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Ethics and Pragmatism: China's Television Producers Confront the Cultural Market

Since its beginnings in 1958, television in China has been hailed as the ‘mouthpiece of the Party, the government and the people’. The rapid expansion of the television industry since deregulation policies were introduced in 1983 has significantly compticated this relationship. New doctrines of accounlability and supply–demand economics have been prescribed as blueprints for the success of cultural institutions now forced to survive without state funding. Whilst the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is anxious to see the television industry ‘stand on its own feet’ and respond to the challenges of market economics, there are also fears that its role as ‘mouthpiece’ might be diminished. The Communist Party has thus sought to curb the excesses of what it considers ‘unhealthy influences’, while at the same time learning from the successes of the market. This paper examines the emergence of Chinese ‘popular’ serial drama in the 1990s and the manner in which this form of television has been co-opted by the Communist Party as a means of inculcating new modes of ethical behaviour appropriate to a modern commodity economy.