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This article provides a brief look at the impact of digital technology on countries in Asia in relation to the media industry. It then examines the implications of digital technology and the policing of media within the countries of Singapore and China, which have sought to connect to the global economy via its investment in digital technology yet still attempt to maintain some form of control of access to certain digital content on its citizenry. The article concludes with potential directions in which researchers can contribute to the ongoing debate about the impact of the ‘global’ on media and its impact on nation states.

The topic of this article and title of this journal are the same: ‘global media andChina’. Although ‘global’ suggests a single universal unit, adding ‘China’ necessarily creates a difference, especially in the context of the ‘Great Firewall’, which creates a well-defined boundary betweenglobal media and China. Should our title read ‘Global Media versusChina’, suggesting that the apparent universality of ‘global’ phenomena may be an illusion in a world marked by difference? We argue the contrary: that difference, produced along borderlines between different cultures – defined as those sociocultural groups whose boundaries require translationto cross, rather than simple transmission– is the productive energy that generates new knowledge (and thence, innovation) among large populations. We show that the peculiarity of current relations between global media and China is not evidence of exceptional ‘Chinese characteristics’, but of how culture deals with the globalisation of communication, and consciousness of that process among whole populations.

This study examines changes in the cultural policy in Hong Kong amid the transformations of political economy in the 1990s, following the handover in 1997, and under the administration of three Chief Executives (and their teams) up to 2015. When reviewing the literature on cultural policies in Hong Kong, this study examines the interaction the policies have with the political-economic development in Hong Kong (within the scope of this study) and subsequently explores changes in the principles of the policies. In other words, this study attempts to understand the conditions under which cultural policies were formulated in Hong Kong (the conditions of the production of local culture). The analytical framework of this study is based on two observations of the political and social changes occurring in Hong Kong (1997–2015): (1) changes in the government’s governance attitude since the handover in 1997, and (2) a series of economic blows Hong Kong has endured since 1998. Differing from the ‘descriptive literature’ defined by Schuster, this study understands that these changes are a result of the influence of a postcolonial state and neo-liberalism on public policy formulation. It is argued that the Hong Kong cultural policy framework has shifted from checks-and-balances towards centralised market orientation.

This article focuses on the regionalization of reality TV I am a Singerfrom China to Hong Kong. It explores the features of a successful flow of a reality singing contest with the concepts of mediascape, televisuality and cultural memory of pop music. The three research questions: what format structures of televisuality are being integrated in I am a Singer; how locals in China and Hong Kong interpret and appropriate I am a Singerto their experience of cultural identities and how trans-border televisual musicscape facilitates regionalization of television programme, are answered by textual analysis and in-depth interviews with 12 informants from China and Hong Kong. It is found that the focal programme is implemented with excessive performative style that holds audience’s attention, authentic music performance that resonates with post-1980s identity in China and Hong Kong, and dramatic reality contest that links to nationalism and Hong Kong people’s victimized identity. Identity politics is consumed by audience in China and Hong Kong as the dramatized excitement of the focal programme, which nurtures a group of loyal audience across China and Hong Kong.

Since the early 2000s, the Korean Wave (aka Hallyu) has influenced Greater China in enterprising and complex ways that diverge from the ways in which Hallyuhas impacted other markets. At the same time, since China joined the Word Trade Organization in 2001, art, culture and media production have been largely transformed from vehicles for state propaganda into new gateways for producing and showcasing popular commercial entertainment. Korean producers have played a significant role in this evolving transformation, albeit in a cultural space that the Government of Mainland China still uses and shapes as an important mouthpiece of the Party-state. While media headlines accentuate these progressive pathways, there is a dearth of scholarly commentary on the ways in which Korean film practitioners are contributing to this new era of cultural globalisation in China. To shed light on this emerging topic, the authors examine Chinese audiences’ reception of the Korean film Miss Granny(2014) and the most successful Korean–Chinese co-production to date, its Chinese remake 20 Once Again(2015). The article utilises data drawn from Douban, a major Chinese entertainment and popular culture social networking site, to assess the ‘inconspicuous’ impact of the cinematic component of the Korean Wave on Chinese cinema. In taking this approach, the authors seek to assess the importance of localized film content for Chinese audiences, as well as canvassing a range of hitherto unknown opinions about ‘Korean’ and ‘Chinese’ styles of storytelling.

The decoupling of content and distribution platform has changed television irrevocably. Potential opportunities promised by the integration of telecommunications, broadcast and Internet networks means television has become a strategic highland for relevant stakeholders including industry players and state regulators. In China, network convergence has been on the state agenda since the turn of the century, but has remained stubbornly hard to move forward. This article starts with a brief overview of the state policy development in relation to the three-network convergence. It then zooms in onto the case of over-the-top streaming as a microcosm of the convergence project by examining two critical moments in its development trajectory, highlighting a short-lived early experiment in 2005 and a more recent wave of solutions since 2010. It offers a contextualised analysis of market evolution and state regulatory approaches in this space as power negotiations play out in multiple dimensions including those between the state and market, between the central and local, and between sectorial interests. By doing so, this article reveals contestations, contradictions and challenges in the state-engineered convergence project.