Classic or farce? Making a spectacle of the ‘anti-Japan drama’, 2000–15

This chapter argues that a case has constantly been defining the current socio-political culture of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A strange case of the television market phenomenon, the ‘anti-Japan serials’ have generated a media event representative of the cultural industry in the PRC. It also marks the twenty-first century as a time in the history of the Chinese television economy that witnesses the irreversible loss of a concentrated ownership over both the content of mass entertainment and audience reception. Considering the unique circumstances of the PRC, the relationship between audience responses and producer considerations could never be straightforward; it must thread its way through state planning and censorship. Since the mid-2000s, State Administration for Radio, Film and Television, in tightening control over nearly every format and topic of television dramas, has turned ‘anti-Japan serials’ into one of a few ‘safe’ categories that the market can still produce without risking censorship.