scene in China, in term of information flow, has been changing rapidly today.  For example, “Time Warner, CNBC, Discovery Communications Inc., and U.S. Children’s Television Workshop (which will produce a local version of ‘Sesame Street’ in Shanghai) have entered into joint ventures with the Chinese government” (Wolff, 73).  Such phenomenon has been caused in part by Western corporations, introducing their products onto the lucrative Chinese market, which regard advertising as the most obvious interface between the manufacturer and the consumer.  However, the Chinese government has imposed a form of restriction on certain programs.  For example, Murdock, in order to gain access to China’s advertising market, had to drop the BBC’s World Service Television News from Star’s broadcasts into China (Wolff, 73).  This shows the Chinese government’s concern over satellite television and free flow of information in general.  The government first became aware of this dangerous bit of technology in 1989, at the time of the pro-democracy demonstrations I Tiananmen Square. 
 

Works Cited 

Campbell, Larry.  "Screening out the files."  Nieman Reports (Fall 1996).  P59-62. 

Fang, Bay. "Chinese ‘hacktivists’ spin a Web of trouble: the regime is unable to control the Internet." U.S. News & World Report  (Sep 28, 1998).  P47 

Gates, Bill.   "Friction-free capitalism and electronic bulldozers." New Perspective Quarterly (Spring 1997).  P15-20. 

Lemon, Sumner.   "Chinese site is politically ticklish. (Yahoo’s Chinese Web site)." Computerworld  (June 8, 1998).  P49. 

Stevenson Robert L.  Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century. Longman Publishing Group (1994). P185- 215. 

Ramo, Joshua Cooper   "China gets wired: the Middle Kingdom has embraced the Net as the fastest path to 
 The 21st century." Time (May 11, 1998).  P52-55. 

Wolff, Diane P.   "China.com?"  The National Interest (Fall 1997).  P73-76. 
 

 In "Communist Media," Stevenson succinctly summarizes the history and structure of the Soviet and Chinese media systems for about the last 80 years (given Stevenson's American-centric slant, the absence of Cuba is somewhat conspicuous).  His analysis of the fall of Soviet Empire, however, comes across as pro-Western with his use of Fukuyama's metaphor of the "end of history" as the imminent result of the victory of Western ideology (Stevenson 186).  Because Stevenson's book was published in 1994, his work misses the later developments in the Russian media system: corporate ownership and control of media outlets and the disruptive influence of American-style political media strategies.  In certain ways, these developments (which took new life with the outright use of the media network by the Yeltsin campaign in the 1996 presidential elections) have proved counteractive for the establishment of democracy in Russia.  Instead, they point to the unscrupulous use of the information dissemination systems by a new set of barons who, some would argue, are more destructive than their communist predecessors.  Unfortunately, contrary to Stevenson's working hypothesis in his book, adherence to Western standards of journalism or privatization is not the panacea for the social and political ills of the (Third?) world (Benn 480). 
A study by Daniel Hellinger, "Democracy Builders or Information Terrorists?" looks at the role of American political strategists in the 1996 presidential campaign of Boris Yeltsin.  These strategists, formerly of the California Governor Pete Wilson's camp, dominantly rallied public and private media resources in favor of Yeltsin while orchestrating a strategic lack or slanting of coverage of the communist opposition candidate Gannady Zyuganov.  The emphasis the media control was television, as Hellinger notes -- 
"Most Russians cannot afford newspapers these days, so they rely upon the electronic media. Dusseldorf's European Institute for the Media found that in the five weeks before the first round, Yeltsin received three times more coverage on prime-time news, with much more favorable coverage on balance than his opponents." (Hellinger 10). 

Nonetheless, control of newspapers and radio was also prevalent.  Only two newspapers (ironically, the English-language Moscow News and Moscow Tribune) ran significant pieces critical of the incumbent candidate (11).  For the most part, however, all media was reflective of the pro-government slant and was under the control of Yeltsin's spin-doctors.  When reporting on the upcoming elections, "journalists would routinely editorialize during the broadcast, calling those who intended to vote for Yeltsin the 'optimists' and those who intended to vote for Zyuganov 'pessimists.'" (10).  Anti-Zyuganov ads depicting the candidate as a throwback to the days of old communist repression and bearing mages of tanks, famine and destruction were put on regular airtime circulation.  With this type of media support, Yeltsin easily won an election many observers believed he would have otherwise lost. 
"The most serious distortion both back here and in Russia was the repeated assertion that a Zyuganov victory would mean a return to a command economy and the Cold War and usher in a wave of violence and perhaps terror. As American aides to Yeltsin admitted to Time, this was a carefully constructed message disseminated by the Yeltsin campaign. It manifested itself in official government get-out-the-vote TV spots in which a clock ticking down the days, hours and minutes to election day conveyed an air of impending crisis. 

