Evaluating Official Attitudes Toward Post-Mao Chinese Film

Through a Quantitative Lens

Ian Lamont
August 14, 2006
ilamont@fas.harvard.edu
(For Graduate Credit)

Prof. Charles Hayford

Visiting Scholar, History, Northwestern University
Harvard Summer School
Film And History
Postwar Japan and Post-Mao China
(History S-1855)
 What does China’s central government think of Chinese film? Attempting to answer

this question in the post-Mao era usually involves qualitative evaluations of two types of

sources: Statements by Chinese officials and agencies, or observations of the actions of

Chinese officials and agencies. Paul G. Pickowicz took this approach when evaluating

Chinese film of the post-Mao era,1 as did Jianying Zha in her comparisons of “Fifth

Generation” Chinese filmmakers Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.2

However, I believe quantitative methodologies can also be used to explain the

evolution of official attitudes toward Chinese film and Chinese filmmakers. In this paper,

I will present the results of a quantitative content analysis based on news published by the

New China News Agency, the state-run wire service of the People’s Republic of China.

Using the NCNA news items as a gauge of official policy, my analysis will explore

the state’s attitude toward Chinese film in general, as well as toward specific directors, in

the context of social and political trends taking place during the five years before and

after the June 1989 Tiananmen incident. I will also compare the NCNA data to some of

Pickowicz’ and Zha’s qualitative research.

Background

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the media gatekeepers of Chinese film — that is, the

individuals and organizations responsible for filtering film content before audience

consumption — were mostly associated with the government. According to Pickowicz,

they included regional studios, the Film Bureau within the Ministry of Culture (and, after

1
Paul Pickowicz, “Velvet Prisons and the Political Economy of Chinese Filmmaking,” in Deborah Davis et al,
ed., Urban Spaces in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
2
Jianying Zha, China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture (New
York: The New York Press, 1995)

1
the late 1980s, the Ministry of Radio, Film, and Television), the China Film Distribution

Corporation, the state-controlled Chinese Filmworkers Association, state-funded film

publications, and even the government organs charged with running film awards

programs.3 Yingchi Chu identifies additional bodies that issued documents concerning

film policy: The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the State Council, the

Ministry of Propaganda, the General State Administration, specially constituted “leading

groups,” and party leaders.4 These organizations and individuals could make or break a

film project at any stage of production, from vetting script ideas to regulating distribution

in domestic movie theaters.

Pickowicz proposes that Chinese filmmakers in fact worked in a “velvet prison” of

state control in the post-Mao era. The velvet prison theory was originally described by

Hungarian author Miklos Haraszti in the early 1980s to explain post-Stalinist control of

artists in Communist countries. Haraszti said it was more effective to give artists special

perks and a little power, as long as they were actively or passively loyal to the state and

were not outright anti-Marxist.5 However, Haraszti described an additional aspect of this

system: the option for the state to briefly revert to Stalinist methods of control should the

need arise.

And this, suggests Pickowicz, is one model for evaluating official treatment of

Chinese film following the Tiananmen square demonstrations in 1989. In the 1980s,

“entertainment” films featuring romance and violence were typical fare, because the Film

Distribution Corporation believed these genres were popular among urban viewers. The

3
Pickowicz, p. 207
4
Yingchi Chu, “The Consumption of Cinema in Contemporary China,” in Stephanie Hemelryk Donald et al,
ed., Media in China: Consumption, Content, and Crisis (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), p. 43
5
Pickowicz, p. 195, citing Miklos Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism (New York:
Noonday Press, 1989)

2
corporation did not really care if the studios managed to get an “art” film past the

censors; the costs for producing such films were borne by the studios and the corporation

could make money off of international distribution rights (which it controlled) while

limiting domestic distribution to a handful of prints.6

However, following the 1989 unrest, the state reverted to a “crude Stalinist mode of

control.” Existing films with controversial content were banned, while the Film Bureau

“ordered the studios to produce a small flood of films on contemporary and historical

topics that praised the army, the party, and the police, while condemning the polluted

ways of foreign cultures.”7

There were variations in the way certain directors operated in this environment, say

Pickowicz and others. Zhang Yimou’s Ju Dou (1990) and Raise The Red Lantern (1991)

were initially banned in China. Pickowicz disputes that dissident politics were the reason.

