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Chinese cultural censorship: underlying contradictions and future opportunities

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Chinese cultural censorship: underlying contradictions and future opportunities

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THESIS

CHINESE CULTURAL CENSORSHIP:
UNDERLYING CONTRADICTIONS AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

Submitted by
Yi Shao
East Asian Studies Center

In partial fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts in East Asian Area Studies
University of Southern California
August 2015

Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Economic Reform’s Paradoxical Impact on State Censorship ....................................................... 3
Commercialized Cultural Enterprises Take Risks to Maximize Profits ..................................... 7
The Tug of War between the Bottom Line and the Party Line ................................................... 9
Art as the Vehicle of Socialist Core Values .............................................................................. 12
Art for Economy’s Sake or Art for Politics’ Sake .................................................................... 13
Main-melody Blockbusters: Closing the Gap ........................................................................... 16
Absence of a Rating System: a Further Complicating Factor ....................................................... 18
The Most Revolutionary Art under the Strictest Censorship ........................................................ 27
Double Standards: Heated Competition between SOEs and Private Enterprises ......................... 28
Fans in Higher Places: Personalization or Institutionalization of the Decision Making Process . 30
Pushing the Envelope: Future Opportunities for Further Cultural Liberalization ........................ 32
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 36
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 38

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Introduction
The history of Chinese censorship could be traced back to more than 2,000 years ago
“when Li Si ( 李斯), Chancellor of the Qin Empire, ordered all Confucian texts burned and their
proponents slaughtered”(Samuels 2012, 162). Imperial Chinese rulers have never underestimated
the power of books and other cultural products that influence people’s minds and the potential
threats they could pose towards the ruling class. Later, the importance of state-controlled media
to regime legitimacy was reiterated when Mao declared, “In the world today, all culture, all
literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is, in
fact, no such things as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes and art that is detached from
or independent of politics”(Mao 1942). Today, despite the tremendous changes China
experienced during the three and a half decades after Mao’s death and the beginning of the
market-oriented economic reform, this quote still serves as a guideline for the CCP leadership’s
cultural policies. In a symposium that gathered some of the nation’s top artists in October 2014,
Chinese President Xi Jinping ( 习近平) downplayed the financial aspect of the culture industry
and urged artists to “present patriotism as the main theme and foster correct viewpoints of
history, nationality and culture” with their works(xinhuanet.com 2014).
With the important and challenging task of policing a fast-growing and constantly
changing culture industry and market, China’s media censors are known to be not only strict and
powerful but also fickle and hard to please. A closer look at their recent behaviors reveals a
number of contradictions that might confuse many: a few shots of laundry drying in Shanghai
together with a high speed car chase in the city’s streets could delay a film (Mission Impossible
III, 2006)’s release in China indefinitely(Lee 2006), while a show (House of Cards, Season 2,
2014) containing potentially more controversial elements including “corrupt Chinese

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businessmen, cyber espionage and China’s territorial ambitions in the East China Sea” managed
to get past censors (Coonan, 'House of Cards' Season 2 Skirts 2014); some harmless-looking
American TV series including The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, The Practice and NCIS
were removed from online streaming websites while Game of Thrones, the popular HBO series
that has violent and sexually explicit scenes, was broadcast by a pay cable channel of CCTV in
2014 (Taylor); and acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s ( 贾樟柯) latest work A Touch of
Sin (Tianzhu Ding/ 天注定, 2013) cannot be released in mainland cinemas, even though Jia’s
handwritten screenplay for the same film was published and sold to Chinese readers. Moreover,
censorship has extended to unlikely domains: in 2013, the state called on a crackdown on some
of the anti-Japanese historical dramas on Chinese TV(THR staff 2013).
Such contradictions make it difficult to draw any general conclusions about whether the
Chinese censorship has become more liberal or more conservative in recent years. This essay
aims to explain such contradictory phenomena by examining the complicated and ever-changing
relationship among politics, economics, morality and art, and exploring potential opportunities of
further liberalization of the Chinese cultural sphere.
The absence of a unifying trend in Chinese censorship reflects not only the conflicts
among the political, pedagogical and commercial aspects of the Chinese culture industry but also
competition between the politically powerful elites and market-oriented profit-driven cultural
enterprises, and the institutional complexity of the censoring establishment. Despite the state’s
efforts of “re-politicizing” culture to justify its policies and legitimize its rule, commercial
interests played an important role in driving the culture industry to keep pushing the envelope
and testing the state’s limits. Artists’ constant efforts towards more creative freedom, increasing
public attention and supervision thanks to the development of the Internet together with the sheer

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institutional complexity of censoring the constantly-changing intellectual world of a giant
country could present new openings for a more liberal environment.