During the three-month presidential campaign, a virtual blitz of slick pro-Yeltsin ads produced by the American firm of Video International blanketed the airwaves. In the days before the elections, documentaries and movies depicting the horrors of Stalinism dominated programming." (10) 

Because of this slanted control of media resources, Zyuganov accused the Yeltsin campaign and its American strategists of "information terrorism" -- knowingly disseminating false and harmful information. Many Russian journalists recognized the slant and the problem, but believed that it was only fair given the way in which the communists shut out other dissenting voices during their time in power (10-11).  Nonetheless, an "Americanization" of Russian political coverage and media strategism (a good sign for democracy building in Stevenson's analysis) seems to be falling prey to passing political whims at the expense of its supposedly watchdog and representative duties. In many ways, it would appear that Benn is right and the Anglo-American model of the media may not be appropriate for non-Anglo-American societies and may not necessarily be linearly conductive to political and social openness. 
Nonetheless, the problems of the Russian media system in the face of "Americanization" or "Westernization" do not end with the interactions between politicians and journalists come election time.  Greatly because of the overwhelming success of the Yeltsin campaign in controlling the media during the 1996 elections, some of Russia's largest industrial and financial conglomerates jumped at a chance to share in the power of information control. This is the focus of Neela Banerjee's study "Big Business Takes Over: a Budding Independent Press Returns to the Old Ways." Banerjee point out how independent media had emerged in the old Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and for a few years produced hard-hitting coverage of news ranging from local police scandals to the disastrous war in Chechnya to government waste and corruption. But lately (from 1997 on), much of the independent media has moved back under the control of the state and of business interests close to it. Tough coverage of anything is a rarity, and what little there is tends to be viewed as serving particular political or business agendas.  The culprit in this new wave of media control is not some "restrictive" communist ideology but free market capitalism itself.  If corporate control of media outlets has begun to catch some negative attention here in the U.S., this trend has taken gargantuan dimensions in the Russian situation, where businesses close to the government have almost unlimited freedom to establish monopolies and run their business unchecked, with virtually no oversight. 
"Over the last year, Russia's most formidable corporations have taken control of much of the national press. In 1996, the country's largest company, the natural-gas monopoly Gasprom, bought 30 percent of the private nationwide TV station, NTV. The powerful private lender Uneximbank this spring purchased 20 percent of Russia's most popular daily, Komsomolskaya Pravda, with a circulation of 1.25 million. Most recently, Uneximbank and LUKoil, the nation's biggest oil concern, divvied up ownership of the respected national daily Izvestia after a public battle that led to the ouster of most of the editorial board by the new owners." (Banerjee 59) 
Banerjee notes how under the ownership of these government-backed corporations, the coverage of these newspapers and TV stations has turned pro-government and misleadingly anti-communist. For Russia's new media barons, the payoffs promise to be huge. In an economy still heavily controlled by the government, those who have become rich have been the insiders -- companies and banks that were given a headstart on reforms when they were spun off from Soviet ministries. By acquiring the media, and with them the chance to shape public opinion, Russia's corporate giants strengthen their position. "In such circumstances," Sergei Agafonov, then foreign editor of Izvestia, is quoted by Benerjee, "a free independent press is doomed, but an unfree and dependent press can flourish." By late July, Agafonov was out of a job (60). If Pyotr Neyev, head of investor relations at LUKoil, is right and  "economics and politics are still too tightly joined in Russia. No matter how big the business, it's not fully independent of the government," (61) then economic reforms and an increased "Americanization" of the Russian media system may not be the way to go.  Maybe the American media model is not universally applicable, contrary to Stevenson's arguments, and will not lead the way for the modernization of Third World societies that will solve their problems overall. 

