In late 1995, the drama Heaven Above (Cangtian zaishang) debuted on Chinese TV. The series featured a villainous high-ranked government official and was the first of the wildly popular corruption dramas that have riveted the nation ever since. Staging Corruption looks at the rise, fall, and reincarnation of corruption dramas, and their articulation of the collective dreams, and nightmares, of China in the market reform era. It also considers how these dramas, as products of the interplay between television stations, production companies, media regulation, and political...

The past two decades witnessed the rise of television entertainment in China. Although television networks are still state-owned and Party-controlled in China, the ideological landscape of television programs has become increasingly diverse and even paradoxical, simultaneously subservient and defiant, nationalistic and cosmopolitan, moralistic and fun-loving, extravagant and mundane. Studying Chinese television as a key node in the network of power relationships, therefore, provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the tension-fraught and, paradox-permeated conditions of Chinese...