Kinky new TV series exposes scandalous lifestyle of China’s government officials

BEIJING: A new TV series in China is swiftly gaining eyeballs for its candid portrayal of philandering and other wayward government officials. Millions of jaws dropped when an episode showed a government official in bed with a blonde mistress.

Another scene shows a communist cadre who stuffing his apartment with banknotes. A secondtier leader is seen fiercely resisting a disciplinary investigation.

The ground-breaking series, In the Name of The People, proved popular among viewers and critics alike, receiving 170 million views by Tuesday for the first 10 episodes on Iqiyi.com, one of the mainland websites and television channels licensed to broadcast it.

The series has broken China’s decade-long ban on anticorruptiondramas being aired in prime time slots and it is the first television drama to paint a “deputy state-level” communist leader as a villain.

In 2004, China’s media watchdog decided to curb the genre because it exposed excessive details of corruption, even imaginary ones, which Chinese officials thought could undermine public confidence in the ruling party.

The production and broadcasting of In the Name of The People on prime-time screens, therefore, reflects Beijing’s growing confidence that it is able to control the anti- corruption narrative and convince the public that oneparty rule can also be clean.

The crackdown on corrupt officials and the incessant calls for party members to be clean has been a hallmark of the current Beijing adminstration.

Since President Xi Jinpeng’s ascent to power in late 2012, an estimated 1.2 million officials have been punished for corruption, including the chief of staff of his predecessor Hu Jintao and two vice- chairmen of the Central Military Commission who served together.

In a speech in September 2015 in Seattle, Xi said his fight against “tigers and flies” – big and small players – reflected of the public’s will and was not a political purge.

“There’s no power struggle, nor anything similar to House of Cards,” Xi said, referring to the hit TV series in the US.