Pervasive sense of inadequacy

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily) Updated: 2014-03-15 08:06

By default, Chinese couch potatoes should and would prefer locally produced content, as testified by a recent poll that puts the rate of preference at 53 percent. But a limited free market-with productions open to all but television channels monopolized by State entities-has created the strange outcome of quantity trumping quality, with some 15,000 episodes churned out each year but precious few winning the hearts of the viewing public.

Of course there are multiple reasons why Chinese soap operas have become the favorite punching bag. Other than overzealous censors and the bar of viewers' reception set by the lowest common denominator, the industry itself has never set right its mechanism for operation. The role of the creator, the most important job for American scripted programming and often assumed by the head writer, is vacant in China.

Writers are often considered dispensable for those who invest in Chinese soap operas, and unsurprisingly, denied parts of the compensation stipulated in the contract. Because Chinese television sprang from the film industry, few have realized that, unlike director-dominated films, TV is the art of the writer, which is accepted in almost all countries with highly developed television industries.

When the most crucial position in a creative industry is relegated to a hack, you can imagine what kind of product will ensue. There is no pride, only money, in the business. And people have little incentive to sharpen their skills when the money is numbingly intoxicating. So everyone involved treats it as a fly-by-night operation.