We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Fashion and lifestyle magazines emerged in post-Maoist China in the context of economic reform and opening to the outside world, which had far-reaching effects not only in the economical, but also the social and cultural spheres. They were also the outcome of an official initiative that began in the late 1980s and gained impetus during the 1990s, aimed at reducing state funding and marketization of the media. Chinese bestselling fashion magazines are not subsidized by the state, and their success is built upon effective marketing strategies. They present their target readership – the newly affluent middle class – with images of modernity and world fashion.
The 1990s also saw the emergence of cultural studies in China. Chinese scholars enthusiastically took up research into new local cultural phenomena, especially those perceived as cultural imports from the broadly understood West, as they offered an opportunity for discussions on globalization and Western cultural imperialism. Fashion magazines, especially Chinese editions of well-known Western magazines, became a popular subject of analysis conducted within the trendy methodological framework of critical studies. As such, they were also frequent targets of more or less harsh criticism for promoting Western consumerism, transforming women into objects of the male gaze and indiscriminate copying of Western models (Zhang, 2002; Guo, 2003; Meng, 2004; Liu & Qi, 2006, and others).
The present book is the outcome of a project initiated by the Jagiellonian University Institute of Middle and Far Eastern Studies, and the Centre for Chinese Language and Culture “Confucius Institute in Krakow”. Both the curriculum and the research interests of the academic staff at the Institute of Middle and Far Eastern Studies focus on modern and contemporary Asia in its cultural, economic, political and social aspects. Several scholars from its Chinese section, whose research and publication topics concern or are related to mass media in China, joined forces with the Confucius Institute, whose mission is promoting Chinese language and culture, and embarked on the realization of the above-mentioned project. The project arose from a desire to supplement the research into contemporary China already conducted in Poland with a perspective that is very significant, but has hitherto been insufficiently represented – that of the media. Its aim was to take the first steps towards the creation in Poland of an academic environment for discussions concerning issues related to mass media in China and the various images of China depicted in the media of other countries.
In his book that sums up the most recent achievements of anthropology (2004, pp. 404-405), M. Herzfeld argues that mass media occupy an important place in the contemporary world.
Mass media play a significant role in the production and reproduction of identities and lifestyles, values and world-views. They also convey information about the world we live in, as they reflect elements of the broader context within which they come into being. This volume, the first on this topic to be published in Poland, brings together eleven essays that offer a complex approach to both media in the PRC and the way China and the Chinese are presented in the media of other countries. Individual chapters discuss images constructed, persuasive techniques employed, political undertakings and official stances reflected, as well as popular feeling expressed in the Chinese official and popular press, information websites, Internet forums, mainstream Western press, Polish and Italian media, Zambian Internet forums, and Indonesian cinema. Media in China, China in the Media: Processes, Strategies, Images, Identities will be stimulating reading for students and scholars of media and mass communication, political studies, cultural and gender studies, interested in the following topics: the Chinese media discourse, transparency as to government activities, Chinese nationalism, the Chinese diaspora, Sino-African relations.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.