China week on the BBC: the media making knowledge and writing history

Abstract

In March of 2005, the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a special week of programming about China in its news and current affairs services on television and radio called “China Week”. This paper argues that the BBC was engaged in a specific task of producing knowledge about China in which a traditional commitment to media objectivity conflicted with a self-conscious interpretation of China for a British audience. The paper suggests that in this ambiguity was a failure to understand the way the BBC was writing a Chinese history or to acknowledge the ideological implications of such a task.