ABSTRACT
This chapter situates the ascendance and impact of the revisionist Qing
drama-led dynasty dramas within the Chinese intellectual debates from the late 1980s to the early 2000s that concerned the path of China’s mod-
ernization between the pro-market liberals’ call for an unhampered free
market and the Leftists’ advocacy of a market checked by the State. It argues
that the dynasty dramas are informed by the major political and intellectual
debates of the time, and that they have generally been aligned with the
intellectual Left, in all its variations. It also provides an ideological criticism
of the anti-corruption themed dynasty drama and its offspring, the con-
temporary anti-corruption drama. Of particular interest are the issues of totalitarian nostalgia and the myth of ‘‘the clean official’’ (qingguan) that
are prominent in the anti-corruption dramas.
