Making control work: recalibration in Chinese media governance across leadership periods

This article examines how media governance in China evolves across successive leadership periods without institutional rupture. Existing studies often interpret change through episodic control tactics or cycles of political tightening and loosening, which offer limited insight into how governance mechanisms are reworked over time. The article introduces recalibration as an analytical heuristic to explain how inherited governance mechanisms are selectively adjusted to maintain workable political authority under shifting conditions. Drawing on qualitative analysis of authoritative Party speeches and media-related regulatory documents from Mao to Xi, the study identifies three forms of recalibration in Chinese media governance: ideological recalibration through Party representative discourse and the delineation of permissible speech; functional recalibration through ‘main melody’ narrative production and coordinated media oversight; and implementation recalibration through infrastructural delegation. These findings provide an institutional explanation for the evolution of China's media control practices and offer analytical reference points for understanding future governance adjustments.