(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
sensitive topics yet prevalent phenomena in contemporary China: nail houses, 1
mortgage slaves, corruption, and people who live off parents 2 —all wrapped up in the
setting of a consumerist metropolis. It is not a Chinese version of Sex and City, but it
is a painfully realistic portrayal of contemporary China, or rather, the consequences of
Chinese neoliberal developmentalism. Its painful realism has drawn criticism as well
as applauds. It has generated a heated discussion online among Chinese netizens on
mortgage slaves and its related topics. It has been viewed online and downloaded by
more than 100 million times. Discussions of the TV drama, mortgage slaves and the
plight of China’s upcoming middle class also ranked high in various print media.
DVDs and books of Dwelling Narrowness were the top sellers and for a time sold out
completely. It has also drawn attention from the Chinese government (represented by
State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or SARFT) and fallen foul of the
censors. The TV drama was pulled off air at Beijing TV and criticized by a SARFT
official for its sensationalizing sex and corruption in order to attract audience
attention. This was met with immediate angry responses from Chinese netizens who
protested against the treatment of the TV drama in all major bulletin board services
(BBS), blogs, and through a cyber vigilance movement called “human flesh search”
to attack that official (see Herold 2011 for a review of “human flesh search”).
Dwelling Narrowness became one of the ten hottest topics in 2009 in China.
This article uses the television drama Dwelling Narrowness to illustrate the inherent
tensions and pitfalls of Chinese neoliberal developmentalism. It examines the
production, circulation and popular consumption of the television drama in order to
illuminate the interplay of the Chinese state, capital and popular aspirations in the
restructuring of Chinese media and communication industries. In such interplay,
neoliberal strategies—as a set of economic policy, cultural structure, and
governmentality—are enwrapped in socialist legacies, traditional values, postsocialist
dilemmas, and prosumer (producer+consumer) desires. Neoliberal techniques and
practices, which are sometimes sincerely and sometimes disingenuously applied in the
1 Nail house is a Chinese neologism referring to households that refuse to make room for urban
development, just like nails that are hard to pull out. See Toy (2007) for a report of the so-called “coolest
nail house in history.”
2 More and more Chinese youths are living off their parents, thus becoming Neets (Not in Education,
Employment or Training) or boomerang kids. Some are laid off workers; some are graduates from
universities who are supported by parents to prepare and pursue postgraduate studies, or search and wait
for jobs.
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