By Ye Kuangzheng (叶匡政), a Beijing-based poet, scholar and commentator
Economic Observer Online
Feb 14, 2012
Translated by Laura Lin
Original article: [Chinese]

Since last October, China's television stations have been behaving like frightened birds not knowing where to perch.

The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) has come out with and endless stream of bans and prohibitions, in an effort to control and censor the cultural products that they're broadcasting. After the "cutback on TV entertainment" (限娱令) aimed at programs such as match-making game shows and other entertainment programming,

and the "TV commercials ban" (限广令), now there's a prime-time ban on airing foreign television series, including Taiwanese and Hong Kong productions. Furthermore, the air time devoted to foreign dramas must not exceed 25 percent of a channel's overall daily drama programming, and any series is limited to a maximum of 50 episodes.

It's hard to understand the logic of these bans. The choice of entertaining programs, foreign or home-made, or the decision of how many ads are shown has been already worked out by local television stations according to their own rules and broadcasting style. There's absolutely no need to manage an autonomous market which is capable of self-governance. The audience is not stupid. They can use their remote controls to cut off the lousy dramas or excessive advertising spots.

Such bans mean that the marketing experience and strategy acquired by the TV stations over the years has now become ineffective. Instead, they have to explore a new set of rules. This will negatively impact the growth and self-regulation mechanisms of the market.

At first glance, the ban on offshore drama seems to provide a monopoly to Chinese-made productions. But because of the earlier restrictions on commercial spots, a lot of local TV stations are now struggling to generate enough income to finance production of their own programs. This cuts into local TV's audience ratings.

Let the Cultural 'Ecology' Flourish

It's obvious the harm that this kind of monopoly can bring. Without the competition and comparison with offshore programs, coupled with the advertising restrictions, China's national TV production quality is bound to fall. Yet the SARFT doesn't seem to mind the constraints caused by these bans.

In this new century, with the expanding competition of Internet and video, TV has become increasingly vulnerable, attractive mainly to the middle-aged and elderly.

Strangely enough, instead of taking initiatives to revitalize the market, SARFT seems willing to suppress it through all kinds of prohibitions. From bans on imperial dramas and comic series through to restrictions placed on dramas that are about corruption or spies, now it's the foreign series that have to go.

Yet, TV content has hardly stood out for its quality. Programs are actually getting worse, to an extent that people feel that China is sliding towards moral degeneration.

Perhaps SARFT's real aim is to reduce local TV's ratings in a bid to drive viewers back to CCTV, the predominant state television broadcaster. Although CCTV is also restricted by all these bans, it still functions as the state propaganda machine. The style as well as the content of the dramas it produces are thus relatively restricted in attracting an audience. In the past few years, its ratings as well as its share of advertising income have been declining.

Still, the various bans have undoubtedly weakened local TV, and a part of the total pool of advertising revenue is naturally going to return to CCTV. This truth is confirmed by the total sum of advertising on CCTV for the year to come – a record-breaking total of 14 billion RMB ($2.2 billion), ending a progressive decline over the last 18 years.

The new ban's harm is not just limited to local television stations, but to culture as well. Since the opening-up of China in the 1980s, a lot of imported programs, including those from Taiwan and Hong Kong, have greatly influenced the cultural sphere. The prosperity of culture comes from a broad vision and free thinking. To block cultural exchange channels is to suppress a nation's space to grow culturally.

Any closed society is bound to decline. If foreign dramas also deal with universal topics such aa the pursuit of freedom, love, life and beauty, what's the point of isolating the people from them? That can only encourage the speculation of a pseudo-culture, which, on appearance, seems to promote "harmony," but in reality is undermining the freedom of this country's cultural ecology to flourish.

American author, media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman, pointed out a long time ago in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business that although television has weakened people's faculty for rational inquiry through reading, its emotional power is nevertheless a new rhetoric of truth.
Everybody knows that there's a lot of "trash" on TV, but the existence of trash is precisely the guarantee of virtue and spiritual freedom. In all culture, good and evil, refined and vulgar, are always entangled together. It is only through comparison that people perceive the difference.

If we are forced to exclude popular culture, people will lose their judgment of goodness and quality at the same time. Multiculturalism seeks to create people with a differentiating consciousness of good and evil, refined and vulgar. An individual's virtues are exactly based on their judgment and choices. They won't be nourished in ignorant soil, nor rely on a mandatory exercise proposed by others.

A civilized and dignified nation will not depend on various prohibitions and restrictions to grow up.

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