Media Bias in China

Bei Qin, David Strömberg and Yanhui Wu

American Economic Review, 2018, vol. 108, issue 9, 2442-76

Abstract: This paper examines whether and how market competition affected the political bias of government-owned newspapers in China from 1981 to 2011. We measure media bias based on coverage of government mouthpiece content (propaganda) relative to commercial content. We first find that a reform that forced newspaper exits (reduced competition) affected media bias by increasing product specialization, with some papers focusing on propaganda and others on commercial content. Second, lower-level governments produce less-biased content and launch commercial newspapers earlier, eroding higher-level governments' political goals. Third, bottom-up competition intensifies the politico-economic tradeoff, leading to product proliferation and less audience exposure to propaganda.

JEL-codes: D72 L31 L82 O14 O17 P26 P31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170947
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

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