Rules And Regulations Of China's Media Sector Functioning

The dissertation discusses two key questions why China's media sector need regulation and how to regulate the media.The first question why media need regulation derives from rethinking on flaws in current media sector functioning. Behind prosperity of China's media, maladies spread out. Paid-for news, vulgar contents and uproarious press become three social effects of pollution; state-owned assets embezzlement, corruption and rent-seeking arise; administrative monopoly distorts the market mechanism and mess up the market order. These phenomena above converge at one point that media pursue its self-interest in excess and sacrifice the public interest. Hence, the main issue of media regulation is to lay the media under the obligation of public interest and to maintain public interest.Public interest of media is the start of research in the dissertation. Media must service public interest because media, as the juncture of social communication network, is the trustee of public's rights to know and express. Though people dispute over the definition of public interest, as for media, whether experientially or constructively, public interest of media exists is evitable. Experientially, countries whose media sector are developed, whether adopting the laissez-faire system emphasizing on market competition or the public media system stressing democratic participation, acknowledge the media's responsibility for public interest, though the extent and method of implements and intervention differ. Constructively, media's public interest is the common aggregate formed by individual interest gaming and obliged to service public's common and shared interest.China's current media sector assumes the function of political voice, the responsibility of public service as public utility established by government and the fiduciary obligation of state-owned media assets. Therefore, principles of public interest of China's media sector should mainly think about three aspects: (1) universal service obligations; (2) right orientation of public opinion; (3) preservation and appreciation of state-owned capital.According to these principles of public interest, the dissertation analyzed the causation of public interest' loss through the interactive approach between micro media structure and macro system, which divided into three aspects: (1) Market mechanism itself cannot meet the entire public interest because individual rational behavior pursuing self-interest in the media market incline to meet the needs of whom maximizing media's income and make the supply of public goods with culture value insufficient; (2) Flaws embedded in market mechanism, such as market disseverance and administrative monopoly, increase the loss of efficiency and public interest; (3) Disfigurations of internal governance structure such as absence of owner and agent, illegibility of property rights and uncontrolled exploitation of self-interest spread out corruption and malpractice, which damage public interest.The analysis of media public interest's loss leads to the second question how to regulate media. To avoid faults in current media system and government control, the system should change into scientific regulation system towards public interest.Firstly, tamp the institutional foundation of media regulation, including compatibility of objectives, clarity of ownership, and order of market. Compatibility of objectives requires separate function of media from government to make media as the main body in the market, assisted with public service media, and launch classified regulations on different media by government. Clarity of ownership claims that different media should reform abided by different mode and some commercial media should introduce multi-ownership under the control of multi forms of rights, such as concessionary rights or limited partnership. Order of market requires break the administrative monopoly and market disseverance to take advantages of scale and scope of economy through sufficient competition.Secondly, establish external regulation system on macro-level. It should adjust the media system includes regulation legislation, organization, and function, regulate media separately by their classification and form institutional arrangements such as concessionary rights, competition order, disclosure of information. Rules of license amend the disadvantages of traditional regulation, which is the future direction of our media regulation.Finally, improve the internal governance of media on micro-level. Based on classified reforms of media industry and public service, it should enhance the internal governance according to different ownership structure, establish assessment and accountability mechanism, build internal control mechanism, and guide media to actualize effective self-discipline standard.