one-child-one-family in China) *Job assignment (referring to the national policy of assigning jobs to the college graduates instead of their going for job interviews in the job market) *Iron rice bowl (life-long tenure system of employment in China) *Junior college (the two or three year higher educational institutions which provide students with specific working skills instead of university education) *Township enterprises (enterprises owned by the city or town governments) *Orderly competition (competition with orders instead of chaos) *Comrade Deng Xiaoping *Non-state-owned firms (firms not owned by the state) *High-risk” enterprises (enterprises which face problems in operations) *Land-use” right (to a foreign investor, meaning the right to use land) *laid-off” employees (unemployed) In addition, China Daily also uses occasional abbreviations in its coverage. However, almost all of the abbreviations are used only when referred to for the second or third time. For the first time, all the names appear in full, particularly organization names, such as BOC for Bank of China, CPPCC for Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, IMF for International Monetary Fund, KMT for Kuomingtang, NAEP for National Agency for Environment Protection, NPC for National People’s Congress, PLA for People’s Liberation Army, SDPC for State Development Planning Commission, SEC for State Education Commission, SEZ for Special Economic Zone, SSB for State Statistics Bureau. 2. News Selection For the selection part, the two writers have divided all the selected samples into eight categories including economy, politics, international relations, science & technology, culture, laws etc. and calculated the total number of words in each story as a measurement of the specific editorial weight devoted to each story. As we can see from Table 12, all the stories are concerned with China instead of international community. The stories on China’s economy take up 34.3% of the total with 12 stories out of 35, and of course carrying the largest wording weight (36.9%). This can be interpreted as a reflection of China’s economic construction process since it first adopted the policy of “reform and opening up to the outside world” in 1978. The ratio of stories of various reforms is also significant, with five stories out of 35, coming up to a percentage of 14.3%. of the total 35 stories and the words that China Daily employs to report these reforms hit 2,436, with a percentage of 16.4 of the total words. These reform stories deal with the reforms on various aspects as small enterprises, social security, science & technology system, education system, and price. Coverage on politics, international relations as well as society also takes much weight in the news selection of China Daily, five stories each for politics, international relations and society and gripping 14.3% each of the total. The wording weight that China Daily spends on each of the above three classes are over 10% of the total words of reporting. Table 12 News Selection of China Daily (1981-1999) CategoryPassagePercentageWords for Each StoryWording PercentageEconomy1234.35,29736.9Society514.32,34616.4Politics514.32,02814.1Int’l Relations514.31,67911.8Science & Technology38.51,1688.2Culture25.77945.5Laws25.76064.2Religion12.94202.9Total3510014,338100*Stories on reforms 514.32,34616.4Although no article on military is found in the samples, the writers still consider that news selection of China Daily is varied and comprehensive enough for a daily newspaper. To some degree, an English newspaper like China Daily may be freer in their selection of news stories, simply because they are published in English (Guo, 1999: 58). Three English-Language Media in China: Assessment 1. Two Development Patterns As is mentioned above, before 1981, China had only one radio station and a couple of magazines for its international communication. However, in the past 20 years, all the media in China have been booming, including the English-language media (Guo, 1999). In the past 20 years, the growth of the English-language media has followed two patterns. Firstly, as compared with the Chinese media, the development of the English media has relatively been stable and not affected much by the politics in China, mainly because (1) they are theoretically targeting overseas or foreign audience; (2) their influence may be still limited, though inseparable; (3) control over media content may be weakened via the use of English due to the insufficient English ability of the government administrators. Secondly, the growth of the English-language media has followed a centralization pattern in the 1980s and with a tendency towards decentralization since the late 1980s. China Radio International with a daily broadcast of 192 hours, China Daily with a circulation of 300,000 copies and CCTV-4 with 17-hours broadcast daily and the six major English websites have surely demonstrated the centralization pattern (Guo, 1999). However, since the late 1980s, regional centers such as Shanghai and Guangdong are also launching their own English media. Though they may not be as professional as the central or national English media, regional English media are certainly playing a role that can not be replaced by the central media in such a big country like China (Zhang Ciyun, editor-in-chief of Shanghai Daily, personal communication, 2001). Besides, like the central English media, the emergence of English-language media at regional centers have also followed a development sequence of radio-newspaper-television-internet, as each new media became mature and began to get involved in international communication. Like in Shanghai and Guangdong, the English media all started with radio, Shanghai Calling in Shanghai and Radio Guangdong in Guangzhou, and then gradually switched to print media. However, recent growth of the English-media at the regional level tends to focus on newspapers (Shanghai Daily in S

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