Hit TV series carries grim warning for HK

It is not just in the United States that big-budget television is grabbing the momentum from feature films. On the mainland, a big-budget drama In the Name of People has become a smash hit on broadcast TV and online. In three weeks it has garnered such popularity that web users are complaining that they feel peer-group pressure to keep up.

Concluded only a week ago, the show runs to 55 episodes and stars some of the biggest names in the mainland's showbiz, including Lu Yi and Zhang Fengyi. It became an overnight sensation after it premiered on Hunan Television, which reportedly paid 220 million yuan ($31.9 million) for the license, on March 28.

Making the series more interesting than simply its big budget and star-laden cast, In the Name of People is also produced by none other than the Film and TV Center under the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China. This means the series is endorsed by the highest agency at the national level.

The series also received praise from People's Daily. "The series gives the audience a better understanding of how anti-corruption works, and help to create a better social atmosphere for corruption prevention," the paper wrote.

Under the backdrop of all these, it is interesting to note how the first political drama on the mainland featuring high-level government corruption since 2004 portrays Hong Kong.

In the series, when bad guys feel they are in trouble, they go to Hong Kong. Staying in the fictional "Three Seasons Hotel" in Hong Kong, they continue to manage their companies on the mainland, conduct business meetings with other bad guys in exile, and consult with "information specialists" - media people that specialize at influencing mainland politics.

The fictional Three Seasons Hotel is known affectionately as Wangbeilou, which literally means a building where people look at the north. North of Hong Kong is, of course, the mainland.

In the series, Hong Kong is referred to by the bad guys as "the safe place" but it is also not so safe now "because Hong Kong has reunited with the nation".

History will remember this radical re-imagination of Hong Kong in the mainland's popular culture as a turning point. For a long time, mainlanders thought of Hong Kong as a symbol of modernity, which includes law and order. Triad movies notwithstanding, Hong Kong is generally conceived of as a place where systematic wrongdoing does not exist.

The recent conviction of former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen confirms, rather than negates, this view. "See how slight his mistakes were, and how swiftly he was brought to justice."

Both Hong Kong people and mainland authorities alike sustain this imaginary perception of Hong Kong. Some Hong Kong residents also use this perception as a basis to reject the mainland.

In the Name of People brought back a little bit of realism. Hong Kong is not holier than thou. Even if corruption is not rampant in Hong Kong, our wealth has a lot to do with corruption on the mainland. In a sense, we benefit indirectly from corruption.

Without this realization, we cannot explain why our retail sector has never recovered after President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption measures, or why mainland money is now driving our stock and real estate markets up.

You also cannot explain why housewives, upon receiving a phone call from alleged "mainland authorities", have millions of cash ready to be transferred into the fraudster's account at a moment's notice. These are scams tailor-made for hustlers; honest people simply would not fall for them.

We should not take this revelation of Hong Kong's dark side made by the State-sanctioned TV series lightly. It is not only bad PR for our city, but may lead to real consequences. Last week, legal chief of the central government's Liaison Office in the city Wang Zhenmin reminds us that "One Country, Two Systems" for Hong Kong could be scrapped if it is used to confront the central government. The same is also true if "One Country, Two Systems" is used as a safe harbor for criminals and the corrupt.

(HK Edition 05/05/2017 page1)