Complex Roles of Chinese Media: Regional Variation of Party Newspaper?s Attitudes towards Government Agencies

In China, Party newspapers, newspapers that are directly run by the various levels of Party agencies, constitute the mainstream media to publish political news about the government and the Party. They are supposed to play the supervising role to monitor the government’s performance. However, the effectiveness of such supervising role depends on the relative power, i.e. the hierarchical distance between the newspaper and the targeted government or Party agency. Party newspapers are more critical to the subordinate level of government agencies than the ones with the same or higher level. A comparative content analysis on party newspapers from two cities, Beijing and Guangzhou, confirms that the city-level party newspapers are more critical to their subordinate districts and townships, while more gentle on the city-level government agencies. However, we also discover that Guangzhou Daily casts more criticism onto city-level officials than Beijing Daily does, in that Guangzhou has a more competitive and civic-engaging media environment. This result shows that the regime?s expectation of the media?s role is affected by local social conditions.