After Door Opened: China’s Mass Media Becomes Part Of World Media

The Open Door Policy launched in1978caused radical changes in China’s mediasystem. The Chinese mass media started intensively integrating into the world mediacommunity. This study aims to investigate the transformation of the Chinese mediacomplex on its way towards international standards. The main aspects touched upon inthe research are: the working environment provided for foreign journalists in China, theactivity of the national media abroad, the country’s reputation created by both overseasand domestic media, and the modification of local media practices.The research relies mainly on the analysis of media contents produced by theworld’s media-such as BBC and CNN-about China-related events which includeBeijing Olympics and Shanghai Expo. It also contains the study of Xinhua’s newsdispatches consumed by the agency’s international subscribers. In addition, the paperappeals to personal work experiences of foreign journalists in China: a Belarusiancorrespondent Inessa Pleskachevskaya acts as an expert and offers her insight on thecurrent media situation in China.The research finds out that, although the Chinese mass media have already evolvedconsiderably, they have not reached the world media standard yet: overseas journalistsrank the job comfort level here as “satisfactory” and the voice of the national massmedia is rather weak to affect China’s image on the world’s stage.