Children’s Television in China: From Education to Commercial Entertainment

Abstract

The task of this chapter is to rewrite the official account of the development of children’s television in China from a critical perspective This necessarily involves a reinterpretation of the available historical facts. The perspective taken here therefore calls for a shift in emphasis from retelling the known history of children’s television, which is indelibly coloured by mainstream evaluations at the time, to exploring socioeconomic and ideological forces which helped to form this history. The formation of children’s television is periodized here into four main stages, with regard to the role it is designated to play in children’s life. These include: the initial stage of intellectual and political education (1958–1967), followed by a period of termination during the high time of the Cultural Revolution (1967–1972); the second stage of heavy political and ideological education after its resumption in the last 4 years before the official end of the Cultural Revolution (1972–1976); the third stage of the restoration and expansion of intellectual and social education (1976–mid 1980s); and the most recent stage marked by the coming of commercialized entertainment. This last stage, coinciding with the popularization of television sets in Chinese families, is a deviation prompted by the new liberal economic order from the longstanding cultivating role of children’s television in China. But this present stage of commercial entertainment mixed with elements of intellectual and moral education seems to last for a long time into the foreseeable future.