参考消息网2月20日报道 英国《金融时报》网站2月17日报道，关注电视剧《狂飙》反映中国的反腐运动。报道称，这部剧以“较高的制作水准和细致的情节设计”受到广泛欢迎和热议。报道还说，不同于赞颂叛逆者破坏体制的好莱坞式叙事，《狂飙》中的主人公警察遵守党纪、令行禁止。报道摘编如下：

在坐满参会人员的政府大楼里，一位高级官员警告称，这场旨在根除腐败和犯罪的运动将不仅针对犯罪团伙，而且还将关注党员干部。这位官员说，现在要“刀刃向内”，这是党中央作出的决策部署。

扫黑反腐电视剧《狂飙》由此开始。这是中国近期最受欢迎的电视节目之一，讲述了中国的全面反腐运动。

美国约翰斯·霍普金斯大学的专家洪源远说：“反腐被视为党主动恢复正直和活力的一种手段。”

根据去年10月中共二十大期间一次记者招待会上公布的数据，中共十八大以来，全国纪检监察机关共立案审查调查各级“一把手”20.7万人。

近几个月来，反腐运动继续推进。本周，有关部门宣布对中国足协主席陈戌源展开调查。

除了《狂飙》，近年来以反腐为题材的电视剧还包括2021年播出的《扫黑风暴》和2017年的《人民的名义》等。

以较高的制作水准和细致的情节设计，《狂飙》讲述了一名警察和一名黑社会头目长达数十年的较量，受到了广泛欢迎和热议。

河南郑州的管理专业学生王兴瑞（音）说：“这部剧引人入胜，而且是根据真实事件改编的。”

在许多方面，《狂飙》坚守党的路线。不同于赞颂叛逆者破坏体制的好莱坞式叙事，《狂飙》中的主人公警察遵守党纪、令行禁止。

奥地利维也纳大学的中国政治专家李玲说：“好莱坞打造了很多超级英雄，受到美国人的喜爱。但中国影视剧中的主人公不会单独行动，就像《狂飙》里的警察一样。”

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.”