Confucian Revival and the Media: the CCTV “Lecture Room” Program

chapter 10 Confucian Revival and the Media: The CCTV “Lecture Room” Program Fabrice Dulery Broadcasted since 2001 on CCTV 10, “Lecture Room” (百家講壇 Baijia jiang- tan, thereafter BJJT) is still a social phenomenon in today’s China. At its very beginning, the program was meant to be purely academic in terms of content, primarily targeting a learned audience. BJJT was bound to disappear due to low audience rates, until the producer, in 2004, decided to focus on Chinese traditional culture. This was a turning point. In spite of the apparent dull and solemn decorum in which each show is performed (a scholar standing before a pulpit gives a lecture about some historical character or classical opus during forty-five minutes), the program and its by-products1 have attracted millions of people and encountered an overwhelming success between 2006 to 2009, featuring scholars like Yu Dan 於丹 (lectures dedicated to the Analects of Confucius2) or Yi Zhongtian3 易中天 (the Three Kingdoms). The reasons of such a success are well known: an efficient narrative structure, the inser- tion of lively anecdotes, a constant interaction between past and present. According to the program slogan, the narrator has to serve the people. In a way that is not without reminding of the Maoist understanding of the ideologi- cal role of the intellectuals, it undertakes a mission of popularization of the “Chinese excellent traditional culture.” This mission needs to be understood within a larger narrative of national rejuvenation that builds on a variety of different resources and clearly includes, along with references to the socialist heritage, numerous references to Chinese traditional culture (see the intro- duction to this volume). Lots of speculations take place on the concrete role that traditional culture in general and Confucianism in particular could play in today’s China. By providing detailed information and analysis of a very 1 Regular publication of books, DVDs and videos on the Internet complement the TV broad- cast. Videos can be found on BJJT official website: http://tv.cctv.com/lm/bjjt/. 2 Yu Dan, a Professor of media studies at Beijing Normal University, became famous with her program dedicated to the Analects of Confucius broadcasted on 2006. Five million copies of her book Confucius from the Heart (論語心得 Lunyu xinde) were sold within two years fol- lowing BJJT program. 3 A Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Xiamen University. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004374966_012 Confucian Revival and the Media 303 concrete case, this chapter emphasizes its function of jiaohua (education/ transformation) in a “mediatic age.” By the end of the 1990s, television in China had expanded to an extent that it had become the hegemonic medium of communications prior to the Internet boom. By 2005, television networks covered 94.4% of the Chinese population with a daily audience of 650 million people.4 The central TV network (CCTV) kept an organic function as voice of the party in a context where mass-media propaganda replaced the permanent exercise of symbolical violence in the name of class struggle by more efficient domination patterns staging forms of popular consent.5 This position was reinforced with the implementation of Hu Jintao’s doctrine of harmonious society. In a circular movement, television was supposed to perform correct guidance of public opinion while channeling ordinary people’s concerns. As a major cultural and communication medium, television is considered by the Chinese authorities as a battlefield for the propagation of government- supported traditional Chinese culture. Thorough study of the CCP’s doctrinal corpus6 in the 2000s indicates that political use of traditional culture was officially designated as a major task, alongside with the building of a spiritual civilization (Jiang Zemin) and the construction of harmonious society (Hu Jintao, 2005). The 2006 cultural development program (in the 11th 5-years plan) celebrated five thousand years of national culture as a source of inspiration and fighting spirit in a context where Chinese people face an even more complex and challenging environment. Within this theoretical framework, exaltation of Chinese traditional culture as an instrument of state-building was endorsed by the educational system and the media through a government-driven restruc- turation of the cultural industry (改造文化產業 gaizao wenhua chanye). By September 2011, the 6th Plenum of the 17th Congress reaffirmed in the most explicitly way the prominence of the CCP for the exaltation of Chinese traditional culture: Since its creation, Chinese Communist Party has been the heir and the faithful propagator of Chinese excellent traditional culture, while in the same time developing and actively propagating socialist advanced culture.7 The Central television network (CCTV) was to play a key role in the mission of 4 Zhu Ying, Two Billion Eyes: The Story of Central Television (New York: The New Press, 2012), 47. 5 Ibid., 15 6 See Sébastien Billioud, “Confucianism, Cultural Tradition and Official Discourses in 2000’s China,” China Perspectives (3) (2007): 53–68. 7 This text can be found at: http://china.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-10/2095239.html, browsed on January 29, 2013..

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