The Rise of Chinese “Media Capitals”

Shujen Wang
Emerson University

Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV, by Michael Curtin. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 2007

Offering an alternative account of global media markets and asking important questions about the dynamics between location and history, in this volume, Curtin remaps those forces of globalization that shaped the development of the Chinese (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Mainland China) media industry. Flowing, riveting, compelling, and substantial, Curtin’s book is supported by impressive empirical fieldwork and sophisticated theoretical arguments. Combining institutional, policy, cultural, and economic analysis, Curtin offers his readers an in-depth view of the rise of one of the most fascinating and fast-growing media industries in the world.

Central to Curtin’s argument is the concept of media capital. Media capitals, Curtin explains, operate according to “(1) a logic of accumulation, (2) trajectories of creative migration, and (3) forces of sociocultural variation” (p.10). In this theoretical framework and in the space of twelve solid chapters/case studies (plus an excellent introduction chapter and a thoughtful and extensive conclusion chapter), Curtin presents Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Beijing, and Shanghai as media capitals at various levels of development. Through captivating stories and empirical accounts, Curtin shows the readers the inextricable trajectories through which these media capitals traveled to arrive at their current positions.

Commenting on how both media imperialism and some schools of the study of globalization are inadequate in accounting for the increasingly complex developments of globalization, Curtin provides new perspectives in the introductory chapter. His emphasis on location (and the intersection between location and history) is especially significant. As he points out, “what globalization theorists have failed to produce… is a persuasive account of the most significant forces driving these processes and a clear explanation of why some places become centers of cultural production and therefore tend to be more influential in shaping the emerging global system” (p.9). To that end, his take on media capital and the emphasis on location could not have been more timely and urgent in helping us understand these complicated and dynamic processes.

By comparing the growth of the Shaw brothers with that of early Hollywood, in Chapter One (aptly entitled “Pan-Chinese Studio System, Capitalist Paternalism”) Curtin charts the Shaws’ early attention to exhibition and their reliance on international operations (due to the lack of a large and stable domestic market) to be successful. Weaving effortlessly through stories of the remarkable growth and expansion of Shaw Brothers, Curtin presents us with a unique examination of Hong Kong as a media capital in its early development. From Shanghai to Singapore, from Singapore to other Southeast Asian markets, and finally from Southeast Asia to Hong Kong, the Shaw Brothers pursued ethnic Chinese customers as a way to ensure a stable and growing market. They took advantage of what these port cities could offer in terms of the accumulation and circulation of goods, currencies, ideas, and cultures.

In Chapter Two, “Independent Studios and the Golden Age of Hong Kong Cinema,” Curtin discusses the cases of Golden Harvest and Cinema City, two very different companies that ushered in a new era of the Hong Kong film industry in the 1970s with very different but equally creative strategies. Golden Harvest focused on flexible production, a stable distribution and exhibition infrastructure, and a Hollywood connection, while Cinema City emphasized local identities to secure the local market and relied on Taiwan presales for continued funding of productions.

One of Curtin’s contributions in this volume and elsewhere is his writing on Taiwan. While Hong Kong can be thought of as a capital of Chinese media production, Taiwan is no doubt the largest single market for media products from Hong Kong, yet Taiwan’s crucial role in shaping regional entertainment production and distribution is often neglected in scholarly writing. In Chapters Three, “Hyperproduction Erodes Overseas Circulation,” and Four, “Hollywood Takes Charge in Taiwan,” Curtin offers a lucid analysis of the Taiwanese market and how it is linked to the development of the Hong Kong film industry and that of the Hollywood majors. The most lucrative market for Hong Kong films, Taiwan’s strong video and cable industries in the 1990s further increased the demand for Hong Kong productions. Such demand for, and investment in, Hong Kong films eventually started a cycle of hyperproduction of low-quality films that contributed to the decline of the Hong Kong film industry and Taiwan’s own film industry.

Drawing from extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Hollywood majors’ Taiwan distribution heads, in Chapter Four Curtin details Hollywood’s strategy in Taiwan, one of the top ten markets in the world for Hollywood movies. When most critics and filmmakers blame the lifting of import quota for Hollywood films for the fall of the local film industry, Curtin points out that the decline occurred long before the quota was lifted. The real impact of the quota lift resides instead in the realm of exhibition, resulting in the growth and expansion of multiplexes built by such transnational conglomerates as Warner Brothers and the Australian based Village Roadshow.

