James Lull - China turned on : television, reform, and resistance

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: TELEVISION

Volume 10

CHINA TURNED ON

China Turned on

Television, reform, and resistance

James Lull

First published in 1991

This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1991 James Lull

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-82199-5 (Set)
eISBN: 978-0-203-51517-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-83896-2 (Volume 10)
eISBN: 978-0-203-77494-6 (Volume 10)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

China Turned on

The years following the Cultural Revolution have seen the arrival of television as part of China's effort to 'modernize' and open up to the West. Endorsed by the Deng Xiaoping regime as a 'bridge' between government and the people, television became at once the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party and the most popular form of entertainment for Chinese people living in the cities. But the authorities failed to realize the unmatched cultural power of television to inspire resistance to official ideologies, expectations, and lifestyles.

The coming of television has intensified the fundamental contradictions of China's socialist society. Its presence in the homes of the urban Chinese has strikingly broadened the cultural and political awareness of its audience and has provoked the people, long treated as compliant recipients of state ideology, to imagine better ways of living as individuals, families, and as a nation. In China after Tiananmen Square, television remains crucially important in the continuing struggle for freedom and democracy.

Set within the framework of China's political and economic environment in the modernization period, James Lull's insightful analysis is based on ethnographic data collected in China before and after the Tiananmen Square disaster. He has interviewed leading Chinese television executives and nearly one hundred families in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xian. Lull shows how Chinese television fosters opposition to the government through the work routines of media professionals, the polysemy of television imagery, and the roles of critical, active audience members.

James Lull is a writer and broadcaster based in San Francisco, California. He is author of Inside Family Viewing (1990), and editor of World Families Watch Television (1988) and Popular Music and Communication (1991).

CHINA TURNED ON

Television, reform, and resistance

James Lull

For Kate Schmalhorst and the memory of Randolph 'Pony' Schmalhorst

First published 1991
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

1991 James Lull

Set in 10/12 Baskerville by Intype, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lull, James
China turned on: television, reform and resistance.
1. China. Society. Effects of television
I. Title
302.23450951

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lull, James.
China turned on: television, reform, and resistance/James Lull.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Television and family-China. 2. Television broadcastingSocial aspects-China. I. Title.
HQ520.L848 1991
302.23'45-dc20 91-2439

ISBN 0-415-05215-7
0-415-05216-5 pbk

Contents

Standing at the top of Tiananmen Gate on a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1989, looking out over vast and desolate Tiananmen Square that was still under martial law at the time, I realized once again why I am so enamored with China. Thrilling, frustrating, fascinating, disappointing China is a mystery, even to the Chinese. The public outcry for freedom and democracy and the violent military repression of 1989, in some odd and terrible sense, characterize the extreme ups and downs of China's history since the founding of the People's Republic more than 40 years ago.

The massacre on the streets of Beijing was the government's brutal way to reclaim a country that it had lost. The sharp political confrontation that led to the crackdown in the capital came on the heels of a disastrous downward turn in the economy in the late 1980s. But what has torn China apart goes a long way beyond problems of politics and economics. At the heart of China's unrest is a profound change in the way Chinese people think about themselves, a transformation of cultural consciousness that is the byproduct of the nation's attempt to modernize technologically. What I set out to show in this book is that an unsurpassed contributing cause of resistance to the government in China stems from the unforseen impact of the very showpiece of technological modernization and national reform television.

This book is an ethnography of culture and communication in contemporary urban China. I place the role of television within the nation's cultural, economic, and political development in the communist era and emphasize what has taken place during the modernization period, beginning roughly at the start of the last decade, when television entered the everyday lives of Chinese families. Rather than just describe how China has changed since then, I offer an explanation. The arguments I construct do not rely on surface impressions or on the insights of 'experts.' The story of China's dramatic cultural and political upheaval told here draws directly from the thoughts and words of Chinese people themselves.

The terrible military crackdown of 1989, of course, has sobered the romanticism that many Westerners, including myself, tend to develop about China. The country that for many years appeared to be the most progressive and promising of communist nations had become in two bloody days among the most repressive and dispirited. Nonetheless, I believe strongly that the world should not, and ultimately cannot, turn its back on China completely. As the influence of world communism erodes in nations as different and distant as Romania and Nicaragua, democratic change will come in its own culturally-specific way to China too. In the meantime, it does not make sense to abandon the Chinese people. Nor should the continuing plea for freedom and democracy there be interpreted primarily in terms of the economic interests of foreign countries. I worry that in the excitement surrounding the fall of repressive communist governments we may lose sight of what the humanitarian principles of socialism mean to the world community.

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