Media : Hodgepodge Television Fare Opens Window on Chinese Life : Programs are much more direct in their moralizing than Western shows. They are also much less sophisticated.

Take modern tales of greed and passion, propagandistic war films, traditional Beijing operas, educational shows and popular foreign imports.

Throw in commercials with sexy women selling soap, refrigerators that talk and an occasional public service announcement.

Present it all to a population sick of politics and bored for lack of night life.

What you get is Chinese television, an eclectic hodgepodge that, despite political controls, can be a revealing window on life here.

Morality, corruption, love, history, politics, consumerism, social problems, attitudes toward foreigners--television’s treatment of these and other issues reflects the stresses that afflict China today. The tube reveals a society caught halfway between socialism and capitalism, between traditional xenophobia and a budding internationalism, between Communist dictatorship and a powerful wave of new social freedoms.

China Central Television (CCTV), the nation’s premier station, reaches all cities in China and most of the countryside. Provincial capitals and other large cities also have their own stations. Beijing viewers receive three channels from 8:30 a.m. to midnight, plus two more that broadcast only in the evenings. All are under state control.

With most programming selected either for its supposed social value or its low cost, television here has little of the slickness of American broadcasting. Compared to American television, there is less violence and a larger proportion of educational and cultural shows such as foreign language lessons or children’s dancing performances.

Shows are never broken by advertising breaks. Instead, commercials are bunched together for up to 10 minutes between programs. Shows often start at odd hours--10:06 or 3:13. The normally half-hour-long CCTV news is allowed to run 40 minutes or more on heavy news days. But the definition of “news” is very different than in the West. Here, it usually involves a dreary recitation of appearances by top leaders, ideological pronouncements and industrial and agricultural achievements.

Political control of television news is so rigid that in many ways the entertainment programs can give deeper insights into Chinese life.

What’s it like, for example, to do business in China? Try tuning in “Miss Public Relations,” the lively tale of a Hong Kong businesswoman working at a joint-venture hotel in Canton. Shows are full of silly rivalries and love stories. But the drama also depicts how Hong Kong’s culture of money and efficiency clashes with the politicized bureaucracy that dominates Chinese life.

Or glance at the serial drama “Business World,” where one recent episode dealt with a state-run factory that was always in the red. Management figures out how to make big money by purchasing subsidized goods for illegal resale at market prices, but unfortunately for the boss, he gets caught.

Another program featured a collective enterprise run by the municipal government of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, near Hong Kong, which needs to import some crucial supplies but can’t get official approval. Over a game of mahjong, the firm hires a “fixer” from Beijing--a woman with good connections who says she can arrange the necessary license in return for a percentage of the profits.

“You have to watch this show carefully to keep track of what’s going on,” commented a Chinese viewer in his mid-20s.

“It’s very sophisticated,” his brother added knowingly.

Shows like “Miss Public Relations” and “Business World,” complained a 60-year-old hotel employee named Zhuang, “only depict men and women fighting for the affections of each other, jealousy and viciousness in business. But sometimes I watch because nothing else is on.”

Cheng Hao, the director of “Business World,” wrote with pride in a recent issue of the popular monthly magazine Chinese and Foreign Television that “there isn’t a single absolutely good or absolutely bad person in the whole drama.”

Unlike “Business World,” many television shows maintain a Chinese tradition, reinforced under communism, of portraying very good heroes and very bad villains.

Among older Chinese, traditional operas are among the most appreciated television fare, their themes still pertinent today.

The recently broadcast “Xu Jiujing Gets a Promotion,” for example, is set during China’s dynastic period. The hero, Xu, a brilliant scholar with a deformed back, places highest in the imperial civil service examinations, but because of his deformity gets only a lowly village post.

Then a judicial case arises that is too hot for the system to handle: Two extremely powerful families are feuding over a bride. One after another, every magistrate assigned to the case goes off on sick leave to avoid alienating either family.

The imperial household finally hits on a solution: Xu is promoted to be a high magistrate and the case is assigned to him.

Alternately wooed and mistreated by the families, Xu at one point gets drunk and considers suicide to escape the torment of the complex drama. But in the end, he chooses justice over self-interest. And having upheld honor in the face of bribes, power politics and the pressure of personal ties, Xu resigns his high post to live as a simple seller of wine.

