February 2012
From a Field Research on Satellite Broadcasts for Rural Areas
Ken-ichi Yamada
A policy to spread the direct to home (DTH) service of satellite broadcasts in farming villages is well underway in China. With its vast national land, it has been difficult for China to deliver TV and radio broadcasts via ground wave to every corner of the nation. In urban areas, cable television was introduced in the 1990, and the number of the users who can enjoy the services on dozens of channels has reached 187.3 million as of the end of 2010. Meanwhile, it has been expected that satellite broadcasting service would spread in rural farming villages, where cable TV becomes expensive due to the low population density. However, out of concern for a negative impact on the Chinese Communist Party’s governance, DTH has been in principle prohibited, regardless of urban or rural areas. Therefore, most parts of farming areas had only a few viewable channels at most, with poor image quality. Nevertheless, the technological advancement of restricting access to foreign channels prompted the Chinese government to spread the DTH service to rural areas on a full scale in 2011. This article presents the current status of DTH and examines the aims of the government which is working on further dissemination of the service as well as its impact on the farming villages, based on the field research the author conducted in October 2011.
China started satellite transmission of TV programs in 1980s, but the spread of DTH was impeded by an “incident,” which occurred in 1993 when News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch took over STAR TV, a satellite broadcaster in Hong Kong, and stated in his speech in London that satellite broadcasts will jeopardize all authoritarian governments of the world. In response, Beijing took a harsher line and implemented a regulation on the ground receiver of satellite broadcasts, and in principle prohibited individuals from installing DTH utilities and receiving satellite broadcasts. Still, satellite broadcasting was essential to provide multi-channel services to the vast farming areas. Hence, the Chinese government developed more advanced technology to prevent the reception of foreign channels and changed its policy in 2008 when the government launched its own DTH satellite. Since then Beijing has been promoting the DTH service. Initially, as the focused was on poor areas, the government shouldered all the expenses and was able to spread the service to approximate 10 million households, but the remaining 200 million households in farming villages had to face a new system, in which the beneficiaries-pay principle was introduced and about 550-RMB (approx. 6,600-yen) equipment-set (antenna, set-top-box, etc.) were sold to users for 310 RMB (approx. 3,700 yen) in test areas. Among farmers in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region who purchased DTH equipment, some actually said they were happy about the increased number of channels and better image quality. The Chinese government regards this project as a social welfare work for rural areas, but their hided intention is to strengthen the “propaganda” for Communist Party policies in these areas. As audience ratings of China Central Television (CCTV), which is loyal to the intention of the authorities, are dropping in the urban areas, the party is trying to push its propaganda more effectively by disseminating DTH, of which available channels are mostly CCTV’s. However, the reality is that even in rural villages people want to watch programs broadcast by provincial TV stations, which makes more entertainment-oriented shows, and there is a question about whether DTH will be spread, as the government wishes, to all the 200 million households in farming villages by 2015 with the current channel-structure. Furthermore, in the first place, the function of multi-channel broadcasting is to encourage diversification of viewers’ values. Therefore, it is highly probable that the spread of DTH may lead to further hollowing out of party propaganda, in contradiction to the government intention.