A new Deng Xiaoping biopic series on CCTV has been raising eyebrows lately for a few noteworthy new on-screen appearances. Commissioned for 110th anniversery of the paramount leader's birth on 22 August, the first episode of the 47-episode series aired at 8:00pm last Friday, the 8th day of the 8th month.
The program will feature some of the first-ever televised representations of "sensitive" figures such as Hua Guofeng, Hu Yaobang, and Zhao Ziyang.
Hua Guofeng in the TV series, looking like a proper Mao clone as always
Hua was Mao Zedong's personally anointed successor when the Great Helmsman died in 1976, but besides reining in the Gang of Four, however, he was little more than a mini-Mao, espousing the same Soviet-style planned economy that worked so well for China during the Great Leap Forward. His grand contribution to political thought was the "Two Whatevers": uphold whatever policy decisions Mao made, and follow what instructions Mao gave. The country needed change and he wasn't the man to provide it. Deng's historic power struggle with Mao's successor will be explored on TV for the first time in the series.
Hu Yaobang was served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1982 until 1987, when he was forced to resign by party elders who despised his market reforms and attempts to make the government more transparent. Hu's death in April 1989 brought thousands of mourners to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, sparking the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that would be brutally quashed on 4 June.
Hu Yaobang in the series
Zhao Ziyang was Hu's replacement as General Secretary from 1987 to 1989, when his reform policies and sympathies with student demonstrators put him on a collision course with Deng and Premier Li Peng. He was purged following 4 June and placed under house arrest, where he died 15 years later.
Despite touching upon these sensitive figures and events for the first time, however, early signs indicate that the series will be making no deviations from the official Party line. In the first episode, Mao was absolved of all responsibility for the Cultural Revolution, which was portrayed as the handiwork of his wife Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four alone.
0 User Comments