Unlocking China

Polis' Charlie Beckett is currently out in Shanghai and writes an interesting post on whether the new media business is changing the politics of China?

The media industry here appears to be booming but scratch under the surface and you realise that even the political authorities fear that there are too many obstacles to innovation. This is both a source of concern and hope

.he writes and continues

the journalism school students and staff talk about how they are being paid for by the state to create journalists who will go out to serve the state. They describe it as accepting 10% censorship in return for doing the rest of their jobs.

Can this work with new media? Well, the answer I am getting is that it doesn’t and that the state itself recognises that.