A DRAMA series featuring high-level government corruption is making waves among Chinese viewers.

    Starring a “deputy State-level official” as the villain, and replete with foreign mistresses, SWAT operations and a bed made of banknotes, “In the Name of the People” had received 170 million views by Tuesday since its March 28 debut on Aiqiyi.com, one of the mainland websites and television channels licensed to broadcast it, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported.

    The 56-episode TV series, which stars veteran actors Lu Yi and Zhang Fengyi and is slated to run nightly until May 1, is built around a complex corruption case brought to light by a conflict at a factory in a fictional province.

    It focuses on the work of anti-graft investigators whose job is to take down corrupt government officials, whether “tiger” (powerful bureaucrats) or “fly” (low-ranking officers), in the parlance of real-life Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has waged war on corruption since taking over power in 2012.

    Overseas media outlets like CNBC and SCMP have likened the series to American political drama “House of Cards.”

    “It has some significance as a ‘main theme’ drama premiering before the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China,” Wan Yuchen, an analyst at the China Market Research Group, told CNBC in an email.

    The term “main theme” is often used to refer to productions, including films and television series, that feature similar overarching themes with government policies, Wan explained.

    The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) told local media that it has commissioned at least two films and two television shows focusing on bribery each year, trade publication China Film Insider reported.

    Indeed, Fan Ziwen, deputy director of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate’s Film and Television Center, had repeatedly visited Zhou Meisen, the writer of the novel on which the TV series is based, to persuade him to pen the drama’s screenplay, China Daily reported.

    The drama secured funding of 120 million yuan (US$17 million) from five private companies — twice the amount of the average TV series.

    A wall of stacked banknotes reminds the audience of Wei Pengyuan, a former deputy director of the coal department at the National Energy Administration, who hid cardboard boxes brimming with cash stuff underneath a mattress in his otherwise empty apartment in Beijing.

    Many lines from the drama have found their way into common usage, such as “people toast him not because he is a good person, but because he has power.”

    (SD-Agencies)

    About the author

    ZHOU MEISEN is regarded as one of the three major writers of anti-corruption novels in China, the other two being Zhang Ping and Lu Tianming.

    As one of China’s most celebrated political novelists, Zhou was close to power at one point in his life.

    To gain some insight into official life for his writing, Zhou took a temporary post as a deputy secretary general in the city government of Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, in 1994. The job only lasted one year.

    Zhou published his first novel, “Perishing Land,” in 1983. His first realism novel “Right Road in the World” was published in 1994. Zhou later went on to create political novels such as “Supreme Interest,” “Absolute Power” and “Public Prosecution of the State.” (SD-Agencies)