o full swing until after 1990. China's first TV ad, more of an announcement than an ad, made its debut in Shanghai on January 28, 1979 (Guo, 1993). The ad for a herbal wine lasted about one minute and 35 seconds, too long by the Western norm, but it represents the start of China's TV ad industry. Meanwhile, journalism education also expanded rapidly (Polumbaum, 1990) in the early 1980s to meet the increasing demand of media development and to accelerate information flow, badly needed for the economic reforms. The number of journalism teachers and undergraduate students increased almost four times from 1980 to 1984 while the number of graduate students remained the same (Guo, 1993). What's more, China started five international journalism programs 1983 which integrate English language training into journalism education. The six-year programs exposed students to a wide variety of Western journalism concepts under their English speaking journalism professors. These open-minded students have now constituted a major reform force to push forward media development in China. Second Phase (1985-86) Following the campaign against "spiritual pollution" in 1984, Chinese media were silenced for a while, especially after then-Party General Secretary HU Yaobang’s speech in 1985, which emphasized the media role as the organs of the government (Polumbaum, 1990). However, it seemed that the party leadership only paid lip service as it still tolerated liberal ideas in media practices such as independent editorials. Meanwhile, media practitioners asked for “a free hand” in the media content, which was supported by the Publicity Department (Polumbuam, 1990), the Chinese counterpart of U.S. Information Agency. One major trend toward liberalization in this phase was a formal recognition of the entertainment function of media in the nation’s Seventh Five-Year Plan. The focus on entertainment coincided with the rapid development of television, a powerful medium of entertainment. In fact, television development and the focus on entertainment reinforced each other in their mutual growth during this phase. Since 1985, entertainment has become an inseparable part of most Chinese TV stations. TV entertainment programs usually include music, opera, literature, variety shows, ballad singing, acrobatic shows as well as TV dramas. For Shanghai Television Station, entertainment programs comprised over 60% of all air time in 1986 (Guo, 1993). Of the entertainment fare, TV drama is the most popular. After 1983, TV dramas, produced and aired, saw an exponential speed. Foreign TV dramas also began to appear on Chinese screens. In 1986, the Chinese dubbed Walt Disney cartoon series “Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck” became a national favorite as soon as it was broadcast over the Central China Television Station (CCTV). In fact, foreign TV dramas were generally preferred as there were few high-quality domestic TV series during this phase. In a national survey by CCTV in 1987, 72 percent of the respondents favored foreign dramas (Yu, 1992). In 1983, as the nation decided to build a nationwide television system by the end of this century, state expenditures on television began to increase. In 1985, the expenditure jumped to 1,780 million yuan (over $210 million) as compared with 670 million yuan ($83 million) in 1980 (Lee, 1994). The pouring financial resources led to rapid television development in this phase. The number of TV stations in 1986 was almost six times that in 1983 while TV set ownership per 100 households rose from 88 % in1983 to 103% in 1986 and the TV audience size expanded from 400 million in 1983 to 580 million in 1986(Yu, 1990). Third Phase (1987-90) This phase, studied meticulously in the Western world, saw the most dramatic social changes in China, which resulted from the media development itself. While maintaining the liberalizing trends in the first two phases, China's media system in this phase gained greater momentum, trying to obtain freedom of press and political independence rather than just petitioning for them in the previous two phases. Action for independence and democracy became a reality rather than just lip service. World Economic Herald, started in Shanghai and banned in 1989, was considered as a pioneer in the West in this process of "peaceful evolution." There also appeared Western-minded opinion leaders like Fang Lizhi and Qin Benli who were encouraged by then-Premier Zhao Ziyang’s work report in1987 that did not mention the media’s role as an official mouthpiece (Polumbaum, 1990). The results reflected in journalistic operations were a more diversified style of news reporting and a greater openness about information. Bad news and critical reports (negative reports), seldom seen since 1957, began to re-appear in the media (Polumbuam, 1990). In this period, the negative reports has always comprised more than 10 % of the total number of news stories for some major newspapers such as People’s Daily, Jiefang Daily, Wenhui Daily and China Daily, China’s only national English-language newspaper (Guo, 1993). The increase of the negative reports was taken as a sign on the media side to push for more reforms in the government work and to ask for more freedom and independence in their media practice, which, to some degree, led to the massive student’s demonstration in 1989. Besides, media development in this phase also was motivated by the influx of external influences in the form of "cultural imperialism" (Stevenson, 1994). Foreign broadcasts from the Voice of America (VOA) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) enjoyed much popularity among Chinese audiences and exercised great influence on them, which the Chinese government accused of trying to undermine the stability in China through propaganda (Guo, 1993). Major influences also came from the inflow of official imported foreign media culture such as movies, soap operas, foreign news and even talks shows and sit-coms (Chan, 1

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