Television in Post-Reform China Serial Dramas, Confucian Leadership and the Global Television Market

This book explores the political, economic, and cultural forces, locally and globally that have shaped the evolution of Chinese primetime television dramas, and the way that these dramas in turn have actively engaged in the major intellectual and policy debates concerning the path, steps, and speed of China’s economic and political modernization during the post-Deng Xiaoping era. It intertwines the evolution of Chinese television drama particularly with the ascendance of the Chinese New Left that favors a recentralization of state authority and an alternative path towards China’s modernization and China’s current administration’s call for building a "harmonious society." Two types of serial drama are highlighted in this regard, the politically provocative dynasty drama and the culturally ambiguous domestic drama. The book also provides cross-cultural comparisons that parallel the textual and institutional strategies of transnational Chinese language TV dramas with dramas from the three leading centers of transnational television production, the US, Brazil and Mexico in Latin America, and the Korean-led East Asia region. The comparison reveals creative connections while it also explores how the emergence of a Chinese cultural-linguistic market, together with other cultural-linguistic markets, complicates the power dynamics of global cultural flows.

1. Chinese Television Drama as Art, Political Discourse, and Transnational Capital 2. History as Political Discourse: Dynastic and Contemporary Anti-Corruption Dramas 3. TV Drama as Political Discourse II: Marching towards the Republic and the Great Emperor Hanwu 4. Dynasty Drama and Serial Narrative 5. Chinese Domestic Theme Dramas, Latin American Telenovelas, and Korean Trendy Dramas 6. Transnational Circulation of Chinese Language Television dramas 7. Building a Harmonious Society through Television Drama: Towards a Chinese Century?

Ying Zhu is Associate Professor of Media Culture, City University of New York-Staten Island, USA. She is the author of Chinese Cinema during the Era of Reform: The Ingenuity of the System, and her work has appeared in leading media journals and various edited books.