Rather, he says, the bans related to bureaucratic issues as well as the films’ “reverse

Orientalism,” which promoted the exotic — and often ugly — aspects of China to appeal

to foreign tastes.8 However, Zha suggests criticism of Fifth Generation films came mainly

from intellectual circles.9 Whatever the causes, the domestic bans on these films were

lifted in 1992, and Zhang even won some Chinese film awards the following year.

Pickowicz says that Xie Jin, a much older Chinese director whose career

experienced a comeback after the Cultural Revolution, had a far different experience than

Zhang. Calling Xie a “thoroughly establishment figure,” Pickowicz says Xie is a director

who is “able to work comfortably in both Stalinist and velvet prison environments and

6
Pickowicz, p. 210
7
Pickowicz, p. 211
8
Pickowicz, p. 213
9
Zha, p. 94

3
whose amazing popular films must be regarded as ‘official culture.’” Furthermore, while

Xie’s films express popular discontent with the Communist system, “Much of what he

does legitimizes and perpetuates the dominance of state socialism.”10

Methodology

Pickowicz and Zha base most of their conclusions on their own appraisals of

Chinese films, the actions of official agencies responsible for creating film policy and/or

film distribution, books, journal articles, and other primary sources. Zha was also able to

conduct interviews with Chinese film workers, including Chen Kaige. Can a quantitative

analysis give insights into the issues Pickowicz and Zha explore, or test their qualitative

findings? I believe the answer is yes, for certain issues and certain findings.

Ideally, my quantitative methodology would be based on documents created by

official agencies, or articles produced by state-controlled film publications. These

documents are written by knowledgeable people within the state system and reflect

official film policy. When subjected to computer-assisted analysis in aggregate or

according to a sampling technique, patterns would allow us to evaluate official policy and

existing qualitative research.

Unfortunately, this ideal approach is impractical for several reasons. First, I am

unable to read Chinese. Second, even if I could, it would be very difficult to locate

appropriate documents from the Ministry of Culture and other state-run organizations.

Third, most documents from the pre-Internet period are not in digital format, which is

required for the software I am using (Microsoft Excel and Yoshikoder). I could transcribe

10
Pickowicz, p. 217

4
the documents or use a quantitative methodology based on human coding, but these two

options would take too much time.

I have therefore used content from the English-language news wire of the New

China News Agency upon which to base my research. Besides being written in my native

language, there is a complete digital archive of NCNA news items11 going back to

January 1, 1977, accessible from the LexisNexis online database. The NCNA is the

official news agency of the central government, “authorized to issue communiqués,

statements and important news on foreign affairs and to provide domestic and

international news for newspapers and broadcasting stations across the country.” The aim

of the English service has an additional mission: to let foreigners and foreign

governments better understand China’s people, policies, and cultural life. While the

NCNA service does not necessarily reflect the views of official groups within the state

film industry, during the Deng Xiaoping era it reported to the Chinese Communist Party

Department of Propaganda, which in turn reported to the Chinese Communist Party

Central Committee.12 These bodies and the film organizations ultimately serve the same

masters, and would presumably be on the same page when it came to outlining official

views about domestically produced films and filmmakers.

My content analysis has several stages. In the first stage, I performed frequency

counts on terms associated with content variables using the results of LexisNexis

searches entered into an Excel spreadsheet. For instance, a news item associated with the

“Film” variable (or “F”) contained the terms “film” or “movie” in the full text of the

article (LexisNexis automatically counts plural forms as well). In 1984, I counted 348 F

11
Articles, official statements, news briefs, and captions
12
Won Ho Chang, Mass Media in China: The History and the Future (Ames: Iowa State University Press,
1989), p. 195.

5
items in English NCNA news items. The following year, there were 404 F items, but as a

percentage of all NCNA items, there was actually a decline from 1.27% in 1984 to 1.13%

in 1985.13 In certain cases, I performed searches of multiple variables — e.g., “Zhang

Yimou” (Z) items and “International” (I), in order to determine what percent of NCNA

items about Zhang Yimou were associated with international film festivals or awards in a

given year. In the Results section of this paper, there is a description of the issues I

analyzed with frequency counts. The Appendix contains a full description of this

methodology, including the terms that I chose to represent each content variable.

