China never went through the culture of mass media that the West, especially the U.S., experienced.

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The definition is fluid, but popular culture, language, film, music and mass media all certainly fit the bill, and China is making or at least trying to make inroads on all those fronts around the world.

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That said, however, today's digital media culture -- which shatters the 20th century mass audience into billions of 21st century authors and enables them all to broadcast their most intimate thoughts to the world -- seems to be making narcissism the default mode of contemporary existence.

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