Here’s a conspiracy thought for the day. My wife and I recently watched “Three Body”, a Chinese drama series. There are some elements in it that confound my understanding of China. A police officer questioned a scientist who asked if the officer had a warrant and said he doesn’t have to talk to the cops if they don’t have a warrant, a reporter faked a minor accident with a police car and the officer asked for her insurance info.
The reporter drives the police absolutely crazy and only once does anyone say something like “if her story might cause problems then squash it”. We said “AHA!” finally something that sounds like the China we hear about.
I can’t accept the idea that the show was cleared for the Chinese people to watch if all that wasn’t relatable. It wouldn’t make any sense to them if it wasn’t normal, it’d be like us watching a show about “normal people” who all drove penguin powered cars or something equally weird.
Hard to tell because of censorship. But the majority of the dramas, both Chinese and Korean, have high moral standards as the goal of the hero, and violating it seen as corruption. So much corruption in the Korean dramas that you imagine it’s a major issue, but then there’s not too much censorship in Korean dramas. You see gritty neighborhoods. Chinese are almost always clean and pretty. Only thing they can’t do anything about is the smog out the high rise windows.
I will point out, though, that this reflects what the Chinese people believe - that the higher levels of government are honest and the locals are much more corrupt. It's essentially the opposite of the way Americans think.