Chinese Democracy in Becoming a Star

While many people nowadays may still see China as a community nation where the Party takes total control of its people, I recently found democracy in this Chinese television show called Super Girl.

Considered as the Shan Zhai version of American Idol, Super Girl is an open competition any female contestant regardless of her age, origin, appearance, or the way she sings. But unlike the U.S. show, Super Girl judges are selected from different backgrounds in the society – some of them are even picked from the audience. And the most astounding part is that in the final stages the winners are not chosen by judges at all; instead they are elected by viewers from all over the country by telephone and text messages.

It has turned out that such fearless form of democracy has culturally conquered China. The 2005 season finale was one of the most popular shows in Chinese broadcast history, drawing over 400 million viewers, more than the China Central Television New Year's Gala – the usual number one show every year – earlier that year. Think about it. The number is even bigger than that of the U.S. population! Further, roughly over 600 million votes on average were casted in every season, making this show one of the most democratic phenomena in contemporary Chinese history.

Super Girl has evidently created incredible commercial success and unprecedented social impacts. Though there remain some opposing voices, particularly from the government, that accuse the show of polluting the Chinese culture with foreign ideologies and promoting a low culture to the youth, they have to realize that globalization, which today continues to assimilates various cultures, is inevitable and unstoppable. To put this way, Chinese people watching Super Girl is roughly the same idea as Westerners learning Chinese after all.

Probably they might change their mind after watching Jane Zhang’s spectacular performance in The Oprah Winfrey Show.