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The Guardian, Monday January 23, 2006
Western stars rising in the east
Some of the biggest celebrities on Chinese
TV aren't from China. So is the country really
embracing foreigners or is it all just propaganda?
Fraser Newham
"Uncle Dashan! Uncle Dashan!"
In a smart bookshop in Chongqing city, deep
in the humid heart of Sichuan, boys in new
sneakers and girls with ribbons in their
hair clamour for attention from the most
famous foreigner on Chinese TV. Toronto-born
Mark Rowswell - or, as he is known to a fifth
of the world's population, "Dashan"
- does not disappoint, rewarding this group
of his youngest fans with a beaming grin
here, a self-deprecating quip there.
In fact this goofy, 40-year-old six-footer
with pitch-perfect Chinese might just be
the most famous Canadian in the world. For
Rowswell is crown prince of a growing band
of foreigners who have found fame on Chinese
TV, often by accident - a bizarre experience
by any standard, and one which forms the
heart of a memoir to be published by Granta
later this week.
China boasts the largest TV audience in the
world, thanks in part to a communist infrastructure
that saw TV as a means of direct communication
with a vast population. Today, state broadcaster
CCTV claims an audience of more than 1 billion;
content comes courtesy of some 200 stations,
offering viewers a total of 2,900 channels.
And as the Chinese economy whips itself into
ever better shape, TV is becoming increasingly
commercial, says Chris Gelken, a UK journalist
who has recently completed a three-year stint
in the country as news anchor with English-language
station CCTV9. "Competition for advertising
dollars is driving a fierce ratings war,"
he says, referring to an industry reportedly
already worth $3.4bn a year.
As a result, where once the programming agenda
was dictated by an ever-shifting party line,
these days programme makers are far more
attuned to ratings - and consequently, sandwiched
between imperialist-baiting war movies and
old-school news reports from the factory
floor, glossy melodramas now document the
movements of the new urban middle class,
playing out their lives over branded cups
of Nescafe...........