| The eight-chapter dissertation has explored the ongoing press reform and media convergence in China since 1996, which include its external structural adjustment, internal convergence of media resources and transformation of news reporting styles.In the past 20 years, it is the reform of China's economic system that has motivated its media reform. But the achievement of its press reform objectives is not only determined by the reform of China's economic system but also by the reform of its political system. It is impractical to expect a fundamental reform of China's media system before a clear-cut reform of China's political system. Therefore, instead of attempting to propose a guideline or establishing a framework for the media reform in China, the present dissertation will concentrate on its basic target: expound relevant countermeasures and suggestions on how to make China's media industry stronger and bigger, on the basis of the existing media reform frontiers, confusions, major contradictions and urgent problems, confronted in the current practices and theories concerning the press reform in China.In the first chapter, the dissertation offers its overall guideline, summarizing the past evolution and problems of, and analyzing the background, objectives and characteristics of the new round of the media reform in China. The most outstanding accomplishment of the media reform in China in the 20 years is characterized by the introduction of information concept twice as well as the re-establishment of the functions and attributes of media in China, which have resulted in predominant and fundamental changes of China's media in the past two decades, in terms of its structure, market, operations and management etc.. The huge progress that the reform of the media in China has brought is obvious to all. But since the progress is achieved when the old system and operational models remain unchanged, the reform has also accumulated quite a number of problems and contradictions, as demonstrated by imbalance of structures, disorder of operations and lack of administrative regulations. In an attempt to solve all the accumulated problems in 20 years of reform and also to adapt to the fundamentally changed media environment after China's entry into WTO, the media in China has initiated the convergence and reform, out of it own will. The two major objectives of the new round of media reform are: (1) to develop a reasonable media strategic formation and an effective development model for the media in China, with the system innovation as a method and efficiency andstandardization as objectives; (2) in terms of media contents, the reform will focus on how media adapts to the principle of "openness, objectivity and fairness" in the socialist market economy, how media protect the public right to know and to provide high-quality news contents to the society.In the second chapter, the dissertation discusses how China's media can achieve its efficiency objectives and the implementing measures to make its media industry bigger and stronger under the present special circumstance and the basic framework of media in China. Regarding the overall media formation, the chapter proposes to abolish the past four-tier (namely, central, provincial, regional and county levels) newspaper-station system that corresponds to administrative geographical divisions and to establish a new system of two tiers for TV stations, three tiers for newspapers and four tiers for radio station. If it is to become bigger and stronger, the media in China must break through the "bottleneck" that discourages the operational mode of cross-region, cross-industry and cross-media. The current obstacles to the "3-cross" mode consist of regional barriers, industry barriers, capital barriers and ownership barriers, which can only be overcome by starting a series of breakthroughs in theory, policy and mechanisms, including such system reforms as re-consideration of media's dual attributes, division of ownership, classified management of media and separatio...
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