Economic Reform’s Paradoxical Impact on State Censorship
China’s economic reform since 1978 has had a paradoxical impact on the state’s control
over the nation’s culture industry: on the one hand, it forced both artists and enterprises to cater
to the government to gain access to the nation’s lucrative market; on the other hand, it created
profit-driven cultural enterprises that would not refrain from themes and contents that will
delegitimize the regime to maximize their commercial interests.

A Stronger State with Monetary Leverage
Domestic and foreign cultural enterprises’ recent dealings with the Chinese censors spoke
clearly about the fact that the nation’s economic growth granted the state more leverage to censor
the cultural market; from films being blocked from mainland China or screenings being delayed
to storylines being compromised due to the cuts requested by the censors, from reduced access to
the country to websites being blocked from Chinese netizens: running into trouble with the
Chinese censors could bring various negative consequences and sometimes serious economic
losses. A Touch of Sin, “the most globally celebrated Chinese film in recent memory” directed by
acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke suffered gravely when its release in mainland China was
delayed indefinitely by the censors(Geng 2014). According to Jia, the film that eventually won
Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 was finished in April 2013, screened in
Cannes in May after state approval and scheduled to be released in mainland China in November
that year(Zichuan 2014). However, in October, when a lot of preparations for the November 9

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release had already been done, the censors notified Jia that the mainland release of his film
needed to be delayed citing concerns about the ultra-violent scenes in the film creating copy cats
as the reason(Zichuan 2014). After more than four months’ communications and negotiations
with the censors, at the end of February 2014, a pirated version of A Touch of Sin was leaked on
the Chinese Internet(Geng 2014). Full of regrets, Jia lamented in a weibo post that the mainland
market for the film had been lost completely and his production company was willing to stop
investing into and construction of art theatres and use the money to compensate the potential
economic losses of partners(L. Chen 2014).
Learning from the lessons of fellow filmmakers and his own experiences, Hong Kong
director Jonnie To ( 杜琪峰) concluded: “From a commercial point of view you can’t not
cooperate with the mainland”(Tsui, Cannes: Johnnie To on the 'Anxiety' of Censors 2013). To
get his films past the censors, To “shot two versions for quite a few scenes” so if there’s a
problem with one cut he can replace it with the other(Tsui, Cannes: Johnnie To on the 'Anxiety'
of Censors 2013). Seemingly seasoned in dealing with mainland censorship, he confessed that
the process of getting his film approved by the censors was a brain-wrecking process and the
anxiety resulted from this process “was more stressful than the actual production”(Tsui, Cannes:
Johnnie To on the 'Anxiety' of Censors 2013).
As the gatekeeper of the world’s second largest movie market, Chinese censors also have
a long-reaching hand over the contents of foreign films since filmmakers and studios could face
the loss of millions of dollars in box office revenues if their works fail to enter or flop in the
Chinese market. In 2014, Paramount Pictures, the Hollywood studio that once enjoyed
tremendous successes in China with Transformers and Mission Impossible, was unable to get
Noah (2014), a bible-based story featuring Russell Crowe, past China’s the censors due to the

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latter’s “sensitivities on religious issues”, even though the film’s mainland marketing team
intended to emphasize the films’ special effects and environmental message instead of its
religious connotations(Makinen and John, China's cinematic censors say 2014).
In the same year, the Quentin Tarantino picture Django Unchained (2014) was pulled
from theaters on the day it premiered in mainland China “with officials in China offering no
reason for the move” and was only re-released a month later after a second edit that “excised a
handful of graphic sequences”(Miller 2013). The film did not fare well in China after it was re-
released, grossing only $2.75 million. The poor box office performance can be, at least partially,
attributed to the delay: first, “Sony’s marketing campaign for the movie was at its most robust”
ahead of the original release date; second, when the film was allowed back to the cinemas, it
faced “increased competition in the marketplace” since it was forced to compete with other
Hollywood blockbusters including Iron Man 3 (2013), the Tom Cruise sci-fi film Oblivion
(2013) and the animation The Croods (2013); third, the film also suffered from “the proliferation
of pirated copies, and moviegoers’ unhappiness over edits that altered Tarantino’s work”(Miller
2013). The adverse effect state-requested edits had on stories was also felt by the Chinese
audiences when they watched a cropped version of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
(2007). Instead of “scenes of cannibalism and ghosts” that led to the previous installment of the
franchise being banned in China, this time it was scenes that featured famous Hong Kong actor
Chow Yun-Fat ( 周润发) as a bald pirate with a long beard and nails, and dressed in Qing
dynasty (1644-1912) clothes that got trimmed for “vilifying and defacing the Chinese”,
according to the state-controlled Xinhua news agency. Unfortunately, such cuts made the film
difficult to follow and therefore compromised the film’s quality and profitability(Coonan,
'Pirates' edited for China release 2011).

