The System Selection In Industrialization Process Of China's Newspaper

The argumentation that the regulation and transformation of China's newspaper industry system provide driving force for its survival and development has been demonstrated clearly in its development history. Quite different from other grand narrative from the macroscopical perspective, the paper focuses on the microcosmic: the system selection of newspaper industry, trying to explore the dynamic mechanism of the system selection of Chinese newspaper industry and to answer the following questions: Why is this set of industry system chosen for China's newspaper industry? Is it the only one option for the industrialization of China's newspaper? If we take each of the new establishments of system as a selection, then by whom are these system selections made? These questions inspired this study.From the perspective of game theory, this study investigates into the system selection of newspaper industry, aiming to keep an eye on the game players in these selections. The system selection of newspaper industry is a behavior of repeated games, during which all participants try to maximize their benefits. Through investigating into the behaviors of the four participants in China's newspaper industrialization, i.e. government, media, capital and audience, this study explores China's particular newspaper industry system selection, and tries to predict and give prospect to the future selection pattern. Furthermore, the ideal type of newspaper system selection is raised in the paper, with the audience as a subject of newspaper system selection, to pursuit the aim of healthy development of Chinese newspaper industry.Based on the purpose and thinking, this paper is divided into six parts in the light of time of system transformation:Part 1: Introduction. It illustrates the motivation, perspective, categories, and innovative idea of present study; defines such basic concepts as system, system selection, game and newspaper industry that are involved; and with more length of article, reviews, orders and evaluates the literature relating with media industry system, and thus gives the academic orientation for present study.Part 2: Theoretical construction of China's newspaper industry system selection. The development of Chinese newspaper industry has different phases, each phase with different theme, and generally witnessed the common road of pilot experiment, observation, rational judgment and finally the formal system work out through which the gaming is being in the whole process. The complicated relation among the government, media organization, capital and audience as the subjects of gaming decides the process of Chinese newspaper industry. Part 3: One-player game: newspaper industry system selection of total society. This chapter describes the system selection behavior of China's newspaper industry from 1949 to 1978, whose exterior circumstance carried on the characteristics of total society. This total society was lack in actual gaming strategies and the system decision-making was made unilaterally by the government, although government and newspaper were the two gaming subjects. Therefore, we call it One-player game. What was formed was not industry system in real sense, but an expediential one for newspaper to survive.Part 4: Two-player game: system selection of China's newspaper industry after the implementation of reform and opening-up policy. The development of market provides the opportunity and possibility for Chinese newspaper to select new system. Newspaper became the initiator of system selection after the concept development being empowered with different meanings by the newspaper and government respectively. Newspaper tries to make the gaming advantageous with strategies of the imbalance of information to compensate the imbalance of power in the gaming with government. When the government and newspaper take the strategies of pursuing both the social and economic benefits, the innovation of Chinese newspaper industry follows the route of from the low-level-newspaper to high-level-newspaper, from the periphery to the core of the newspaper system. Since 1992, the government dominates the two-player game; the establishing of news groups enhances the political appeals of Chinese government.Part 5: Three-player game: system selection of China's newspaper industry and WTO. The entry of WTO indicates the large scale of system transplantation, thus the transformation of government and the opening-up of media industry is unavoidance. The permission of entry of capitals forms the three-player game. Since 2003, separation and system transformation become the theme of newspaper selection. In the perspective of three-play game, separation and system transformation leads to the loss of national capital, the damage to the media intelligent capital, the break of capital industry chain, thus does harm to the development of Chinese newspaper. After this phase of competition, trans-regional newspaper arises; however the problems of non-party newspaper and the region belonging of newspaper lead to the tightening of trans-regional newspaper, indicating the long road for Chinese newspaper to fulfill the goal of industrialization.Part 6: Four-player game: the ideal model of newspaper industry system selection. For quite a long time, the audience, the direct benefited of newspaper system, have been neglected in system selection. This does not count fair to them. Together with the development of China's civil society, the gradually emphasized audience is to become significant subject with driving force for profound transformation. Only by gaming among the four players, can China's newspaper industry system gain progress in proper direction. Non profit organization is the main way for the audience to exert the right to participate in system selectionIt is concluded in present study that, gaming behavior, which is the compulsory stage of optimizing decision-making, is to continue in China's newspaper industry selection for long; the ideal model of four-player game leads the trend of future development of newspaper industry; the precondition of positive development of China's newspaper industry system is the gradual weakening of government rights as well as the gradual strengthening of the other three's.