Instead of being all-inclusive or comprehensive, this timeline aims to portray the flavour of each year to allow readers unfamiliar with recent Chinese media history to have an all-round feeling of what it has been like to live through the changes of the last 30 years.
1978
Deng Xiaoping assumes power and soon introduces reforms that start China's transition from a planned to a market economy.
1 May 1978
Beijing TV or BTV is renamed China Central Television Station (CCTV)
4 January 1979
China's first post-Cultural Revolution newspaper advertisement is published in the Tianjin Daily. The ad was for Blue Sky toothpaste.
28 January 1979
China's first post-Cultural Revolution TV commercial appears on Shanghai TV. The commercial is for an alcoholic drink with tonic properties.
17 April 1979
The first newspaper advertisement appears in the Communist Party organ The People's Daily, for industrial machinery.
15 March 1979
Ogilvy becomes the first foreign advertising agency to publish an ad (for Rado watches) in Shanghai Wenhui Bao newspaper.
October 1979
Japanese cartoon Astroboy is broadcasted on CCTV. At that time, there was only one channel. Soon after that, American TV serial The Man from Atlantis begins broadcasting.
27 September 1979
'The Stars' are a group of artists who paint and sculpt in styles that depart completely from both social realism and traditional Chinese art. This is unacceptable to the authorities. After countless rejections from the China National Art Gallery, on 27 September they hang their paintings and sculptures on the railings outside the gallery. The foreign, contemporary style of their works sends shock waves through Beijing's cultural community.
5 February 1980
China's first home-grown TV series, CCTV's nine-episode 'Diying Shiba Nian' (18 Years in the Enemy Camp), starts broadcasting. The serial told the story of a People's Liberation Army spy who stayed with the KMT army.
1 July 1980
Publication of the first issue of Jiankang Zhiyou (Woman's Day), the first post-Cultural Revolution woman's magazine. The magazine focuses on women's health and — as the liberal climate of China in the 1980s sets in — more and more on fashion, cosmetics and beauty.
Late 1980
CCTV begins broadcasting on a second channel, and starts to lease time to external companies and sell advertising.
February 1982
The State Council officially announces 'Advertisement Management Temporary Regulations'. These rules show central government support for developing the advertising industry, but as 'regulations', they do not have the force of 'laws'.
1983
Xinguancha (New Observer) magazine publishes an article introducing Western rock music.
1983
China's TV industry begins to reform with the introduction of the 'Four Level Administrative Guidelines' in order to develop radio and TV broadcasting at four levels (central, provincial, prefecture and county). This is the first step in China's decentralization of media authority.
6 May 1984
Hong Kong kung fu TV series Huo Yuan Jia starts broadcasting on CCTV. In the same year, Japanese, Brazilian, and Mexican TV serials also start playing in China.
July 1984
China's TV audience grows to 600 million people.
1984
State-owned news agency Xinhua publishes Liaowang (Observer), the first mainland news magazine to have overseas distribution, via a deal with a New York magazine distributor.
1985
The National Games sports competition is sponsored for the first time by many companies wanting exposure on TV, radio and in newspapers, ushering in the mainstream use of media as an advertising channel.
1986
Global advertising agency Ogilvy opens an office in China.
25 August 1986
The first email is sent from China from a computer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences by Wu Weimin. The email is sent to a fellow scientist at CERN in Switzerland. It takes another decade for the Internet to become available to the public.
1987
Cui Jian, China's first and most famous rock musician — often called the Godfather of Chinese rock — releases Rock 'n Roll for the New Long March. The songs on the record can be read as an ironic commentary on growing up in a world where socialism is collapsing but the rhetoric remains the same. The album is a smash hit and inspires Chinese youth across the country.
1987
CCTV reaches 270 million yuan revenue.
1988
The movie Guafu Cun (Village of Widows) hits the cinema screens, and is called the first domestic film 'not suitable for children'. This drives crowds to theatres, but the most they see is bare midriffs and sexual tension.
1988
Zhang Yimou films Red Sorghum, which sets high standards for the visual artistry of Chinese movies, and shows the West a different side of China.
In the same year, Beijing 'hooligan' author Wang Shuo, who writes stories about marginal characters who speak in Beijing slang, has four adaptations of his novels on screen. The media calls it 'Wang Shuo year'.
1988
Hachette Filipacchi starts publishing Elle magazine in China in partnership with state-owned publisher Shanghai Translation Publishing House.
4 June 1989
What the Western media call the Tiananmen Square Massacre is known in Chinese media — when mentioned — as the Tiananmen Square Incident. Colloquially, it is called 6-4. CNN broadcasts the events live from Beijing. For the first time in history, China's internal conflicts are broadcast around the world, and recorded on video for posterity.
