The Forerunner, a TV series commemorating the 130th birthday of Mao Zedong, achieved its highest rating of 10.84 percent, surpassing all other Chinese dramas broadcast during the same time slot, according to CVB, a television show statistics collector affiliated with the National Radio and Television Administration.

Spanning from 1921 to 1927, the TV series follows Mao's transformative journey from a young participant in the first congress of the Communist Party of China to a pioneering leader of the Chinese revolution. The drama started to run on CCTV-1 on Dec 12.

Actor Wang Renju revealed that this marks his fifth time playing the role of Mao. "When the tale goes back to 1921, Mao was a young man with a passion for revolution. To accurately capture the historical figure's state of being, I insisted on daily long-distance running to shape my physique, aiming to embody Mao's enthusiastic state," he said during a recent seminar in Beijing.

The script is co-written by Chen Jin, the former deputy director of the Party Literature Research Center of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Liang Zhenhua, a veteran scriptwriter known for the revolutionary epic Faith Makes Great.

Zhang Junfeng, from the Party Literature Research Center, said that the show has filled a gap in Party history-themed television dramas while also presenting a fresh artistic image of Mao.

He added that the popularity of The Forerunner, similar to The Age of Awakening, a phenomenal hit in 2021 scripted by Party history expert Long Pingping, shows that inviting experts to write the scripts ensures historical authenticity.