In the second stage of my content analysis, I used a software tool called Yoshikoder

to count the frequency of positive and negative terms in NCNA news items about Zhang

Yimou and Xie Jin over time. The aim was to analyze official attitudes toward Xie and

Zhang, as well as evaluate test Pickowicz’ conclusions about the two directors. The

results are described in Issue 4 of the Results section, and more information about the

methodology is described in the Appendix.

It must be noted that the quantitative methodologies I use are a far from perfect

gauge of official government attitudes toward Chinese film and filmmakers. General

problems with computer-assisted text analysis include researcher bias at the design and

interpretation stages; poorly designed studies; inconsistencies in the source

documentation, which range from misspellings to changes in writing styles and

terminologies (e.g., Mao Tse-tung was used in NCNA stories in the late 1970s, but the

pinyin spelling — Mao Zedong — was used in the 1980s and later decades); ambiguous

terms, or words with multiple meanings; and a general inability to discern subtleties in

13
i.e., 27,461 NCNA items divided by 348 F items vs. 35,789 NCNA items divided by 404 F items

6
language — the use of metaphors, attempts by writers to have readers “read between the

lines,” etc.

Specific problems I encountered were numerous. They included a small number of

NCNA news items for certain content variables. For the Yoshikoder analysis, I was

limited by a small number of news articles to sample from, as well as a dictionary that

was not tailored to film studies or NCNA content — I relied on the basic positive and

negative categories within the General Inquiry dictionary, which was originally

developed for the study of political texts. Lastly, there was a quirk in NCNA content that

ruined most of the data relating to certain content variables in 1990 and 1991. This was

caused by a daily “What’s on in Beijing” arts and culture listing, which was apparently

aimed at local expatriates and tourists visiting the capital. The column ran almost every

day in 1990 and for the first four months of 1991, ending on May 5, 1991. It caused a

spike in references to some, but not all, variables under study during this period. They

included the F (film) and O (opera) variables.

Results

In the following section I will detail the issues that were subjected to quantitative

analyses.

Issue 1: NCNA coverage of Chinese film

The first issue I attempted to gauge was how the government — through the

barometer of state news agency coverage — viewed Chinese film. My methodology did

not allow for me to discern official policy per se, but it did let me measure the amount of

NCNA coverage devoted to Chinese film as a percent of all film coverage. I also

7
searched NCNA news items for groups of opera- and Chinese opera-related terms, to

provide a basis of comparison with the film and Chinese film variables.

The results were intriguing. Neither film (F) nor opera (O) received much attention

from the NCNA from 1984 to 1993 relative to the entire census of NCNA news items.

Film references were three to five times more common than opera references, but the gap

narrowed in the early 1990s, as F references declined sharply and opera references

declined and then leveled out (see chart, “NCNA Film vs. Opera Items, 1984-1993”).14

The gap between Chinese film (CF) news items and Chinese opera (CO) news items

was narrower still. The total number of Chinese film items dominated from 1984-1989,

but these levels dropped by about half in 1991, 1992, and 1993 (In 1990 there was a spike

of Chinese film items, but this is related to the daily “What’s on in Beijing” arts and
14
An article that contains references to both film and opera will count as a single reference for each
category. This convention applies to all comparative frequency counts described in this paper.

8
culture listing, which sometimes contained references to Chinese film.) The number of

Chinese opera items rose post-1989, beating out Chinese film for four consecutive years.

This was partially the result of the “What’s on in Beijing” arts and culture listing, but

even in 1992 and 1993 the number of Chinese opera items was notably higher than in

1989 (see chart, “Chinese Film vs. Chinese Opera Items, 1984-1993”).