Two CCTV presenters who report the events in the 'News Network' programme are fired soon after the event. Wu Xiaoyong, the son of a Communist Party of China Central Committee member, is removed from the English Program Department of Chinese Radio International. Qian Liren, director of the People's Daily, is also removed from his post because of reports in the paper that are sympathetic to the students.
1989
Tibet TV starts broadcasting via satellite. By 1999, all provinces of China have access to different satellite channels.
1989
Mainland movie box-office receipts reach 2.7 billion yuan, representing 29 billion visits to the cinema. In 1999, there are only 300 million visits to the cinema — TV destroys the movie market.
1990
Kewang (Hope), China's first privately produced TV series, starts broadcasting. The series was an extraordinary hit, making the producers rich.
1991
Jin Yong's martial arts novels appear in authorized versions on the mainland for the first time. They had always been popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan but, because of magic and other elements in the stories, were considered taboo in mainland China.
Duzhe (Reader), a general interest digest magazine, becomes China's top-selling magazine. It later becomes the fourth top-selling general interest magazine in the world.
April 1992
Deng Xiaoping tours southern China, praising the entrepreneurial energy he finds there and criticizing leftist elements in the Party, thus ensuring continuing reform and opening up policy after the post Tiananmen chill.
August 1992
First film festival in China, the Changchun Film Festival. Zhang Yimou's Story of Qiuju takes top prize.
8 August 1993
Trends Group starts, launching Trends magazine, China's first fashion magazine. In April 1998, Trends became China's edition of Cosmopolitan in a joint venture with Hearst.
May 1994
The national English language newspaper China Daily launches a website. Despite the newspaper's turgid official style, the newspaper and its website publish Reuters and other foreign news wires' articles, which are often much racier than anything in the rest of the state-owned Chinese language press.
1 January 1995
China's first 'city newspaper', reporting local matters and relatively free of central government interference, is published: Sichuan Daily publishers launch Huaxi Dushi Bao, (Western China City News), distributed in Chengdu, the most developed city in Sichuan Province. Similar city newspapers follow in other cities, developing a new circle of journalists who get used to reporting stories they have researched personally, rather than copied from Party directives.
1995
San Lian Zhenghuo Zhoukan (Sanlian Life Weekly magazine) launches. Looking like Time or Newsweek, it becomes one of China's most influential news and opinion magazines.
1 February 1995
'People's Republic of China Advertisement Law' is officially promulgated. (Note that the first rules about advertising were promulgated in 1982 as 'regulations': it took 13 years for those guidelines to become law.)
September 1995
China's first commercial website, a directory of companies, goes online at Chinapages.com. The site was started by Jack Ma who grew it into Alibaba.com, one of the most successful Internet companies in China.
1996
Internet connections become widely available to the public; the service is administered by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Applicants for the service are required to register with their identity card.
Sina.com and Sohu.com, two privately-run Internet companies get funding and open for business. As the dot com boom takes off, the Internet grows as rapidly in China as it does elsewhere: suddenly there is a whole new medium that is not subject to any existing government regulations. Within a few years, ordinary Chinese people have access to all the information available on the Internet, with very few restrictions.
May 1996
The country's first Internet café opens in Shanghai.
1 July 1997
China resumes control of Hong Kong, increasing flows of trade and information between Hong Kong, which has a thoroughly international media culture, and the mainland.
1 September 1997
Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis News) is launched by a publisher under the Guangzhou municipal government. The publication soon shakes up the Chinese newspaper business, with its absence of Party rhetoric and hard hitting news stories about corruption and other sensitive issues.
April 1998
Modern Media Group relaunches the newspaper Zhoumo Huabao (Modern Weekly), as a glossy, tabloid format weekly news magazine that goes on to become one of the best-distributed glossy periodicals and one of the earliest to extensively feature business and cultural news from abroad in a mass publication.
June 1998
Bill Clinton visits China, the first US President to go to Beijing since 1989. The visit is a key moment in the warming of relations between the two countries, and causes enthusiasm for American investment in China in both countries.
1999
Hunan TV's Huanle Zongdongyuan, which extends karaoke to become a television show in which guests perform songs in complete imitation of stars, becomes the year's top programme.
Cai Zhiheng (nicknamed 'Scoundrel Cai') publishes a novel he had earlier serialized online; the printed version is a bestseller for two years and it touches off the careers of a number of online writers.
2000
Internet services that allow users to get online anonymously without any kind of registration become widespread. Chinese Internet users rapidly get used to being anonymous online.
The dot com bubble bursts, but the massive increase in both Internet accessibility and Chinese online content cannot be reversed.
However, the government uses increasingly sophisticated technologies to block and filter certain foreign websites, and starts regulating Chinese websites more strictly as Internet use grows.
2001
The Chinese government releases a statement encouraging the amalgamation of Chinese media entities in order to be better prepared for increased competition after WTO entry.
July 2001
Beijing is awarded the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, focusing international attention on China and its place on the international stage.
