Personal Statement
Applicant: xx
Program: Journalism and Communication (The University of xx)

An event of defining significance happened in 1984 when I was a fifth grader in elementary school. My father, a public servant in a major state-owned enterprise, was jailed for the “criminal” act of doing a small private business. He was released four years later not because his innocence was proved but because he demonstrated “good performance.” In the following two years, he kept visiting relevant local government departments in an effort to achieve rehabilitation. In 1990, his innocence was proved and he regained his job.

This event naturally had a devastating impact on my family. For me, the event triggered much serious thinking on my part. If the political climate at that time was not that negative, my father would not incur such injustice. If the supervisory function of journalism was really established, public opinion would prevent such an injustice. If the legal system was sound and the rule of law prevailed, my father’s case would not be mishandled.

To a large extent, my father’s case determined my academic and career development. Having completed my junior college education in Chinese language and literature at Southwest xx, I embarked on an undergraduate program in Journalism in at the xx. I was motivated by the belief that journalism and journalists represent the conscience of society and that the function of journalism could best be served by supervising government activities that infringes on the rights of the citizens. “Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.” This remark by xx highlights the fundamental importance of journalism in the social life of a country.

My junior college education in Chinese language and literature contributed to my success as a student of journalism. I excelled in courses such as news reporting and news writing, which required strong skills in in-depth analysis and writing. I evolved my own distinctive, flexible and yet effective techniques of interviewing so that I could always come up with in-depth coverage of a person or of an event. Even as an undergraduate, I had important experience of journalism—writing reports for the Institute’s student news agency and for the student broadcasting station, and undertaking a 5-month internship at the xx.

Following my academic training in Journalism, I entered the Law School of xx University to do a second undergraduate degree on law. As it has turned out, my legal training from China’s most prestigious university has given me interdisciplinary knowledge across journalism and law and has allowed me to outperform average journalists. On the other hand, in addition to adding depth to my overages, my legal knowledge has kept me well informed about the legal rights and liabilities of a journalist. In particular, I attended an intensive training program sponsored by xx University and xx University on the Common Law and a weekly forum on the British Law. Extracurricularly, I was a member of xx University Student TV Station.

My strong academic qualifications contributed to my career opportunities with China’s top media organizations. From July 2000 to June 2002, I worked at xx News Agency where I was an editor at the News Department of the Agency’s Network Center. Apart from completing my proper responsibilities, I published a series of articles and interviews, some of which were reprinted by other media like xx. As a correspondent, I reported on the xx.

My greatest professional achievements come from my employment since June 2002 at xx Channel as executive producer. I have been responsible for the production of the xx, a 30-minute show on leading business giants and their successful stories. My responsibilities included masterminding the subject, in-studio and off-studio interviewing, and after-editing and producing. Among more than a dozen shows, The Business Opportunities of xx created the highest viewing rate for 203 and How xx Converted Knowledge Capital into Monetary Capital was given the Best Interview Award for the first quarter of 2003. In addition, I cooperated with other TV channels in and off xx on several programs.

Even though our show as a specialized program cannot reach a viewing rate as high as that of the more popular entertainment shows, it is still important for us to improve our show and maximize its viewing rate. This is in keeping with the market-oriented media reform currently going on in China’s media industry. Therefore I have decided to take a year out to receive new professional input by going outside the mainland to pursue a Master’s program in Journalism from the University of xx. This will undoubtedly heighten my understanding of Journalism and Mass Communication both on the theoretical and practical levels. Hong Kong, the place where a perfect economic and cultural fusion between the East and the West has developed in the contemporary history, has one of the most developed media industries in the world. I believe that your program will teach me a lot of useful knowledge and expertise that will prove crucial to my future career development.

In my study plan, I would like to focus on the problems and prospects of Chinese Communication under the impact of globalization. Although communication education and research in Chinese societies have begun to burgeon in recent decades, a close observation of the field in China found that the emphasis of the field is fragmented and unbalanced. China is much behind the trend, slow in instituting a more systematic study in the field of communication. More specifically, the discipline of communication study in Chinese societies suffers from four common problems: incomplete landscape, skill orientation, lack of collaboration, and westernization.

The advent of a new era of telecommunications and human interconnection has introduced a globalizing trend in human society in which people are forced to redefine the meaning of identity, community, and citizenship, and communication educators and scholars everywhere are required to face this impact of globalization. Four issues emerged from the trend of globalization will constantly challenge communication discipline, including how to build a new sense of community, how to balance the dialectical relationship between cultural identity and cultural diversity, how to deal with impact of global media, and how to foster citizenship in the global civic society.

The center of problems faced by human beings in the future society actually surrounds the movement and counter-movement between globalization versus localization, or between cultural diversity and cultural identity. The success of communication study in Chinese societies in the 21st century is dependent on the ability to balance the pulling and pushing forces between globalization and localization.
 
Globalization is a process of reducing barriers between countries and encouraging a closer interaction in different aspects of human society. The process dissolves the limit of space and time through the widespread connectivity and integrates human societies into a global community. However, globalization also reflects a dilemma that represents a pulling and pushing between local diversity and global identity.  Globalization not only demands an integration of cultural diversity in the global community, but at the same time also reflects people’s needs to develop a strong self or cultural identity(ies). Communication discipline in Chinese societies cannot exempt itself from the impact of this demand.

For the Chinese communication community, there are four major prospects. It needs to expand its perspective for a global picture. It must be knowledgeable enough to balance contradictions of globalization. It should also be flexible enough to flow with and manage changes on personal and professional levels due to the impact of globalization. And finally it ought to be sensitive and open enough to value diversity for continuous improvement.

The future of Chinese communication study must aim to educate its members to become a competent citizen in both global and local levels, and the problems faced by Chinese communication study should as well be solved under this framework. By first developing a global mindset, members of Chinese communication community will be enabled to envision the change of world trends and to engage in the process of regulating the change through the abilities of motivating themselves to respect diversity, expecting themselves to reconcile conflict, propelling themselves to regulate change, and orienting themselves to the globalizing process.

Using the impact of globalization on human society to examine the problems and prospects of communication study and education in Chinese societies, I hope that, through your program, I can examine the in-depth implications of the problems of Chinese communication community and what specific measures and actions must be taken in order to realize the four prospects. I will not simply focus on journalism but on communication as a whole and, geographically, how communication among Chinese in the Greater China Region and in the entire world will be made possible.