Between the Lines

Outside China, the country’s media landscape is often depicted as a monolithic system, where journalists are subject to tight control and little room exists for perspectives that diverge from the official line. While the political and professional environment in which Chinese journalists operate remains challenging, it is far from static. This volume examines the dynamic interplay between journalistic genres, media outlet characteristics, and discourse variability in contemporary Chinese journalism, exploring how professional commentators navigate the boundaries between official narratives and self-expression. Focusing on the genre of opinion articles, the analysis draws on case studies spanning ten years to assess degrees of discursive flexibility in both institutional and commercial outlets. Though acknowledging growing restrictions under Xi Jinping’s leadership, this qualitative research suggests that space for improvised, nuanced expression persists—albeit in limited and context-specific ways. Combining genre analysis with tools from Critical Discourse Analysis and corpus-assisted methods, the book offers an empirically grounded contribution to Chinese media studies and calls for continuing, human-informed linguistic engagement in this evolving field.

Emma Lupano is Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Cagliari. Previously, she worked at the University of Milan, at Peking University and at the China Media Project of the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests lie in China’s contemporary culture and society, the relation between the institutional and the media discourses in China, and genres and professional practice in Chinese journalism. In an earlier professional life, she was a reporter for national and international news organisations, including a short period as a visiting reporter at the People’s Daily in Beijing (2009).