Research paper Purpose The current study attempts to examine how media ownership, media usage and attention to advertising vary among urban and rural children in Mainland China. It also collects information about the contexts of media usage and time spent on various activities including media usage. Design/methodology/approach . Questionnaires were distributed through sixteen elementary schools and local researchers were selected and trained to administer the data collection. Findings Media

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... rship and media exposure were high for television, children's books, cassette players, VCD players and radios among both urban and rural samples. In general, media ownership, exposure and usage were higher among urban children JCM rural-urban.doc 3 than that among rural children. However, television ownership and television exposure were slightly higher among rural children than among urban children. The urban-rural gap between media ownership and media exposure was more prominent for new media such as DVD and computer/internet. Chinese children had low to medium attention to advertising. Rural children reported a higher attention to television commercial than urban children while urban children reported a higher attention to other forms of advertising than rural children. Media usage by sex and by age group was also reported. Research limitations/implications