@samuelszuchan: In 1057, a Chinese magistrate named Bao Zheng was appointed to govern Kaifeng. His nickname was the "Iron-Faced Judge." It was said his smile was "rarer than clear waters in the Yellow River." Within two centuries of his death, he became the central figure of an entire genre of Chinese theater. Roughly 10% of all surviving Yuan dynasty plays feature him. When Sherlock Holmes was first translated into Chinese in the late Qing dynasty, Chinese readers nicknamed him "the English Judge Bao." That tradition of the clean official who breaks the corrupt local boss is the template "The Knockout" runs on in 2023, a show that exceeded three billion views. Now look at America. In 1999, The Sopranos premiered. A charming, violent mob boss whose interior life the show invited you to inhabit. Then The Wire in 2002. Breaking Bad in 2008. House of Cards in 2013. Succession in 2018. In twenty-five years, American prestige TV trained its most engaged audience, the producers, executives, lawyers, and founders who actually move money, to associate sophistication with cynicism, and moral seriousness with the inferior cultural product. China's story about power runs on a thousand-year template: the clean official arrives to fix what's broken. America's runs on a twenty-five-year pivot: there are no clean officials, only interesting corrupt ones. And both audiences think they're just watching TV.

Sam Szuchan

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Region: US

Sunday 23 August 2026 14:00:00 GMT