Recent efforts by the Chinese Government to purge prime time television of violence and uproot websites featuring pornography remind us of the need to redefine the role and functions of media in China's national development.

The unique socio-economic conditions in the fast developing Chinese society are highly complex and must be handled with great care. The role of media in China needs to be cautiously defined in order to ensure the media function to the greatest benefit of the population and the country and not to the detriment of social development.

If the Chinese media are to best serve the goal of national development they should be empowered and equipped to enlighten the masses on important issues of vital concern.

Following the central government's proposition of a scientific perspective on development, the media have been seeking to awaken the masses and grass-roots leaders to a collective sense of the importance of environmental protection. Paralleling this urgent call to be sensitive to the potential costs of economic progress, we also see the need to mediate between the rich and the poor, bridging the widening gap between people at opposite ends of the social ladder.

It needs to be made clear to the population that a well-off socialist China with unique characteristics is still a far-off goal, but one that can be realized through the collective efforts of a united nation. Such efforts will provide those struggling against poverty with some hope, while those living in prosperity will have a longer and broader vision of the future.

Enlightenment implies bringing people a sense of hope, revealing to them crucial truths and facts they previously overlooked. In this age of information overload, which literally penetrates every corner of society, much of the task of enlightenment rests on the media.

Encouragement is another important function the media can and should fulfil in China.

Along with the inevitable increase in unemployment, social inequality and corruption among officials baffle the people. Governments at various levels have been striving to cope with these social ailments, but their efforts are often met with deep pockets of resistance from groups and individuals with a vested interest in the existing social order.

This segment of society has frequently been exposed by the national media in both news and entertainment programmes. But media practitioners and national leaders need to be fully aware that a lopsided portrayal of society may thus be offered to the population, and the people may be unduly discouraged about the prospect of the nation.

We frequently hear lamentations from intellectuals who publish opinions to the effect that they hold little hope for the spiritual and moral prospect of human society in general and Chinese society in particular.

While the increasing personal liberty in China permits the airing of such negative sentiments, opinions of this kind need to be balanced with a more positive perspective that offers encouragement to the people. The delicate art of balancing between "objective reporting" and presenting a "positive image" of society requires greater professional competence on the part of media practitioners.

The educational function of the media cannot be over-emphasized. As leaders and promoters of most "fashionable" styles of clothing, living and thinking, the media have a remarkable impact on the population, especially young people who are yet to become mature and sophisticated. One cultural critic has observed that the media "teach us how to live, how to study, how to work, and even how to spend our leisure time and disposable income."

Moreover, the media more or less serve as a roadmap by which we navigate the environment from which we have become detached by innumerable technological inventions that are products of modernization and urbanization.

And in the government's efforts to deal with the considerable illiteracy rate in certain rural areas, the media can fulfil the function of an educator in the absence of conventional teaching.

Evidence produced by scientific research insistently and persistently suggests youth are particularly vulnerable to negative media effects. Therefore, the media's role as a collective educator should be seriously re-examined and defined in order to better serve national development.

Media's function in offering mass entertainment has probably invited the largest amount of attention and debate among experts, teachers and the masses.

Somehow, misleadingly, the word "entertainment" has gradually come to be associated with the spreading of coarse jokes and sexually-oriented sentiments, along with the promotion of excessive materialism and hedonism. Some observers have gone so far as to equate the media's entertainment function with providing mass cultural products, especially those catering to society's lowest common denominators.

This is a notable tendency warranting our attention and alertness. A nation that is lacking in a strong uplifting spirit cannot long endure. As a Chinese saying goes, "education should be embodied in entertainment." That is the highest ideal of entertainment.

We are confronted with the unpleasant reality that modern people live in an increasingly competitive social milieu, which exerts a great deal of pressure on the individual. People therefore eagerly desire entertainment and relaxation as an emotional outlet during their spare time.

Now the crucial question is how media entertainment can uplift morale in a pleasurable way which the majority of people can accept.

One false assumption underlying the undue "entertainmentization" of media content is that media practitioners underestimate the cognitive power of the audience. Experience from the recent past informs us the Chinese are good at discerning what kind of story/plot is worth laughing at or crying at, and we enjoy and appreciate media content that makes us think. TV dramas that cause viewers to reflect upon their own lives and probe their inner world have been well received, such as the well-known series "Big Brother", "Big Sister" and "Mother-in-law."

Though entertaining and relaxing in nature, such media content exemplifies how entertainment can embrace education, enlightenment and encouragement.

It is true that nowadays when people read the newspaper and watch TV they may not have any conscious desire to be "educated" or "enlightened." But good media content that can withstand the test of time and the human heart always turns out to be something that makes people think, laugh or cry, and think deep.

On its way to becoming a well-off society, China offers a grand stage on which the media can play a large role that is enlightening, encouraging, entertaining and educational.

The author is a professor with the Department of Journalism and Communication at Xiamen University.

(China Daily August 6, 2004)