How Chinese Local Official Image Is Shaped in Political TV Series

• In Event: Genre, Subcultures, and Politics

Abstract

The Knockout is a political TV series gaining great popularity in the year 2023 in China, its nationwide discussion of corruption among central and local officials shows the authenticity of the portrayal of such character images in this TV series.
Through the method of Critical Discourse Analysis, in the process of direct and indirect(productive) censorship of the image of government officials conducted by SARFT(The State Administration of Radio Film and Television in China, Abbreviations are used in the following text) and producers, the images of local officials have four typical kinds in total: The positive officials who represent the modern “rule of law” and advocate the use of power for "public interest"; The negative officials who use the “rules of Renqing (human relations)” to manipulate power and obtain personal benefits; The negligent officials who are struggling between “Renqing” and “rule of law”, and finally "slip" from justice to “rule of Renqing”; Fourth, officials who believe "power neutral" and are not motivated to seek their own interests.
From the construction of the representation of Chinese local officials, It can be seen that the central government tends to create an "absolute" type of image, with both positive and negative roles at two extremes. It reveals Chinese government is strict about building a modern country under the rule of law for bureaucratic officials and for the maintenance of the regime. Besides, this passage also reveals the power dynamics between central SARFT censorship and the productive censorship by producers.
The invisibility of the central corrupt officials in the TV series also reflects the “Pressure release mechanism” for the central censors, which means that any misstep only belongs to local but will not reflect the central Party and threatens its rule.
However, as a political TV series, the popularity of the series in China also speaks to the Chinese people's concern about the political ecology, and the authenticity of the official images presented in the series, indicating that the Chinese government's dynamic standards for censorship are constantly updated.

Author

• Linnea Tang.L