Media Ecologies in Taiwan and China in the 1990s

Chapter 3 “Media Ecologies in Taiwan and China in the 90s” complements the socio-political contextualization by offering an account of the media scene in China and Taiwan in the 1990s. After a short introduction on the media-state relationship in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the bulk of the chapter focuses on developments in the Taiwanese media landscape. It discusses ownership structures and the ways the one-party state, ruled by the Nationalist Party (KMT), maintained a supervisory role from the late 1940s until the early 1990s, while also using the media for external propaganda services. The chapter also outlines the role of the media in the Taiwanese democratization process and sketches the situational context in which media workers found themselves. It is based on both a review of existing literature and interviews with newspaper editors.