Popular family television and party ideology: the Spring Festival Eve happy gathering

This article analyses the Chinese Central Television (CCTV) Festival Eve happy gathering on 6 February 1997, as a case to illustrate the way in which popular entertainment on television is tied in with political and ideological messages in the full-blown market era of the mid-1990s. The CCTV gala, first conceived in 1983, has been institutionalized over the years into an indispensable part of the Chinese New Year celebrations. As the year's most popular programme, the party has been paying keen attention to its content and social impact. Traditional family gatherings on New Year's Eve, with the advent of television and this special programme, have been turned into a national reunion. This, in effect, has been doing good service to sustain political and ideological centralism in post-Mao China.