| Abstract | Based on a comparative analysis of Tales of Qianlong (1991) and Towards the Republic (2002), this chapter examines the censorship discourse surrounding historical drama in postsocialist China. It explores how the Chinese state’s ideological imperative to shape historical consciousness, especially under post-Tiananmen patriotic education, intersects with the entertainment function of television. While Qianlong was well received and uncensored, exemplifying a moment of relative leniency in representing imperial history, Republic provoked censorship despite extensive efforts at ideological compliance. By asking “When is China?”, this chapter interrogates how historical representations are policed and legitimised within broader state efforts to define nationhood, instil patriotism, and assert political authority. When history is playfully represented, official anxiety over how audiences might interpret or misread the past remains ever-present. Historical dramas thus become contested sites where pedagogical expectations, political sensitivities, and the need to entertain coexist uneasily. This chapter highlights how the imagined vulnerability of audiences fuels the regulatory impulse and reveals the stakes of narrating the nation’s past on the popular screen. |
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