In China, where such forces continue to influence many people’s lives, the lessons for today are obvious.

Television fare often is much more direct in its moralizing. War stories, for example, are a favorite vehicle for pro-government messages.

One recently broadcast television film related the exploits of the People’s Liberation Army as it swept into the Nationalist capital of Nanjing in 1949. The narrator praises the valor of the Communist soldiers in fighting Japanese aggression, “American imperialism” and the forces of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek.

Another recently aired film depicted the opulence and corruption late in the Qing Dynasty, and the 1860 destruction of the Yuan Ming Yuan imperial summer palace by a British military force. In one scene, a Chinese woman who has been raped by a foreign soldier runs screaming from her home and commits suicide by jumping into a well.

“Why are they so arrogant?” the narrator asks about the foreigners.

“This is the invaders’ so-called ‘civilization,’ ” he adds, in reference to the burning of the summer palace.

Another film, made in 1961 and recently rebroadcast, depicted land reform in a Communist-controlled area of northeast China during the late 1940s.

A Communist official named Xiao seeks out a political alliance with the poorest man in the village, a peasant nicknamed “Bare-bottom Zhao” because he is so poor he often works the fields in ragged clothes that leave him half-naked.

The plot revolves around the attempts of Xiao and Zhao to rally the peasants to publicly criticize the village’s cruel landlord. Zhao dies in a shoot-out with the landlord’s bandit brother, but the villagers ultimately punish the landlord for his misdeeds and divide up his land and property.

The pro-Communist, often almost prudish, and sometimes anti-foreign messages of such films compete with a very different set of values conveyed by commercials.

A perfume company’s advertisement, for example, shows a Caucasian in a tuxedo using cologne, then a Chinese woman using perfume, and finally the woman opening a door to greet the tuxedoed foreigner, who turns out to be her date.

Until a few weeks ago, commercials for Chrysanthemum brand electric fans showed a girl so close to the product that her white skirt is blown to thigh-revealing heights. Apparently in response to complaints that the scene was too sexy, it has now been edited.

An advertisement for a bath liquid said to protect the user against sexually transmitted diseases--including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which is rare but deeply feared in China--showed a woman’s legs with her slip falling past her knees as she prepared to bathe.

Chinese Central Television also airs clever public service advertisements that poke fun at common foibles of Chinese society, presenting educational messages with a light touch that contrasts sharply with the heavy-handedness of many propaganda films.

One such piece takes aim at the many Chinese who have never driven a car, and who show no respect for traffic rules. Against a background ditty titled “Driving Is Tough,” a clearly frustrated taxi driver slams on his brakes, wipes his brow and shakes his head as a succession of pedestrians and bicyclists appear suddenly in his path.

“People are long sick of the old (moralistic) propaganda,” a critic named Wang Chen wrote in a Chinese and Foreign Television article discussing these popular pieces. “Seeing that the old methods of using slogans, sermonizing and inculcating were used too often, comrades at the advertising department racked their brains before coming up with a method that people would like and accept.”

Foreign shows, dubbed into Chinese, also have an important place on Chinese television. “Mickey Mouse” is a favorite. “Falcon Crest” is another. Among the most popular shows is the Los Angeles-based police thriller “Hunter.”

Foreign programs are selected to be nonpolitical, but sensitive facts about life abroad inevitably slip through.

China, for example, is a society where the power of the police is virtually unchallengeable, except perhaps through personal ties or a bribe. Against this background, commented a young office worker, many Beijing residents are deeply impressed when police in “Hunter” tell suspects of their right to remain silent. It’s a scene you would never find in a Chinese show.

The appetite for foreign programming is so strong that many urban households have scraped together the money to buy videocassette recorders, which are primarily used to watch programs from America, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Tapes, usually pirated, can be rented or purchased at stores and are often loaned among friends.

While there is no cable television here, there are more than 16,000 satellite dishes in China capable of receiving television transmissions. First-class hotels and residential compounds for foreigners are among those places served by such technology.

Relatively few ordinary Chinese can see these broadcasts. But the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, concerned nonetheless about uncensored public access to foreign programming, recently announced a new licensing program aimed at tightening satellite dish controls.

Times researcher Tamara Perkins contributed to this article.