In March 2006 the national television network CCTV started to broadcast the 37-episode TV drama The Great Admiral Shi Lang. As soon as the broadcasting started, a fierce debate about the drama in general and the role of it’s major hero Shi Lang for Chinese history in particular broke out.

The TV drama told the story of the patriotic General Shi Lang who, by recapturing Taiwan at the end of the 17th century, successfully reunified the country. It was another prime-time costume drama but its historical background started up a debate that split the participants in two factions. One side was praising the heroic achievements of General Shi Lang in finally realizing unification of China and Taiwan under the Qing Dynasty, the other side saw Shi Lang as a traitor and denounced the TV drama for rewriting history.

Prime time historical dramas play an important role in China. Everybody knows they don’t only serve for entertainment – they also serve purposes of political propaganda and public education. This is not only due to the influences of politics on TV productions in China but also caused by the important role historical events and especially important historical persons – who can be considered “heroes” – play for the establishment of national and cultural identity in China (Zhu 2005). The TV drama itself was realized with support of the provincial Party committee of Fujian province.

In fact, however, the debate had started earlier already. The role of General Shi Lang had been intensively discussed because Shi Lang had been promoted as national hero by Chinese officials already before the TV drama was broadcasted. Therefore parts of the debate took already place before the TV drama was realized and don’t refer to the drama itself (Lai 2002; Luo 2002).

The debate surrounding General Shi Lang is so interesting because it is an exemplary field to discuss some major intellectual and political issues of modern China. The major issue is the definition of Chinese identity, the question whether the concept of China as nation-state or as cultural entity is adequate (Gao 2007). Before the 20th century the Chinese had a concept of Chinese culture but not a concept of a nation-state. According to those concepts everyone outside the circles of the Chinese culture was considered as barbarian (Yi). The differentiation between "We" and "Them" was not constructed along the borders of the country. This was not a differentiation along ethnical criteria either, because non-Han invaders which took over the power and assimilated were considered as Chinese too as soon as they followed the orthodox Chinese classics.

Chinese nationalists since Sun Yat-sen developed a new definition of China which was influenced by Western ideas. They opposed the Manchu which were considered as responsible for China’s decline and they developed a Chinese nation state on the foundation of ethnical criteria which caused problems to include non-Han people. Especially since the May Fourth Movement Confucianism was considered as backward and Westernization promoted. These ideas had a revival in the 80th of 20th Century and went even so far to refuse traditional Chinese culture in order to save the Chinese people as expressed in the TV drama Heshang (1988) which was supported by Zhao Ziyang and connected with criticism of the role of the Chinese communist party especially during the Cultural Revolution (Ma 1996).

An opposite development was the resurgence of Confucianism and Chinese cultural nationalism in recent years. Especially after the Tiananmen Square protests the Communist party started to support recent ideas of New Confucianism as adequate vehicle to establish a Chinese nationalism on the foundation of Asian values. This provided convenient means to refute Western ideas of universal values and to oppose the ideas of the students of the Tiananmen protests and their supporters with a revived Chinese nationalism (Lee 1998). But this revived Confucianism caused some problems. It contradicted parts of the communist ideology and especially the fundaments of Chinese communism in the May Fourth Movement. And it largely took the form of Chinese cultural nationalism which is mainly a Han-nationalism and excluded in this form non-Han minority people from the Chinese identity and came in conflict with the modern idea of a nation state. A fierce debate between different nationalist concepts evolved.

The debate about General Shi Lang can be considered as part of this debate. One predecessor was the debate about Zeng Guofan in the 90s. National historians tried to rebuild an authentic Chinese past and to satisfy people’s desire for national heroes. This lead to the rediscovery of Zeng Guofan as national hero, who saved China from the Taiping Rebellion, was a loyal statesman and incorporated as “last Confucian” the Confucian tradition. This was mainly a debate within the nationalist and different concepts within New Confucianism. While some scholars praised Zeng Guofan others criticized him as Han-traitor (hanjian) and traitor of his country (maiguozei) because he supported the Manchu-led Qing government (He/Guo 2000: 79-105). The debate about Shi Lang follows similar lines. We find within the group of New Confucians nationalists who describe Shi Lang as a national hero (Chen 2006) and others who blame him as traitor (Jiang 2006; Yang 2006). At the same time, liberals such as Li Zehou and Qiu Feng warn of a nationalism without democracy and denounce the Shi Lang style reunification as dangerous militarism (Li 2006; Qiu 2006).

The second major issue of the Shi Lang debate is the Taiwan question. Shi Lang is mainly promoted as national hero because he captured Taiwan and “reunited” it with the mainland. In this way he gives an example for the solution of the Taiwan question today. But this poses some problems. Taiwan’s being part of China is mainly founded on the Chinese ethnicity of the major part of its inhabitants now as well as at the end of the 17th Century and their belonging to the Chinese culture. But this is an argument provided by Chinese cultural nationalists. But most Chinese cultural nationalists are Han nationalist too and argue that the Ming loyalists were the legitimate rulers of China and Shi Lang a traitor by serving the Manchu which were not Han. Advocates of a nation state which includes all ethnic groups must explain why they refer to cultural arguments when arguing that Taiwan is part of China. And they have to explain why and from what moment on the Qing were the legitimate rulers of China. Alls these positions can be found in the Shi Lang debate (Gao 2007).

Another issue of the debate is the question of the definition of a national hero. Is a national hero someone who acts morally and unselfishly in order to save people or is it someone whose actions turn later out to have been positive for the unity of the nation? (like Shi Lang). And is it right to adjust history to the requirements of patriotic education and rewrite it in contradiction to the real events. Does this kind of reinvention violate the standards of history writing or is it anyway a necessity? And what effects does this TV drama have on the relationship to Taiwan? Does it help to reunite Taiwan with China or accelerate the alienation process? So we find as major issues of the debate:

• Is Shi Lang a national hero?
• May falsification of history be allowed and should history serve as tool for patriotic education?
• Is China a cultural nation or a modern nation state with many cultures?
• Are the Manchu and the Qing dynasty legitimate rulers in Chinese history?
• How does history influence the current relationship between the Mainland and Taiwan?
• Is the current wave of nationalism a necessary step on the way towards future glory, or a dangerous lapse into militarism?