Regional soft power/creative industries competitionindustry entrepreneurs of the potential for backlash in the target nations if the Korean Wave was
promoted too zealously as a “national” cultural export:
Proposals for dismantling the “barriers to maintaining the Korean Wave” included
developing a stronger strategy for continuous distribution through larger scale produc-
tion, regulation of content quality, and delinking the Korean Wave from nationalistic fervor.
(2005, 160, emphasis added)Given the unequal flow of pop culture into its territory, China was unwilling to sit idly by
while its media space was inundated by imports from Korea, Japan, and other nations, espe-
cially the United States. Soft power had become a preoccupation with not only the party-state
leaders but also with intellectuals and the Chinese media even before the communist party-state
public affirmation by both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao of the need to “raise
our nation’s cultural soft power” during the 17th Communist Party Congress in 2007. This
ambition and desire was guided by the realization that acquiring soft power is a necessary com-
plement to the country’s newly acquired hard economic and military power—all are required
to reinforce China’s claim to its future as a global power. Within this ambition is the “notable
Chinese discontent about losing competitiveness in the international trade of cultural products”
(Li 2008, 7), including media products, fast food, and fashion; China suffers from a general
“deficit” in cultural trade.
China has an additional motivation to export its media culture products to other countries in
the region. China sees itself as the birthplace of an East Asian civilization and views its traditional
culture as having influenced the rest of East Asia for millennia. Traditional Chinese culture is
thus seen as a soft power resource for the region. This assertion has been disrupted by what is
seen by many Chinese to be audacious cultural claims made by some Korean cultural producers.
For example, in the Korean drama Daejanggeum, acupuncture was portrayed as a Korean indige-
nous practice. Chinese netizens have also been incensed by UNESCO acceding to the Korean
claim that the “rice dumpling festival” is a Korean cultural heritage. For the Chinese the festival,
known as Duanwu Festival (端午节), commemorates the self-sacrifice of a loyal official, Qu Yuan
(屈原). The Chinese feel the necessity to “rectify” the Korean misrepresentations (Xu 2010) and
reestablish their place as custodians of traditional Chinese culture, which they view as having
been historically the core of the larger East Asian traditional culture, and thereby “recentralize”
this larger culture in China.
Since the marketization of its economy in 1978, the media sector in China has been under-
going radical structural transformation. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of the
changes, nor is it necessary for the purpose at hand. Broadly stated, the hitherto state-controlled
media industry has been “commercialized.” To regulate the political content of media products,
ownership remains with the state, but each media organization has to generate its operating
revenue from marketing its products. The consequences have been profound: the emergence of
a media market where revenue is dependent on profit from products and advertisements; the
rise of an advertisement industry with private agencies and production houses; and, after joining
the World Trade Organization in 2001, the arrival of foreign capital for joint productions with
state media companies.
With specific reference to television, the number of stations expanded from a mere 32 in
1975 to 202 in 1985 and 980 in 2000, with a corresponding expansion in the number of relay
stations, from 12,159 in 1985 to 42,830 in 2000 (Chang 2002, 11), ultimately reaching almost
90 percent of the more than 1.3 billion population. Along with other components of the media
industry, television transitioned from being an instrument of political propaganda to one that