Taiwan's Television Culture in the Era of Chinese Hegemony

This book delves into the transformative impact of China's rise on Taiwan's television culture throughout the past two decades, situated within the dynamic landscape of East Asian popular culture. Integrating political economy and cultural analysis, the narrative unfolds the power struggles surrounding the cultural-economic concept of the Chinese language market. It traces its emergence during the late 1980s and early 1990s, an era marked as the "Taiwanization of the Republic of China," its zenith in the early 2000s amid the heyday of neoliberal globalization through China, and its subsequent wane, replaced by the notion of the global market starting in 2016, ushering in the era of decoupling globalization.

 

Examining popular television dramas across these distinct stages, such as Meteor Garden, Empresses in the Palace, Home 1945-1949, Inborn Pair, A Boy Named Flora A, and The Making of An Ordinary Woman, the book elucidates the intricate interplay between global capital and the struggles intertwined with nation formation. By centering on the Chinese language market, the book foregrounds the role of ROC’s colonial language politics in shaping Taiwan's contemporary television culture. The book explores how China’s unification mandate collaborates with KMT’s cultural colonization project. It delves into how the newly elected DPP regime attempts to bridge the gap between two contrasting national imaginations—Chineseness and Taiwaneseness and how global capital actively engages in these nation-building endeavors across different phases.

 

Furthermore, through meticulous textual analyses of these shows, coupled with

commentaries and phenomena spawned by these popular dramas, the book underscores how gender politics becomes a conduit for narrating competing stories of the nation. While unpacking the complexities of gender, nation formation, and global capital, the book argues that these dramas, influenced by the prevailing sentimentalism propagated by the colonial ROC regime, serve a dual purpose. On one hand, they depoliticize by confining politics to the intimate realms of love and family; on the other hand, they carve out a space for articulating discontent and problems stemming from nation building and neoliberal globalization.