When the Chinese film and Chinese opera items are charted as a percent of all film

and opera items from 1984 to 1993, Chinese opera comes out firmly on top. Chinese

opera was consistently above 50% of all opera-related items.15 Chinese film shows a

gradual decline, starting out at 24% of all film items in 1984, and dropping to 13% by

1993 (see chart, “NCNA Chinese Film and Chinese Opera Coverage, 1984-1993”)

15
1988 is the exception, with 47%. There was also a spike to 80% or more in 1990 and 1991, but this was
caused by the “What’s on in Beijing” arts listing, noted previously.

9
 I believe the prominence of Chinese opera in NCNA coverage had much to do with

the increased domestic emphasis on established Chinese art forms (i.e., Chinese opera) at

the expense of foreign-influenced art (i.e., Chinese film). Furthermore, in the post-

Tiananmen geopolitical landscape, in which the Chinese government was scorned for its

actions in 1989, there was also an increased emphasis in NCNA on innocent “cultural

exchanges,” which often involved tours of Beijing opera troupes to foreign countries.

It must be noted that the relative lack of non-Chinese opera items when compared

with foreign film in NCNA coverage can partially be attributed to entertainment

preferences among NCNA journalists. Many urban Chinese during this period had seen

foreign movies on television or even in theaters.16 But live Italian, Russian, or German

16
Hollywood productions weren’t regularly shown in domestic cinemas until 1995, but movies from eastern
Europe, India, Hong Kong and elsewhere were sometimes screened.

10
opera was a rarity, probably owing to logistical issues, high production costs, and

expensive tickets.

Issue 2: Chinese film and “reverse Orientalism”

Much has been written about the tendency of Fifth Generation Chinese filmmakers

to receive accolades abroad while being ignored at home. This is a simplistic assessment,

but Both Pickowicz and Zha point to the early 1990s as being particularly rough for

directors. During this time, certain Fifth Generation films were celebrated at foreign film

festivals while being banned or heavily edited at home. Pickowicz laid out the reasons

behind the domestic freeze as follows:

“[This was] more to do with what might be called [Fifth Generation directors’]

‘reverse’ Orientalism. In a word, these trendy new works, funded by foreign sources and

made primarily for foreign audiences, reveal the exotic and erotic Chinese world that

foreigners like to see rather than a Chinese world that is recognizable to the Chinese

themselves.”17

If this is the case, the NCNA, as the official press mouthpiece of the government,

should logically de-emphasize Chinese film during this period. As I have demonstrated

earlier, this is exactly what happened, at least in 1992 and 1993 (see chart above,

“Chinese Film vs. Chinese Opera Items, 1984-1993”).

However, there are several problems with this logic. First, not all Chinese films are

made by Fifth Generation directors. Chu notes a rush of “mainstream melody films” (i.e.,

films that support the government’s social agendas) around this time, such as Founding

Ceremony of the People’s Republic (1989) and Zhou Enlai (1991). As these types of

films toe the government line, they should not be subjected to the same silent treatment in
17
Pickowicz, p. 213

11
the NCNA news wire as Fifth Generation films and directors. A second problem: Not all

NCNA news items that discuss Chinese film mention specific directors or films from

either camp, but rather discuss the general state of the domestic film industry.

Nevertheless, I think it is possible to reconcile these issues, even though I did not

run searches on all Fifth Generation filmmakers and their “mainstream melody”

counterparts, or separate the general film industry articles from reviews or news about

specific filmmakers and films. First, if the level of so-called mainstream melody film

items remained the same or even rose slightly, and Fifth Generation news items as well as

general industry items declined, overall references to Chinese film should still decline.

This is reflected in the NCNA data. Second, I ran a series of NCNA searches on a single

Fifth Generation filmmaker, Zhang Yimou. His NCNA items peaked in 1988 at 7,

dropped to 1 in 1989, rose to 3 in 1990, dropped to 0 in 1991, before rising back to 7 in

1992 and 5 in 1993. The data for the last four years is particularly intriguing, as it roughly

corresponds with the release of three of his films: Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern

(1991), and The Story of Qiu Ju (1992). The first two films were temporarily banned in

China, and in those two years there was very little news about Zhang reported by the

NCNA.

But in 1992, the number of Zhang references shot back up to pre-Tiananmen levels.

