Freelancers or "public intellectuals"? Professional identity and discursive representation of Chinese independent media writers in a fast-changing landscape

Freelance journalists in China emerged in the early 2000s as a much-needed professional entity in a sector that had changed significantly since the media reform was launched in the country in 1978. When Chinese newspapers, which formerly survived thanks to state funds, had to adopt a business mindset, freelance writers became necessary to sustain these changes. They contributed in particular to the diffusion and standardization of the genre of the “commentary on current affairs” (shiping 时评), establishing themselves as new and original voices in a media system that is still tightly controlled. Building on an analysis of the linguistic features of a corpus of qualitative interviews conducted with Chinese freelance writers between 2008 and 2015, this paper studies their self-representation and understanding of their mission, discussing the extent to which they believe their independent opinions matter in the public arena, in a context that has been changing quickly, due to the decline of print media and due to a new political environment.