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In fact, to cash in on the lucrative Chinese market, some filmmakers took things to the
other extreme: in order to the please Chinese censors, they chose to showcase China and the
Chinese government in a very positive way in their works. Transformers: Age of Extinction
(2014) portrayed the Chinese government as assured and effective through a scene of the PRC
defense minister “sternly and seriously vowing to defend Hong Kong” when the latter called the
central government for help in the middle of the “alien endangered chaos”(Cohen 2014). In the
end, the Michael Bay picture was released in China on the same day of its North American
premiere and grossed 300 million US dollars in the nation, 22% higher than the film’s domestic
US revenues of around 245 million and accounting for 27.7% of its total global box office,
according to Box Office Mojo.
Filmmakers are not the only group of people who developed a renewed interest in China.
The country’s rapidly growing wealth and international status made it the center of attention of
the world therefore an indispensable subject matter for western news agencies. Therefore, access
to the country has been used by the Chinese state to influence western coverage of the country.
After the New York Times and Bloomberg News published articles about the wealth accumulated
by relatives of top CCP leaders, both news organizations experienced difficulties in obtaining
resident journalist visas for their journalists(Jocobs 2014). For fear of losing access to the
country, western news organizations also started to think twice before publishing negative
reports or articles on topics deemed sensitive by China’s state authorities. It is also reported that
Bloomberg News dropped an investigative report that “detailed the hidden financial ties between
one of the wealthiest men in China and the families of top Chinese leaders” for the fear of being
kicked out of the country (Wong, "Bloomberg news" 2013).

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Commercialized Cultural Enterprises Take Risks to Maximize Profits
Traditionally a tool to “disseminate Communist ideology and to ensure the Party’s
political control”(Zhu, Chinese Cinema's Economic Reform From the Mid-1980s to the Mid-
1990s 2006, 905), art and culture’s economic potential was not recognized by the Chinese state
until the mid-1980s when “the State Council officially added art and culture to the third sector,
whose revenues are calculated in the national GDP”; the term “culture industry” appeared for the
first time in policy papers in 1988 (qtd. in Pang 150).
“From being agents of the party-state to being commercially viable”, after the market-
oriented reform, cultural enterprises must present the consumers with products appealing enough
for people to pay for them to survive in the fierce competition(Shambaugh 2007, 33). Therefore,
the growing prowess of the censors did not stop cultural workers from pushing the envelope or
“hitting shots that glance off the edge of the table (Daca Bianqiu, 打擦边球)”—if the Chinese
term that came from ping pong is to be used (Esherick 2014). Sometimes, artists and
organizations challenge the state for the freedom of expression; in a lot of other cases,
controversial cultural products are created for the simple fact that they tend to attract more
attention and could therefore be more popular and profitable. In fact, the experiences of some
authors and filmmakers demonstrated that potential economic benefits could encourage cultural
enterprises to take risks, granting artists’ space for negotiation. Moreover, sometimes the fact
that a certain work runs into trouble with the censors could make the work more attractive.
Musing on the fact that a film could be banned for 20 years, while the novel on which it
is based could be sold throughout the same period, the author of one of such novels, To Live
(Huozhe, 活着, 1994), Yu Hua, wrote in a recent article for the New York Times that editors of
Chinese publishing houses that have operated as commercial enterprises for years “are under

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pressure to make the biggest profit they can” and therefore willing to “take the gamble” “even if
a book carries some political risks as long as “there’s a chance it will be a best seller”(H. Yu
2013).
The American scholar Joseph W. Esherick shared similar thoughts. In a recent article for
Foreign Policy, he explained how he dealt with the Chinese book censors when he tried to
publish Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey Through Chinese History, a book that traced the
history of one Chinese family from the imperial time to the present, in mainland China. “His
very successful business model (enough to buy that house in California),” as Esherick described
his Chinese publisher who owns a property in the US, “involves publishing books that are a little
bit controversial therefore popular”. Moreover, when Esherick got so frustrated with all the
revisions he had to make that he threatened to abandon the plan to publish in China, the in-house
censors of the publishing house compromised and the previous twenty-seven-page document of
requested changes was reduced to nine(Esherick 2014).
Even though contents that crossed a certain red line had to be deleted, the fact that a
certain book or film had to be edited to be approved the censors can be discussed and reported
on. In a lot of cases, these deleted passages or cropped scenes received widespread attention
from both the media and the people. When Esherick’s work was finally published in China, he
included a statement in the preface of the mainland edition that some parts of the content had
been changed or deleted. Every journalist that interviewed him and reviewed his work noticed
the fact and one of his colleagues even asked him for a complete list of the deleted passages
since he planned to write a longer review and wanted to see whether he could include some of
the deleted passages(Esherick 2014).