Pickowicz and Zha point out that Chinese officials liked The Story of Qiu Ju, released

that year, because, among other reasons, it made the Public Security Bureau look good. I

conclude that the frequency of the NCNA’s Zhang Yimou news items over these three

years supports Pickowicz’ and Zha’s findings. As for the 1993 data, even though none of

Zhang’s films were released that year, Pickowicz says that Zhang was “allowed to win”

12
some domestic film awards in 1993, which correlates with the 5 NCNA news items

mentioning Zhang.

Issue 3: Chinese film and international awards

After reading Pickowicz and Zha, and listening to class discussions, I was interested

in learning more about Chinese film in the context of recognition abroad. How much do

international film festivals and awards matter to the Chinese government, especially if

some of these filmmakers show China’s ugly underbelly to foreign eyes? According to

Zha, the praise from foreign film critics put the government in an uncomfortable position:

“Amid all these hosannas in the West, Chinese officialdom has been gritting its

teeth, more perturbed than pleased by the situation. Like many apparently inward

cultures, China has an almost paradoxical craving for the laurels of external validation.”18

Aiming to add a quantitative perspective to existing qualitative research, I designed

a simple frequency analysis that counts the number of Chinese film news items that were

mentioned in the context of international film festivals, awards, and prizes (CF+I).

Domestic awards and festivals such as the “Golden Rooster Award” and the “Dragon

Film Festival” were excluded. The purpose of these searches was to gauge how the

Chinese government valued Chinese film. Were Chinese film and filmmakers worthy of

being mentioned as an art form and entertainment media in their own right? Or were they

primarily mentioned when receiving “face” abroad, in the form of screenings and award

ceremonies at international film festivals?

In the pre-Tiananmen period (the five years from 1984 to 1988) between 40% and

50% of all NCNA news items that mentioned Chinese film also mentioned international

awards, festivals, and prizes. Beginning in 1989 the percentage of Chinese film news
18
Zha, p. 79

13
items with these international associations dropped. The 1990 and 1991 data has to be

discounted owing to the “What’s on in Beijing” column, but in 1992 the rate was still

below 40%. In 1993 it shot back up to pre-Tiananmen levels (see chart, NCNA Coverage

of Int'l Chinese Film vs. Int'l Chinese Opera, 1984-1993).

I also ran a test of Chinese opera items in an international context (CO+I), to

provide a basis of comparison. This was problematic. I needed to identify appropriate

Chinese opera items that not only involve international recognition, but are also a valid

point of comparison with the international recognition awarded to Chinese films. In the

entire 1984-1993 period there was only one NCNA news item that mentioned Chinese

opera in the context of an international opera festival. In that same year (1993) there were

25 Chinese film items that mentioned international awards, prizes, or festivals.

14
 Owing to this disparity, I decided to use “cultural exchange” as the international

term to apply to the Chinese opera searches. This was a poor substitute, as such mentions

in NCNA news items relate more to Chinese diplomacy than international recognition.

But at least it provides some basis of comparison, and leads me to conclude that Chinese

film is not viewed as a local art form as much as it is a source of prestige abroad. Chinese

opera, on the other hand, stands on its own as a popular art form, entertainment medium,

and cultural treasure, even though foreigners may not appreciate it.

Issue 4: Zhang Yimou vs. Xie Jin

The last segment of my study tests the idea that Fifth Generation filmmakers were

viewed and treated differently than non-Fifth Generation filmmakers by China’s film

bureaucracy. Zha’s chapter on Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou did not mention any non-

Fifth Generation directors, but Pickowicz does compare directors from the two groups.