Banerjee, Neela. "Big business takes over: a budding independent press returns to the old ways. (freedom of the press in Russia)." Columbia Journalism Review; Nov-Dec 1997, v36, n4, 59-61. 

Benn, David Wedgwood. "The Russian media in post-Soviet conditions." Europe-Asia Studies; May 1996, v48, n3, 471-480. 
 

Hellinger, Daniel. "Democracy builders or information terrorists? (US media consultants and the Russian election)." St. Louis Journalism Review; Sept 1996, v26, n189, 10-11. 

Stevenson, Robert L. "Communist Media" in Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Longman Publishing Group, 1994, 185-208. 

 Chapter eight of Robert L. Stevenson’s Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century deals with Communism in history, the Soviet Union, and China.  Stevenson quickly covers Chinese Media and does not talk about Chinese Film.  I am going to use three articles: “The Well Dries Up” by Tony Rayns,  “Farewell My Concubine and Its Nativist Critics” by Ben Xu, and “Farewell Chen Kaige” from the South China Morning Post to give an introduction to the state of film in China. 
 “The Well Dries Up” by Tony Rayns looks at the state of the Chinese film industry at the beginning of 1997.  Rayns writes: 
 The coincidence of new political constraints in Beijing with box-office free-fall throughout the region has brought Chinese cinema to its lowest ebb in living memory. (Rayns, p. 89) 

This is contrasted with 1993 and Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, which brought together the three main strands of Chinese Cinema, and ended up winning 1993’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. 
 A film like Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1993) pointed the new way forward.  Financed from Taiwan, produced from Hong Kong, shot in China by a mainland director and crew with a cast drawn from all three territories, Chen’s film not only proved that the three strands of Chinese cinema could work together but also showed they could come up with a film with strong global appeal. (Rayns, p. 90) 

The political restraints that Rayns mentions in the first quote come from a change in Chinese film bureaucrat at the beginning of 1996, and the Chinese Ministry of Radio, Film and Television’s Film Administration Regulations which were implemented July 1 1996.  The Administration regulations were to limit the number of foreign films allowed to enter China and make clear the government’s reasons for banning and demanding changes of domestic Chinese films. 
 Ben Xu’s “Farewell My Concubine and it’s Nativist Critics,” looks closely at Chen Kaige’s movie and its critical reception in China.  Xu writes: 
 As an aftermath of the crackdown on the democratic movement of 1989, the official ideological orthodox staged a comeback and cultural discussions sensitive to domestic political and social issues were silenced, leaving behind a stark intellectual vacuum.  It was at this moment that there emerged among these Chinese critics the new trend of cultural discussion that combined theoretical radicalism and political pacifism by deliberately turning away from domestic problems concerning the relations of culture and power and choosing international culture/power relations as the main area of critical attention. (Xu, pp. 155-156) 

Xu argues that these critics end up misreading films like Farewell My Concubine as appeals to Western audiences. Also, critics unwillingness to address important domestic issues “makes their ethical appeals sound hollow, taking away the moral edge of their criticism of Western domination and oppression”(Xu, p.156).  Xu sees Farewell My Concubine as contradicting Marxist philosophy by “suggesting an alternative narrative of history”(Xu, p. 159).  He argues that critics miss this and other issues brought up in the film, and instead choose to construe many of the elements of the film as attempts to please Western audiences and film critics. 
 Chen Kaige’s 1996 film Temptress Moon was released internationally but was banned in China.  Of the seven films he has made, two have been banned in China (Temptress Moon; Life on a String), one has been heavily censored (Farewell My Concubine), and one was delayed for several months (Yellow Earth).  In an October 17, 1997 South China Morning News article, Kaige discusses his problems with the propaganda wing of the communist party, and the constant accusations from journalists that his films offer a negative view of China to western audiences.  In the article Kaige said that he was in going to move to the United States to make English-language films. 

References: 
Stevenson, Robert L. (1994). “Communist Media,” in Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 185-208). White Plains, NY: Longman. 

Rayns, Tony (1997). “The Well Dries Up,” in Index on Censorship. January – February, vol. 26, no. 1. (pp. 89-94) 

Xu, Ben (1997). “Farewell My Concubine and Its Nativist Critics,” in Quarterly Review of Film & Video. Vol. 16, no. 2. (pp. 155-170) 

(1998). “Farewell Chen Kaige,” in The South China Morning Post. October 17. (p. 1)