The buzzword in China’s state media industry now is 系统性变革 systemic transformation, a full year after the word was included in the Resolution of the 3rd Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on further deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization

We will improve the spokesperson system, develop content production and communication mechanisms as well as assessment systems for all forms of media, and promote a systemic transformation in mainstream media.

Why is a systemic transformation necessary? Because the situation is dire.

Listen to Guo Quanzhong, Professor at the School of Journalism & Communication, Minzu University of China and formerly Board Secretary and Director of the Investment Advisory Department at China Press and Publishing Media Group, and Deputy Director of the Strategic Operations Department at Nanfang Media Group in Guangdong Province.

Guo has launched a brisk WeChat series skewering the transformation of China’s mainstream outlets—state-owned newspapers and broadcasters under various tiers of government—which, for all their privileges in licences and fiscal subsidies, command scant loyalty. Meanwhile, platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin have become the country’s most popular and lucrative purveyors of information.

The culprit, he argues, is both institutional constraint and the internet’s steady gravitational pull. Audiences have migrated to platforms; the platforms, not news outlets, own the users’ loyalty. Advertising, in turn, follows distribution rather than reportage.

He also punctures a cherished newsroom conceit: content is a necessity, but news is not. News is a narrow, perishable slice of content, whereas entertainment, knowledge, and services are what he believes win wallets. Add overstaffed newsrooms, thin reporting, and low technical capacity, and the mainstream media’s business model collapses.

Below are selections from Guo’s series of short posts on his personal WeChat account, 全中看传媒.

—Yuxuan Jia

主流媒体系统性变革系列谈

Series on the Systemic Transformation of Mainstream Media

主流媒体系统性变革系列谈之7:用户连接失效

No. 7 The Failure of User Connection

The primary reason mainstream media have fallen into systemic difficulty is the failure of user connection. It is no exaggeration to say that mainstream media today lack a sizeable user base and have effectively been abandoned by their audiences.

1. Mainstream media have neither users nor audiences

The traditional audience base that mainstream media relied upon for survival has completely migrated to the internet, resulting in a near-total loss of traditional readership and viewership. In other words, the once-loyal groups of readers, viewers, and listeners have now fully