10-episode documentary shows overall changes under Xi
Chinese State television on Monday began airing a political documentary that features the achievements of reforms led by the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Called Carrying the Reform through to the End, the documentary summarizes the progress and achievements of the overall reforms initiated during and after the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012.
The 10-episode documentary will be aired one episode a day on China Central Television (CCTV), and will also be streamed on the State broadcaster's online media platforms.
The documentary covers a range of aspects of political life, including the economy, politics, social management, Chinese culture, the armed forces and the Party's self-governance, which will be explained in each episode.
It was produced by CCTV with the guidance of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms.
With the 19th CPC National Congress scheduled for the second half of 2017, the documentary is expected to inspire CPC members and the Chinese people.
"The political documentary, which aims to build momentum for the upcoming 19th National Congress, signals the CPC Central Committee's resolve to carry on reform in all fields. And it also helps sum up ideas put forward by President Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee," Su Wei, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Chongqing Committee, told the Global Times on Monday.
The documentary clearly demonstrates the resolve, wisdom and achievements of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi as the core, reads the introduction to the documentary on the CCTV website. It shows Xi's new ideas on the governance of China and comprehensively deepening reform, as well as the CPC Central Committee's deployment, top-level design and practice at primary levels.
"The documentary also shows that the CPC, which attaches more importance to political reform after 2012, is going to expand the ongoing reform overall, to areas including social development and people's livelihood," Xu Xing, a professor of politics at the Zhou Enlai School of Government of Nankai University, said.
"The key point of reforms enacted after the 19th National Congress will be how to develop the socialist economy and resolve any contradictions in ideology, political, social, cultural, Party construction and other fields," Su said, adding that the documentary pointed out the key emphasis of the CPC's work in the next phase.
Important questions
On Monday, the first episode, "Question of the Times", was broadcast, an overview of the documentary.
Civil servants and government employees reached by the Global Times say that government departments have ordered staff to watch and learn from the documentary.
"The episode displays how Xi's ideas on reform have evolved and the processes of some crucial strategic deployment on reform … it interprets systematically questions such as 'why should there be reform?' 'what kind of reform should it be?' and 'how to take the reform and for whom is the reform taken?'" read a report from news portal .
Xu said that the episodes, which will help more people understand Xi's reforms, will also lead them to participate in and smoothen the path for future reforms.
Su said that the episode demonstrated the achievements made after the 18th National Congress and the people's sense of gain.
He added that people's sense of gain has always been a focus of the reforms, as the reform process has entered a "deep-water zone," where the problems needing to be solved are all tough, and the sense of gain differs for people from different classes.
"The best way to test if a reform has achieved its aim is to check people's true feelings about the reform's fruits … [and] making people have a sense of gain," Xi said at the 10th meeting of the central leading group for comprehensively deepening reform in 2015.
"Making a political documentary on reform is also a vivid and well-accepted way to add to people's sense of gain - people can get a direct view of the theory, accomplishments and future focus of the reform," Zhang Xixian, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee told the Global Times.
