This book advances research about China by providing an updated narrative of its entertainment life in the beginning of China’s twenty-first century. As the rest of the world continues to pay keen attention to developments in China’s politics, economy, and culture, the book provides insights on fascinating new developments in contemporary Chinese popular culture—including its reality television, family dramas centered around younger generations’ life struggles, and social media. Furthermore, Entertainment and Politics in Contemporary China is the first book to apply the theoretical innovation of an aesthetic public sphere in examining closely the linkages between China’s political life and activities in the country’s culture sphere. Since concepts of public sphere and democracy largely took root from the West, Wu argues that this case study of China promises valuable insights about entertainment’s role in the formation of citizenship and building of a civil society, which remains a site of great contention in Western theories and empirical efforts.

Due to high audience numbers and the significant influence upon the opinions and values of viewers, the political leadership in China attributes great importance to the impact of television dramas. Many successful TV serials have served as useful conduits to disseminate official rhetoric and mainstream ideology, and they also offer a rich area of research by providing insight into the changing Chinese political, social and cultural context. This book examines a group of recently released TV drama serials in China which focus upon, and to various degrees represent, topical political, social and cultural phenomena. Some of the selected TV serials reflect the present ideological proclivities of the Chinese government, whilst others mirror social and cultural occurrences or provide coded and thought-provoking messages on China’s socio-economic and political reality. Through in-depth textual analysis of the plots, scenes and characters of these selected TV serials, the book provides timely interpretations of contemporary Chinese society, its political inclinations, social fashions and cultural tendencies. The book also demonstrates how popular media narratives of TV drama serials engage with sensitive civic issues and cultural phenomena of modern-day China, which in turn encourages a broader social imagination and potential for change. Advancing our understanding of contemporary China, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Chinese culture, society and politics, as well as those with research interests in television studies more generally.

After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences. In particular, the volume focuses on the interplay of politics and media. The book’s intended readership is academics and students of Chinese studies, language and discourse, and media and communication studies.

Acting the Right Part is a cultural history of huaju (modern Chinese drama) from 1966 to 1996. Xiaomei Chen situates her study both in the context of Chinese literary and cultural history and in the context of comparative drama and theater, cultural studies, and critical issues relevant to national theater worldwide. Following a discussion of the marginality of modern Chinese drama in relation to other genres, periods, and cultures, early chapters focus on the dynamic relationship between theater and revolution. Chosen during the Cultural Revolution as the exclusive artistic vehicle to promote proletariat art, "model theater" raises important questions about the complex relationships between women, memory, nation/state, revolution, and visual culture. Throughout this study, Chen argues that dramatic norms inform both theatrical performance and everyday political behavior in contemporary China.

Since the early 1990s the media and cultural fields in China have become increasingly commercialized, resulting in a massive boom in the cultural and entertainment industries. This evolution has also brought about fundamental changes in media behaviour and communication, and the enormous growth of entertainment culture and the extensive penetration of new media into the everyday lives of Chinese people. Against the backdrop of the rapid development of China’s media industry and the huge growth in social media, this book explores the emotional content and public discourse of popular media in contemporary China. It examines the production and consumption of blockbuster films, television dramas, entertainment television shows, and their corresponding online audience responses, and describes the affective articulations generated by cultural and media texts, audiences and social contexts. Crucially, this book focuses on the agency of audiences in consuming these media products, and the affective communications taking place in this process in order to address how and why popular culture and entertainment programs exert so much power over mass audiences in China. Indeed, Shuyu Kong shows how Chinese people have sought to make sense of the dramatic historical changes of the past three decades through their engagement with popular media, and how this process has created a cultural public sphere where social communication and public discourse can be launched and debated in aesthetic and emotional terms. Based on case studies that range from television drama to blockbuster films, and reality television programmes to social media sites, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, media and communication studies, film studies and television studies.

Most current research on the evolution of China’s propaganda discourse only touches upon recent variations of official propaganda rhetoric grounded in popular media. Here, the research is extended by tapping into the most recently released popular cultural media narratives such as online documentaries, films, TV drama serials and education programs, all of which are enlisted and co-opted by the state for propaganda goals. This book maps out the cutting-edge expansions of official propaganda that are embedded in the entertainment industry of contemporary China. Its case studies bring to light the progression of the mainstream propaganda discourse in terms of its merging, cooperation and compromise with the commercial features of both the traditional and newly-emerging entertainment media. In particular, it examines a group of mass entertainment products which include two best-selling mainstream blockbusters, two on-line commercial web documentaries, the China Central Television Moon Festival Gala series, socialist revolutionary TV drama serials, and a prime time science and education program. In so doing, it forefronts the up-to-date developments and novelties of state propaganda: its motives, reasoning and approaches within the mediasphere of today’s China. Illustrating how the CCP propaganda apparatus and tactics evolve and become embedded in popular media products, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, Media Studies and Popular Cultural Studies.

This book explores xiangsheng, one of the most popular folk art performance genres in China, its enlistment by official propaganda machine after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its revival in popularity under Guo Degang and his Deyun Club. Just as the 1950's saw the shift of xiangsheng 's social function from entertainment to the political tool of ‘serving the party’, Guo Degang has completed the paradigm shift by turning its focus back to ‘serving the people’ as a means of entertainment and social criticism. This volume examines how Guo has resurrected the essence of xiangsheng, successfully commercialised it in a market economy, and simultaneously deconstructed the official discourse through grassroots means.