PRC's digital media amid the trade war with the United States: Conditions within the country and prospects for expansion

The article aims to highlight some of the features of Chinese information policy and state regulation in order to survey the current state of Chinese media theory within the country. In the sphere of China's foreign relations, the aim was to find evidence that, under conditions of economic pressure, China is moving from a policy of “soft power” towards its partner countries to the practice of building direct economic and infrastructural dependence. The theoretical part of the article is mainly based on the materials of the Chinese Tsinghua Institute. When studying the situation abroad, data from the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy and similar think-tanks in North America were used. According to the current Chinese media theory, all information sources inside the country make up three major groups with more than six subdivisions inside each group. Another point of Chinese media theory, which includes the “six forces” concept, brings much more controversy. According to it, “government” and “party force” are different actors while “capital force” has only limited influence over media content. This concept may be disputed by example of “Southern Model”, when one of the Chinese provinces used a lot of autonomy in its broadcasting policy. The autonomy came to an end, when the state-owned company SMC gained control over the province's broadcasting in 2007. This is one of the examples of how party, state and capital forces' acts combined and merged into one. Correlation analysis shows the interdependence between capital and state forces within the country. The article examines activities of Chinese media, government-organized non-governmental organizations (GONGO), and communications corporations abroad. According to open-source data, the hugest economic intervention in media markets of developing countries made by China so far is united under the Digital Silk Road initiative. During the trade war, many Chinese companies, like Huawei, lost their western customers and markets access. By maintaining Chinese media market shut for foreign capital and by expanding own communication network beyond borders through the web of GONGO and favored contracts, Beijing gains an advantage in the ongoing trade war. Such impermanence shows the incompleteness of media theory in China. While being recent, it struggles to describe objective reality without notion that in highly monopolized and regulated spheres, like Chinese media market, the forces of national capital and government may act on behalf of each other. China, despite the lack of a sophisticated theoretical basis, gains control over the media policy in developing countries. The Chinese-built communication infrastructure, which allows controlling internet and mobile media, becomes fundamental for countries in Africa, South-East and Central Asia. Such a situation may lead these countries to fall into the Chinese sphere of influence.

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