Meteor Garden and the Chinese Government

                                                        

                             Meteor Garden 

And the Chinese Government 

 

 

Meteor garden is supposedly about normal life in China, but is missing one very important part, the government. 

China is a single party, authoritarian, communist state. The government has a much larger influence on the lives of the people of China and thus, the people of China have much less privacy and personal freedoms then us living in the EU and western world. The government of China has built up a database of information over the years on each of their citizens actions. This is become less subtle with the introduction of the social credit system. They also keep tabs on Chinese citizens outside of China who might be talking ill of the government in order to stop the spread of democratic ideas from other countries spreading to China. 

 

China became a communist state in the aftermath of World War 2. The Chinese civil war continued on once Japan was defeated by the ally powers. Mao Zedong of the people's republic of China took advantage of the devastation left by the Japanese invasion of the coastal areas of China. He and his allies invaded the democratic, Republic of China and expelled them to the Island of Formosa (Taiwan), where they were left due to their lack of a navy. Even till this day, a peace technically hasn’t been made as the Republic of China (RoC) still claims to be the one true China and exists more famously as Taiwan and is recognized by 15 members of the UN. They are still a democracy, being led by Tsai Ing-wen and fallow the social changes that the west has practiced such as being the first Asian country to legalize same sex marriage and are staunch allies of the US and NATO. This is the reason the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has not invaded as an attack on Taiwan would be an attack on the USA and their network of Allies like Japan, India, France, Turkey, Australia, Israel and the rest of NATO. This would cause World War 3. 

Mao Zedong

The Chinese government, past and present have ruled with an Iron fist. After the civil war, China was a rural, poor, underdeveloped nation with a massive population. Mao Zedong wanted to rapidly develop in order to be on par with the USSR and the West. In order to achieve this, he implemented major farming reforms that brought people out of farms and into factories, and introduced the predecessor of the one child policy, the two-child policy. As a result of the farming reforms, the food supply was severely disrupted. During the years of 1958 and 1962, 55 million people died in the resulting famine. Around 9% of the population of china at the time. Mao Zedong then ended these reforms, but it was too late to avoid severe damage. The great leap forward ended sending china back a decade. 

In the 1970s, the two-child policy was reformed into the one child policy in order to attack the problem of overpopulation in China, after the two-child policy didn’t slow growth enough. This decision was made not by scientists or experts but by military generals. This meant couples were not allowed more than one child, and couples that did have more than one child would be fined, be forced into an abortion or forced into not giving the child citizenship, which would mean they could not get a job, live a normal life or leave China in the future. This policy resulted in a major gender imbalance as China has a 52:48 male to female ratio (there are around 2% more females globally which is because of men being more likely to die in many ways and younger), as boys would be the preferred child. This caused couples to abandon their daughters after birth or even kill them. This has also caused a loneliness epidemic in China as in some rural town's men outnumber women 2:1. The one-child policy also affects the less well-off population more as rich families are able to pay the fine if they have a second child whereas poorer families are not. This worsens wealth inequality. 

The one child policy is seen in the show with Shencai, being less well off, is an only child whereas the only character in the show with a known sibling is Daoming Si, who's family is very wealthy.  

Chinas communist government needs to approve of every TV show, movie or piece of public media that is released in or exported to China. This is so they have control on what media the population consumes and to make sure that anti-communist/democratic ideas are not spread. It is likely that the Chinese government had some sort of influence on how the show was made/presented. 

China is becoming more and more aggressive each year as it violates the one country two systems agreement that gives Hong Kong its democracy, continues to run concentration camps for the Uyghurs and in Tibet, expands its claims in the south China Sea and conducts military exercises in order to intimidate Taiwan. We see parts of the attitude of racism in the show when Shencai supposedly was with a foreigner, a major taboo that causes a lot of controversy.

Overall the world of Meteor garden is an idealised view into life in China through a rose coloured window approved by the Chinese government but treds the line of propaganda and entertainment well, mostly falling on the entertainment side.