With film industry in decline, Hong Kong television market became increasingly appealing. The development in broadband and satellite communication technologies in the 1990s and the change in government regulation to encourage broadband communication made the television market a hot property. In Chapter Five, “The Globalization of Hong Kong Television,” Curtin provides a fascinating look at television development in Hong Kong, and contrasts the different routes Star TV and TVB embarked on to remain competitive in an increasingly global market. Curtin’s smart analysis not only shows the challenges Li Ka-shing’s Star TV faced, but also the lessons Li learned about the importance of content production and the logic of media capital operations. The two cases also highlight the highly dynamic relationship between hardware/infrastructure and software/content development.

What shapes the development of Hong Kong terrestrial and cable television development is very different from that in Taiwan. In Chapters Six “Strange Bedfellows in Cross-Strait Drama Production” and Seven “Market Niches and Expanding Aspirations in Taiwan” Curtin presents a historical, cultural, and policy review of the developments of television in Taiwan. While the terrestrial television development is marked by years of political censorship and public/party ownership, which led to media oligopoly, the cable television development has been chaotic. The fact that Taiwan enjoys one of the highest cable penetration rates (82%) in the world also indicates a market that invites attention and competition.

A very different market from Hong Kong and Taiwan in ethnic composition and political system, Singapore offers an interesting scenario in the study of Chinese language media industries. In Chapter Eight, “Singapore: From State Paternalism to Regional Media Hub,” Curtin introduces a different kind of challenge that Singaporean television stations faced in regional co-production. Contrary to popular belief, cultural proximity may not enhance audience reception. In the case of Singapore (and Taiwan to a lesser extent) cultural proximity has in fact had the opposite effect in “inviting critical scrutiny from viewers” (p.190).

Equally challenging is pan-continent satellite television’s effort to survive in a highly competitive and unstable regional/global satellite television environment. The many trials and errors Star TV made, for example, to reterritorialize global or regional television content for local reception prove to be one of the most interesting cases in the study of satellite television. In Chapter Nine “Reterritorializing Star TV in the PRC” Curtin examines global conglomerates’ interest in a pan-Asian satellite television operation and the many unforeseen obstacles they must overcome to remain viable. News Corp’s purchase of Star TV (for US$870 million), China’s ban of private ownership of satellite dishes and promotion of cheap cable service as a counter-strategy, the challenge posed by different time zones to advertising clients, and local programmers’ and global conglomerates’ reluctance to sell contents to Star for fear of competition are some of the hard lessons Star learned in that process. Star was forced to rethink the “pan-Chinese” and “pan-Asian” strategy that seemed to be so appealing, and to take into consideration different socio-politico-cultural variations in its attempts to revamp its localization strategies.

In Chapter Ten, “Global Satellites Pursuing Local Audiences and Panregional Efficiencies,” Curtin continues with global satellites’ Asian strategy in localizing and reterritorializing operational and content strategies. Curtin again makes an excellent observation that while satellites have the abilities to surmount obstacles that confront media conglomerates with global ambition, “the forces of sociocultural variation continue to exert powerful constraints on media institutions with global or even regional ambitions” (p.227).

Returning to Singapore and focusing on its broadband development, in Chapter Eleven “The Promise of Broadband and the Problem of Content” Curtin shows technology or capital alone does not do the trick. Without content or creative personality, “even the most powerful media cartel seems destined to falter” (p.244).

In Chapter Twelve, “From Movies to Multimedia: Connecting Infrastructure and Content,” Curtin brings the discussion back to the Hong Kong film industry, since “Hong Kong movies represent a point of strategic convergence among the increasingly interconnected media industries” (p.245). The new strategies discussed in the chapter attest to a new era in which one needs to rethink distribution, exhibition, and production.

As Curtin reminds us in his conclusion chapter, “Structural Adjustment and the Future of Chinese Media,” his aim in writing this book is to urge his readers to “think spatially” and to ask “the question of location” (p.269). By doing so, Curtin reconstructs the complex and intersecting networks that shaped the development of these media capitals at various levels of media agglomeration. By emphasizing the geographically relational characteristics of these media capitals, Curtin brings our attention to the political, cultural, institutional, technological frameworks that help establish the “spatial integrity of media circulation systems and to define the relations among locales and the directions of flow” (p.286). One of the most solid and extensive studies of this particular region of media developments, Curtin’s book has made, and will no doubt continue to make, a vital contribution to the fields of Chinese media studies and globalization.