英媒 從《狂飆》看中共掃黑反腐決心

英媒：從《狂飆》看中共掃黑反腐決心

2023.02.20來源：參考消息網

參考消息網2月20日報道 英國《金融時報》網站2月17日報道，關注電視劇《狂飆》反映中國的反腐運動。報道稱，這部劇以“較高的製作水準和細致的情節設計”受到廣泛歡迎和熱議。報道還說，不同於讚頌叛逆者破壞體製的好萊塢式敘事，《狂飆》中的主人公警察遵守黨紀、令行禁止。報道摘編如下：

在坐滿參會人員的政府大樓裏，一位高級官員警告稱，這場旨在根除腐敗和犯罪的運動將不僅針對犯罪團夥，而且還將關注黨員幹部。這位官員說，現在要“刀刃向內”，這是黨中央作出的決策部署。

掃黑反腐電視劇《狂飆》由此開始。這是中國近期最受歡迎的電視節目之一，講述了中國的全麵反腐運動。

美國約翰斯·霍普金斯大學的專家洪源遠說：“反腐被視為黨主動恢複正直和活力的一種手段。”

根據去年10月中共二十大期間一次記者招待會上公布的數據，中共十八大以來，全國紀檢監察機關共立案審查調查各級“一把手”20.7萬人。

近幾個月來，反腐運動繼續推進。本周，有關部門宣布對中國足協主席陳戌源展開調查。

除了《狂飆》，近年來以反腐為題材的電視劇還包括2021年播出的《掃黑風暴》和2017年的《人民的名義》等。

以較高的製作水準和細致的情節設計，《狂飆》講述了一名警察和一名黑社會頭目長達數十年的較量，受到了廣泛歡迎和熱議。

河南鄭州的管理專業學生王興瑞（音）說：“這部劇引人入勝，而且是根據真實事件改編的。”

在許多方麵，《狂飆》堅守黨的路線。不同於讚頌叛逆者破壞體製的好萊塢式敘事，《狂飆》中的主人公警察遵守黨紀、令行禁止。

奧地利維也納大學的中國政治專家李玲說：“好萊塢打造了很多超級英雄，受到美國人的喜愛。但中國影視劇中的主人公不會單獨行動，就像《狂飆》裏的警察一樣。”

Chinese TV series shines light on Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crusade

https://www.ft.com/content/abdeebc2-0bbe-4c78-83bd-a4515d814694

‘The Knockout’ seen as a way for Communist party to shore up credibility after zero-Covid blunders

A villager watches the 20th national congress of China’s Communist party in October last year © An Ming/Future Publishing/Getty Images

Chinese TV series shines light on Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crusade on twitter (opens in a new window)

By Joe Leahy and Kai Waluszewski in Beijing FEBRUARY 16 2023

 

In a government building packed with Chinese Communist party cadres, a senior official warns that a campaign to root out corruption and vice will target not just criminal gangs but his fellow apparatchiks — at the orders of China’s all-powerful president himself.

“Now it’s time to turn the blade of the knife inwards,” said the official. “This strategic decision comes from the party central committee and its core, comrade Xi Jinping.”

Thus begins crime drama The Knockout, one of China’s most popular recent television shows, which dramatises President Xi Jinping’s sweeping crackdown on corruption — one of the broadest in the party’s history and a hallmark of his decade-long term in power.

At a time when the party’s credibility has been strained by a slowing economy and chaotic exit from its zero-Covid policy, highlighting the anti-corruption campaign is seen as a way to shore up its legitimacy as Xi begins an unprecedented third term in office.

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Popular crime drama ‘The Knockout’ dramatises President Xi Jinping’s corruption clampdown

The series hints at “the party’s concerns that its legitimacy has taken a hit from the zero-Covid policy and economic slowdown”, said Yuen Yuen Ang, professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of China’s Gilded Age, which examines corruption in China.

“Anti-corruption is seen as a means to restore the party’s integrity and vigour on its own initiative and thereby avert social discontent,” she added.

Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, launched an anti-graft campaign in 2013 against systemic corruption that he argued was undermining the Communist party’s authority — and to neutralise potential political rivals, according to observers of Chinese politics.

The campaign netted prominent national figures such as Zhou Yongkang, China’s former security chief, and Ling Jihua, a top aide to former president Hu Jintao.

“The two previous major factions in the party — the Shanghai faction [of late president Jiang Zemin] and the Communist Youth League [of former president Hu] — have been marginalised through Xi Jinping’s masterful use of the anti-corruption drive,” said Willy Lam, an expert in Chinese politics at the Jamestown Foundation think-tank in Washington.

“I think Xi Jinping will continue to use this technique because there are still factions who don’t see eye to eye with him,” Lam said, adding that the crackdown had shifted to target public security officials and businesspeople seen as aligned with rival factions such as in the tech sector.

At the CCP’s 20th congress in October, where he secured a third term as party leader and military chief, Xi boasted that 207,000 “top leaders” at all levels had been investigated by the country’s feared discipline inspection and supervision organs.

Ling Li, a Chinese politics expert at the University of Vienna, said that the campaign, while rooting out corrupt officials, was selective in terms of its targets for investigation. “There might be corruption everywhere, so why do you only go after these guys?”

Rather than slowing as Xi consolidated power, the crackdown has accelerated in recent months. This week, authorities announced an investigation into China’s national football association chief Chen Xuyuan.

“There appears to be an intense revival of anti-corruption in the beginning of 2023,” said Ang.

The party’s censors have increasingly turned to television. Aside from the 39-episode The Knockout, which aired its finale this month, programmes such as Crime Crackdown released in 2021 and In the Name of the People in 2017 focused on the anti-corruption crusade.

Last year, China Central Television, a state-owned broadcaster, aired a five-part series, Zero Tolerance, in which convicted CCP officials gave on-screen confessions that revealed their abuse of power. Viewers were not convinced: many said the officials appeared unapologetic on screen and their sentences were too lenient.

 Recommended Chinese business & finance China’s Big Fund corruption probe casts shadow over chip sector The Knockout, with higher production value and a more nuanced plot focusing on the decades-long rivalry between a clean cop and a crime boss, has drawn stronger reviews. It has also been much more popular. 

“The story is based on real events. It’s very exciting, while reflecting the darkness of the political and legal system,” said Wang Xingrui, a management student in Zhengzhou, in China’s central Henan province. But in many respects, The Knockout adheres to the party line. Unlike Hollywood narratives that celebrate the renegade individual’s ability to disrupt the system, the policeman obeys the party hierarchy, awaiting his orders before acting. “Hollywood has a lot of superheroes — Americans like them. But the hero in Chinese propaganda shows like this one, they cannot work alone,” said the University of Vienna’s Li. “All the wrongs have to be corrected through the authorisation of the higher authority of the party, which is not corruptible.”