Television in Post-reform China is a long-overdue work from an active and knowledgeable scholar on an important and seriously neglected topic. Ying Zhu has co-edited two previous collections on Chinese television dramas, one in Chinese, the other in English, and another volume on broader aspects of Chinese television. The current study sets out to cover some of the major genres of Chinese serial drama, in particular dynastic drama and domestic theme drama, and to explore “the political, economic and cultural forces, locally and globally, that have shaped the evolution of Chinese prime time TV drama” (p. 127). The study also seeks to make “cross cultural comparisons that parallel the textual and institutional strategies of Chinese TV drama with those of transnational TV dramas from the three leading regional production centers, the US, Latin America and the Korea-led East Asian region” (p. 128). Given the relatively limited space (the main body of the text is just 142 pages) and the wide scope of the topics that the author aspires to cover, this ambitious project tends to result in broad theoretical statements which are not thoroughly fleshed out with original research or in-depth analysis.

The major case on which the book builds is the study of dynastic drama which Zhu first published as a journal paper (“Yongzheng dynasty and Chinese primetime television drama,” Cinema Journal, Vol. 44, No. 4). The discussion of the political discourse of revisionist dynastic dramas in chapter two, and to a less satisfactory degree chapter three, is indeed the highlight of the book. Using three politically charged costume dramas (Yongzheng Dynasty, Great Emperor Hanwu and Marching towards the Republic) as concrete examples, the textual analysis is both fine grained and well grounded. Zhu not only informs readers about the political and cultural context of these dramas, such as the emergence of neo-authoritarianism in China, but also discusses how they have engaged social and cultural debates in the post-Tiananmen era.

However, this kind of original work is not followed through in the rest of the book, where the author digresses into too many topics for which she has done insufficient original research to support her arguments. This results in a certain lack of coherence. For example, after three chapters focused on dynastic drama, Zhu then turns to Chinese domestic theme drama, which is a much more complicated phenomenon but is squeezed into the space of a single chapter (chapter five). Within 20 pages, the author attempts to cover several distinct subgenres under the broadly defined rubric of “domestic themes,” from contemporary family drama and family saga drama in early modern times to young idol “pink drama.” On top of this, she also introduces East Asian trendy drama and Latin American telenovellas, with each taking up four or five pages. This means that the discussion of Chinese domestic dramas is reduced to extremely brief summaries of a handful of television drama titles, with heavy reliance on other researchers' observations about individual dramas and genres (mainly drawn from Shuyu Kong, Janice Xu and Ya-chien Huang's chapters in TV Drama in China, ed. by Ying Zhu, Michael Keane and Ruoyun Bai, Hong Kong University Press, 2008). This patchwork approach does not provide consistent support for Zhu's argument about the revival of Confucian ethics in Chinese television drama that she has developed from her analysis of dynastic drama. It also fails to do justice to the complex and ambivalent role played by contemporary domestic drama that, for example, Lisa Rofel has described in her study of Yearning (“‘Yearnings’: Televisual love and melodramatic politics in contemporary China,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1994).

Another example is chapter six, “Transnational circulation of Chinese television drama,” which Zhu could have developed into a strong case showing the global forces that have shaped dynastic drama. However, after introducing the useful concept of the cultural-linguistic market from contemporary communication theory, this chapter turns out to be primarily a general survey and sweeping account of the Chinese media overseas, synthesizing available materials or reiterating existing research on media systems in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China and the diaspora mediascape, but without any particular reference to the actual circulation of television dramas, such as exported titles, reception rates and global circulation patterns, through analysis of industry data, reports or documented audience surveys.

One major claim of the book is that it will introduce “a much needed comparative perspective to the study of Chinese television drama” (p. 19). Again, this promise is delivered only in a rather superficial way. For example, in chapter four, after extensive summaries of the evolution and style of serial narrative in the US, Asia and China respectively, Zhu then attempts to compare Chinese dynastic drama with US primetime drama despite the fact that they share little common ground in terms of narrative, style or cultural content. This leaves the reader wondering whether the comparison is done purely “for comparison's sake.” In order to explain the unique generic characteristics and narrative strategies of Chinese dynastic TV drama, a more relevant approach would surely be to compare the genre with the pre-modern narrative tradition (for its episodic structure and historical imagination) and with modern historical stage drama and films (for its political function) in China.

In conclusion, while Ying Zhu should be admired for her broader perspective, her capacity to synthesize existing research, and “pioneering efforts” in a neglected field (as acknowledged in Stanley Rosen's foreword), Television in Post-reform China is really just a first step: a smorgasbord of subjects, topics and approaches to Chinese TV drama that in most cases require further in-depth original research and analysis to make them more coherent and complete.