He qualitatively analyzes the films of Zhang Yimou, and describes Xie Jin, the much

older director whose career was re-established in the 1980s, as an “old-school

melodramatist” and “thoroughly establishment figure.”19

If Xie is indeed more of an establishment figure than Zhang, then official news

coverage of the two directors should be quite different, with the NCNA generally

favoring Xie Jin over Zhang Yimou. With this assumption in mind, I designed two

quantitative methods to evaluate NCNA coverage of the two directors. The first method

was based on frequency counts in the LexisNexis database, and hypothesized that the

more politically acceptable director would receive more coverage. The second method

uses Yoshikoder dictionary reports to evaluate the relative amount of positive and

negative words contained in news items about Zhang vs. news items about Xie.
19
Pickowicz, p. 217-218

15
 Data derived from frequency counts supports Pickowicz’ qualitative assessment.

When news items containing references to Zhang Yimou are compared to those

mentioning Xie Jin as a percentage of all articles about Chinese film, Xie comes out

firmly on top in the pre-Tiananmen period, and marginally on top in the post-Tiananmen

period (see chart, “Zhang Yimou vs. Xie Jin in NCNA References, 1984-1993”). Only in

1992 did Zhang have slightly more NCNA references than Xie, and that was the year the

officially sanctioned The Story of Qiu Ju was released.

However, data derived from the Yoshikoder results ran contrary to my initial

expectations. This stage of the content analysis involved measuring the number of

positive and negative terms in seven news items about Zhang Yimou, and seven news

items about Xie Jin. As there were not enough news items to chart the results from year

to year, they were organized in two groups: The five years preceding the Tiananmen

16
demonstrations (1984-1988), and the five years including and after the Tiananmen

demonstrations (1989-1993). The four groups of news items were then entered into

Yoshikoder, and parsed by a dictionary of positive and negative terms based on the

General Inquirer content analysis program, which is regularly used for evaluating

political texts.

My expectations, partially based on Pickowicz’ findings and the frequency counts

described in the chart above, “Zhang Yimou vs. Xie Jin in NCNA References, 1984-

1993,” were that Xie would be associated with positive terms throughout both periods,

whereas Zhang would be mostly negative.

This is not what the data showed. Even though Xie was covered more often by the

NCNA in the pre-Tiananmen period than Zhang, the sampled news items about Xie had a

much higher level of negative terms, and a slightly lower level of positive terms (see

chart, “NCNA And Xie Jin, Zhang Yimou: General Inquirer Positive and Negative

Terms”). At first, this was quite puzzling. While it is conceivable that Zhang’s growing

international stature would have resulted in more positive coverage than Xie during this

period, there is no obvious reason why Xie-related items would have received a higher

negative score. Then I looked at the news items that up the sample. One of the Xie items

describes problems in the film industry.20 Another item recounts the tragic plot of Xie’s

Hibiscus Town.21 Both items include numerous terms that would trigger the negative

General Inquirer dictionary. Moreover, the two pre-Tiananmen items about Zhang22

20
“Leading Film Director Sets Up In Business,” Xinhua General News Service, December 6, 1988.
21
“‘A Town Called Hibiscus,’ A Big Hit,” Xinhua General News Service, April 2, 1987.
22
“Xi’an Director Putting China’s Movies On World Screens,” Xinhua General News Service, July 29, 1988,
and “Orders Pour In For Prize-Winning Red Sorghum Film,” Xinhua General News Service, March 3, 1988.

17
discussed his successes as a filmmaker, without delving deeply into the depressing

ending of Red Sorghum and other films shot during the 1980s.

As for the post-Tiananmen news items, those about Zhang had, as expected, a

higher negative score than items about Xie. However, the Zhang-related items also had a

higher positive score. There are several explanations for this. First, high positive and

high negative scores are not mutually exclusive using this type of methodology. Second,

Zhang’s official profile was rehabilitated in 1992 and 1993, thanks to The Story of Qiu

Ju. Indeed, four of the five Zhang items from the post-Tiananmen sample discuss this

film, and do so in a positive manner. Third, because the NCNA reduced coverage of

Zhang in the three years following Tiananmen, the sample size was small, and were

weighted heavily toward items about the officially endorsed The Story of Qiu Ju. While

this may be seen as a significant error on my part, I was left with no choice: There simply

18
were not many NCNA articles about Zhang to input into Yoshikoder. In 1991 he was

totally shut out from NCNA news coverage — there wasn’t a single mention of Zhang in

the 71,080 news items NCNA published that year.

Conclusion

I hope the research described in this paper will serve as basic examples of how

Chinese media content can be used to answer historical questions about Chinese film.