11 September 2001
In April 2001, an American spy plane collides with a Chinese fighter jet, causing the death of the pilot. This incident causes a great deal of friction with George W. Bush's new administration. But 9-11 has a strange effect on China: because the subsequent 'War on Terror' takes the attention of American hawks away from the People's Republic, Sino-American relations become much smoother and more cordial. Good Sino-American ties mean more cultural and technological exchanges, further opening up China's information environment to the outside world.
11 November 2001
China officially joins the WTO, causing a further increase in trade as well as cultural and diplomatic exchanges.
September 2002
Actress Tang Jiali publishes a book of art nudes that stays on the bestseller lists for a year. This is the first such photo book in which the model is named, and it launches a public discussion about art and decency.
March 2003
Young graphic designer Sun Zhigang is arrested in Guangzhou by the police. A few days later he dies in detention. In April, the Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis News), reports the news, causing a national scandal.
March to June 2003
The SARS virus causes a panic in East Asia, especially in China, where the government does not reveal the extent of the outbreak until forced to do so by international media exposure. The SARS outbreak causes a new openness in Chinese government communications and media about diseases.
June 2003
A young journalist with the online name 'Mu Zimei' (also written as muzimei and Muzi Mei) starts a blog in which she records her sexual experiences. After publishing a rather negative 'review' of her experiences with a well known rock musician, her diary becomes an overnight Internet hit, read by millions of Chinese youngsters. The print media publish reports about her, and blogging becomes a household word.
11 November 2003
Xin Jing Bao (The Beijing News) starts publishing. The editorial team is headed up by Cheng Yizhong, the editor who published the Sun Zhigang scandal in March. The first issue's front page features a large photograph of Bill Clinton embracing an HIV-positive boy, both a sign and a cause of increased openness about HIV and AIDS in public discourse.
December 2003
Menbox, China's first openly gay glossy magazine, starts distributing to newsstands. The magazine is produced in partnership with the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
January 2004
A young computer gamer named Li Hongchen wins the country's first virtual properties dispute case: the Beijing Chaoyang District People's Court orders Arctic Ice Technology Development Company, the maker of the game 'Hongyue' (Red Moon) to return game winnings, including virtual biochemical weapons, to Li, who protested after the items were stolen by a hacker. In the same month, the state-owned news agency reports that a new online game is introduced every ten days in China.
February 2004
Chen Lili, a post-operative transsexual from Chongqing, is given the green light to compete in the China selection pageant for the Miss Universe competition.
November 2004
An editorial appears in the conservative Jiefang Ribao (Liberation Daily) attacking 'public intellectuals' — in other words non state-sanctioned writers and thinkers — who make public statements about China's politics and society. It is the start of a slow but steady backlash against the increased media openness seen during 2004.
December 2004
The advertising operations of the state-owned Beijing Youth Daily Newspaper Group are listed on Hong Kong's stock market as Beijing Media Corporation. This is the first such listing of a mainland media company.
February 2005
CCTV launches pan-Asian satellite channel, hoping to cater for growing overseas demand for information about China.
March 2005
China's National People's Congress proposes a bill to ban lip-synching at pop music concerts.
In the same month, university authorities at the prestigious Peking and Tsinghua Universities are ordered to stop open access to the two universities' Internet forums (or BBS). These forums had been open to the public and were often host to freewheeling discussions about society and politics.
April 2005
Real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi starts a blog, becoming the first of many celebrities to start blogs in 2005 and early 2006.
August 2005
Provincial TV station Hunan TV's hit show Chao Ji Nusheng (Super Voice Girls) broadcasts the final, knockout competition. The show is a nationwide hit, drawing advertisers away from the stodgier programs on CCTV.
September 2005
The government announces that the death tolls from natural disasters will no longer be regarded as a state secret, ending an official policy of secrecy about disasters that has been in place since 1949.
December 2005
The top three editors of Xin Jing Bao (The Beijing News) are removed from their posts, apparently on orders from the government, because of reports in the newspaper about riots in rural areas. A Chinese blogger writes about the dismissal, urging a boycott of the newspaper. The blog is hosted on Microsoft's MSN Spaces; Microsoft receives an official order from the government requiring them to remove the blog.
January 2006
The editor of Bing Dian (Freezing Point) supplement to the China Youth Daily, is removed from his position after authorities object to the tone and content of the supplement, in particular to one article calling for the revision of Chinese high school history text books. The editor accepts interviews from the foreign press, and writes an openly-circulated letter criticizing the stifling of discussion.
March 2006
Soon after Newsweek magazine's Asian edition features Chinese bloggers on its cover with the headline 'Beijing vs. Bloggers', one of the bloggers featured in the article named Massage Milk stages a 'government shutdown' of his blog. The Western media report it, after which the blogger reveals the shutdown to be a hoax, a prank played on Western media in revenge for their 'obsession' with the censorship issue.