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Zha Jianying ( 查建英), a Chinese American journalist and non-fiction writer, shared
Esherick’s experience. After working with a Chinese editor who is “a veteran of the game and a
definite liberal” and going through “three rounds of in house checking and cutting”, Zha’s
Chinese book The Nineteen Eighties (Bashi Niandai Fangtan Lu, 《八十年代访谈录》) was
published in mainland China and in the introduction and at the end of each chapter, “the cuts
were noted”(Nathan, et al. 2015) Since the book stirred up a lot of public discussions in mainland
China, some readers compared the mainland version and the full version that was published in
Hong Kong and “posted on the Internet a detailed report on what was cut out”(Nathan, et al.
2015).
A lengthy approval process might also have worked in Chinese director Ning Hao ( 宁
浩)’s favor when his road movie No Man’s Land (Wuren Qu, 无人区, 2013) was released in
China after a censoring process of nearly four years and at least five versions had been submitted
to the censoring committee for review (Tan, A dialogue with film Censor Zhao Baohua 2013).
Audiences interviewed by the Chinese website Sina said that they heard that it took nearly four
years for the film to be cleared by the censors and therefore became very curious about it(Tan,
'No Man's Land' received positive reviews after premiere 2013). CEO of DMG Entertainment,
the company that coproduced this film, also acknowledged that the long delay worked in the
film’s favor “as the huge anticipation is clearly driving big box office returns”(Coonan, After
Lengthy Ban, 'No Man's Land' Blasts Onto Chinese Screens 2013).

The Tug of War between the Bottom Line and the Party Line
The state demonstrated a limited tolerance for such profit-driven risk-taking behaviors.
When the commercial bottom line strays too far away from the political Party line, the state

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responds with restrictions and crackdowns(Shambaugh 2007, 55). How the TV matchmaking
reality show If You’re the One (Feicheng Wurao, 非诚勿扰) achieved immense popularity but
soon fell out of favor with the censors demonstrated this process well.
After being launched by Jiangsu Satellite Television (JSTV) in January 2010, If You’re
the One “quickly became the most talked about show in China”(Kong 2013, 127). In the show,
twenty-four women stand behind a string of podiums, evaluate male contestants through both
face-to-face communications and the men’s self-introduction videos and try to decide whether
they want to date one of the male contestants. “With its ranks of fashionably dressed, attractive
female contestants; the intrusive and ego-deflating questions thrown at the male contestants; and
most of all, the heated debates on various social topics it stimulated, both on stage and online,” If
You’re the One for a while ranked at the top of national TV rating and inspired a string of
copycats by other provincial satellite TV channels(Kong 2013, 128). In 2012, the advertising
revenue of the show reached 1.8 billion Chinese yuan, ranking the third in the country after
CCTV’s daily prime time news program Xinwen Lianbo ( 新闻联播) and daily news comment
program Focus Report (Jiao Dian Fang Tan, 焦点访谈) (Luo & Shan 2011).
The massive popularity of the show can be attributed, to a great extent, to the show’s
ability to manufacture controversies(Kong 2013). In the January 17, 2010 episode, when invited
to go on a ride on a bicycle by a male contestant, Ma Nuo ( 马诺), one of the female participants
of the show, declared that she preferred to cry in a BMW rather than laugh on the backseat of a
bicycle; two months later, Liu Yunchao ( 刘云超), a typical second generation rich kid (Fu’er
Dai, 富二代), showcased his personal fortune of about 6 million Chinese yuan and invited Ma to
cry in his customized BMW(Kong 2013, 127).