This type of methodology is currently not a popular way to study history. Quantitative

data is sometimes used to support qualitative research, as in Yingchi Chu’s skillful use of

annual film production figures and box office receipts. Additionally, many researchers

use Chinese media content selectively to support their hypotheses. But very few

historians use computer-assisted methodologies or even basic statistical analyses of

Chinese media content to understand Chinese mass media or Chinese media policy.

I hope this will change, as more Chinese- and English-language media sources are

included in digital databases such as LexisNexis and Factiva, and researchers are exposed

to the quantitative tools and methodologies that can help them answer their research

questions and support their hypotheses. And while there are certainly some drawbacks to

using such methods, as noted above, I believe there is a bright future for quantitative

research in the fields of Chinese film and mass media history.

19
Appendix: Full Methodology

My computer-assisted content analysis was based on data gathered from the LexisNexis
Academic “Guided Search” Form, accessible via the password-protected Harvard
Libraries Website. A series of drop-down menus and text fields were used to select
World News, Asia Pacific News, the search terms (described below), and the Source,
“Xinhua” (i.e., the New China News Agency).

Searches were performed on NCNA news items, which are any text content in the
database that has a unique NCNA item number. Most news items are articles, reports, and
official statements, but some are captions, news briefs, and entertainment briefs. The
NCNA English wire service released tens of thousands of news items each year from
1984-1993. The news item totals are included in the master Excel spreadsheet that
accompanies this report.

All searches were full text searches, looking for terms located in any part of the news
item, as opposed to just the headline, or just the headline and lede. The information
entered in the Search fields were groups of terms organized around the following seven
content variables, and associated search terms:

Variable: F (Film)
Search terms: “film” or “movie”

Variable: CF (Chinese film)

Search terms: “chinese film” or “china's film” or “china's film” or “chinese movie” or
“Beijing film” or “chinese director” or “changchun film” or “jiangxi film” or “shanghai
film” or “jiujiang yangtze film” or “domestic movie” or “zhang yimou” or “xie jin” or
“chen kaige”

Variable: O (Opera)
Search terms: opera and not “soap opera”

Variable: CO (Chinese Opera)

Search terms: “china's opera” or “peking opera” or “beijing opera” or “chinese opera” or
“local opera” or “traditional opera” or “guangdong opera” or “sichuan opera” or “tibetan
opera” or “cantonese opera” or “taiwanese opera” or “shanghai opera” or “fujian opera”

Variable: Z (Zhang Yimou)

Search terms: “Zhang Yimou”

Variable: X (“Xie Jin”)

Search terms: “Xie Jin”

Variable: I (International Festival/Award)

20
Search terms: “festival” or “award” or “prize”
and not “dragon film festival” or “zhuhai film festival” or “golden rooster award” or “one
hundred flower award” or “changchun film festival” or “shanghai international film” or
“china international sports film festival”

Exception: I associated with O (International+Opera)

Search terms: “cultural exchange” (replaces “international opera festival” or
“international opera prize” or “international opera award”, which only yielded one result)

Searches could be combined, as the LexisNexis interface has three search fields
connected by “and/or/not” drop-down menus. A combined search might be CF+I, etc.

LexisNexis results of the searches included total number of results, headlines, date, and
first sentence of the news item. I only used the total number of results for each search in a
given year, and entered this figure in an Excel spreadsheet. I customized the spreadsheet
to calculate relative percentages, and also used Excel’s “Chart Wizard” to create charts
that appear in this report.

For Issue 4, “Zhang Yimou vs. Xie Jin”, I identified seven articles about Xie Jin and
Zhang Yimou in the NCNA search results from LexisNexis. These articles were about the
directors, or their films, as opposed to simply mentioning them in passing. I copied and
pasted the articles for Xie and Zhang into four text files: Xie 1983-1988, Xie 1989-1993,
Zhang 1983-1988, and Zhang 1989-1993, and imported them into the Yoshikoder content
analysis software program. I then applied the “General Inquirer” positive and negative
dictionary to each of the text files, to measure the relative proportions of negative and
positive terms, as defined in the GI dictionaries. The numerical results were then pasted
into an Excel spreadsheet, and turned into a chart, which I used to compare NCNA
coverage of the two directors.

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