Localization Between Negotiating Forces: A Case Study of a Chinese Radio Station in the United States

During the past decade, Chinese state-owned media have accelerated their pace of overseas development to establish their international presence. In their worldwide expansion in the service of the government’s political and diplomatic initiatives, these media outlets attempt to connect with and rise in the global media market by borrowing experiences from their Western competitors. This article revisits the Western model of media localisation and examines how the strategic components in Western media’s localisation practices are absent in Chinese media’s applications, where tensions and incongruities exist between the headquarters and the local production team. By looking closely at the operations of a US-based studio jointly run by the Chinese international broadcaster China Radio International and its local partner, the article further analyses the negotiation between propaganda-oriented logic and market-driven logic as two major driving forces behind Chinese media’s worldwide expansion, and how the contradiction and disjuncture between the two affects the media outlets’ localisation practices and outcomes.