Switching power or surviving on the margin? Wanda Group as a case study for understanding network power in China

Abstract A growing number of private Chinese media companies have reached an economic scale comparable to established Western media conglomerates, providing fertile ground for revisiting and revising media theories developed in the Western context. This article makes theoretical and practical contributions by showcasing the potential and plight of Wanda Group (Wanda). In particular, it examines the extent to which Castells’ network theory of power (1998, 2016) can be applied to a non-Western political economy. We use publicly available financial documents and an archive of more than 3,000 newspaper articles to examine how Wanda builds, exercises, and loses its switching power. While highlighting the primacy of the switcher as described by Castells, we demonstrate Wanda’s switching power is fragile, and its exercise remains constrained and contingent on the extent to which the company aligns with the interests of the Chinese state.