Chinese Fashion Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Chinese Fashion Industry - Essay Example The essay "Chinese Fashion Industry" talks about International Fashion Magazines and their Social Power in China. The government censors the media heavily, with foreign materials and literature screened thoroughly before they are consumed by the Chinese. This not withstanding, the media of the people’s republic of china is one of the vibrant one around the world. Due to the fact that the government no longer subsidizes the state media houses, they have been affected by a shortage of fund (Evans, 2004). This means that they cannot function fully. This has given them a motivation to move away from being the government mouth pieces to produce items that can be consumed by the public. This has meant even going overboard and starting to import foreign programs to broadcast to the local audience. However, the foreign content is still tightly censored by the government. This phenomenon can be found both in print and electronic media. The number of newspapers and magazines circulating in the country has more than tripled in the last three decades. In 2004, the number of magazines circulating in china was approximately 9700. More than a quarter of these titles were commercial magazines. It is a fact that the government has relaxed its regulation on both local and foreign literature, albeit at a small measure. This, coupled with the increased wealth of the Chinese citizens, has attracted a lot of foreign media. The twenty first century has seen an influx of international and foreign media in this country. This includes print media and electronic media. The people of china can now watch foreign program, albeit loosely censored, via the pay channels. They are able now to read publications from the international media houses like the New York Times. Foreign fashion magazines have not been left behind (Xing, 2009). A lot of fashion magazines are now available to Chinese people from foreign publishers. The September of the year 2005 saw such one magazine been launched in china. Conde Nast, the publishers of best selling fashion magazines, launched a local version of one of their best selling magazine. This was Vogue, which they labelled Vogue China (Gareth, 2008). The magazine had some local content with a dash of foreign fashion literature. The first issue was a thick, 430 pages of fashion (Gareth, 2008). It sold very first. In fact, the first 300,000 copies were literally scrambled for by the local fashionistas. The cover model was Australian Gemma Ward. But there was also a dash of local models like Wang Wenqin, Tong Chenjie among others (Miss Zhang, personal communication, 2008). This was the case with other foreign magazines that were making their debut in the Chinese market. However, this success was short lived. Three years down the line, vogue china seems to have grounded to a halt as far as influencing the Chinese fashion culture is concerned (Xing, 2009). It has been left for the few people in the society who are in the elite segment and who have western and foreign orientations. Vogue china can be described as having failed on its mission to change the Chinese. However, local fashion magazines have succeeded in these areas that high end and foreign magazines have failed. The above scenario is not restricted to Vogue China only. Others international magazines which had enjoyed some measure of success after their launching have fizzled out (Latham, 2007). This paper will look at the reason why this is so. Could it be the change in consumer taste, competition or other factors which have led to this scenario The writer, having been an intern at Vogue China offices,