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The show’s popularity and the potential damage it could do to the state for reflecting
money worshipping values, widening income gap and some other negative consequences of the
government’s economic reform policies were soon noticed by the Chinese authorities. In 2010,
China’s main censorship body the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT,
now known as SAPPRFT
1
) issued the “Directive on Tightening the Regulations of TV Dating
Programs”
2
that forbade such shows to “showcase and hype up money worship and other
unhealthy and incorrect marriage values”(xinhuanet.com 2010). State media People’s Daily
( 《人民日报》) also published an article on its website to support the sSARFT’s decision by
quoting “people of remarkable insight and visions” (Youshi Zhishi, 有识之士) who warned “TV
media’s exaggeration of money worship, wealth flaunting and hedonism will bring severe
pressures to the disadvantaged groups of the society, leading to the society paying a heavy price
for imbalanced social values” (people.com.cn 2010). After being halted by the SARFT and
criticized repeatedly by state-controlled media outlets including People’s Daily and CCTV,
JSTV had to make changes to the show “to avoid a cancellation disaster”; format and content
adjustments included inviting Huang Han ( 黄菡), a female professor from the Jiangsu Provincial
Party School, to function as an advisor and commentator, welcoming “the participation of a
much greater variety of men and women representing a broader range of career paths” and
refraining from displaying the personal incomes of male contestants in their self-introduction
videos(Kong 2013, 137).
TV programs that suffered from similar criticisms include the 2009 series Narrow
Dwellings (Woju, 蜗居) which touched upon “mistresses, rocketing house prices and corrupt

1
SARFT merged with General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) and formed State Administration of Press,
Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) in 2013.

2
Guangdian Zongju Guanyu Jinyi Bugui Fanhun LianJiao Youlei Dianshi Jiemu Deguan Litong zhi, 《广电总局关于进一步规
范婚恋交友类电视节目的管理通知》

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officials colluding with property developers”(J. Feng 2010). In fact, Li Jingsheng ( 李京盛), the
Director of the SARFT’s TV Drama Department, openly criticized the show for “having a vulgar
and negative social impact by hyping porn jokes, corrupt officials and sex to woo viewers”
according to the Chinese newspaper Huaxi Metropolitan News ( 《华西都市报》)(W. Wen
2009).

Art as the Vehicle of Socialist Core Values
Downplaying commercial interests while emphasizing cultural products’ capacity in
promoting moral values, the Chinese state is re-politicizing culture. In fact, in his speech to the
country’s leading creative figures in 2014, the Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that cultural
products should inform the public in a covert but influential way of what should be praised and
what should be denied without carrying the stench of money(bbc.com 2014). In March 2015,
when delivering the annual government work report to the National People’s Congress (NPC),
the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang ( 李克强 ) pledged to put into practice core socialist
values(Coonan, China's Premier Vows 2015), defined as “a set of moral principles summarized
by central authorities as prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the
rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship” according to an article published on
the Xinhua News Agency’s English website(Mu 2014). Therefore, while some shows were
criticized, forced to change or sometimes cancelled by the censors, others that sent out
“appropriate” messages received official backing.

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The “Directive on Tightening Regulations of General Channels of Satellite TV”
3
issued
by the SARFT in October 2011 required every Satellite TV’s general channel to host a morality-
building (Daode Jianshe, 道德建设) program that promoted “traditional Chinese virtues and the
core socialist value system”(the SARFT Publicity Department 2011). With helping others,
honesty, strong work ethnics and filial piety as their major themes, most of such morality-
building programs focused on good people and good deeds within the Chinese society(L. Li
2013): for example, in 2012, Hunan Satellite TV started to broadcast a show called Hero ( 平民
英雄) that detailed heroic acts of common people including tales like passers-by working
together to save a car that fell into a lake or a patient journalist talking an elder man out of
jumping off a high building(Liu, Deep focus: how 2013); moreover, in 2013, People’s Daily and
Guangming Daily ( 《光明日报》), two major state-controlled media outlets, published articles
that discussed how morality-building shows could be made more attractive for the audience and
more competitive in terms of rating. By promoting such shows that “have positive and important
impact on building mainstream values and positive public opinions”, the state tried to persuade
its citizens that the Chinese society remained a harmonious space where morality was still
respected and upheld(Liu, Deep focus: how 2013).

Art for Economy’s Sake or Art for Politics’ Sake
Building the culture industry into a pillar of China’s economy and using the culture sector
to spread state-approved values are both on the Chinese state’s agenda. Unfortunately, these two
attempts tend to work against each other. The state’s recent crackdown on the previously
approved anti-Japanese historical dramas demonstrated this mechanism well.

3
Guanyu Jinyi Bujia Qiangshang Xingzong Heping Daojie Muguan Lide Yijian《关于进一步加强电视上星综合频道节目管
理的意见》

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From time travel to one-night stands, from spy series to ancient costume period dramas,
since the list of topics that might run in troubles with the authority is getting longer and longer,
production companies and cultural workers choose safer themes to work with. Since patriotism is
part of the core socialist values, the patriotic theme of Chinese resistance against the Japanese
Imperial Army in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1938-45) became one of the most popular themes
on Chinese TV.
In 2012, out of one hundred and fifty movies or TV dramas filmed at Hengdian World
Studios, forty-eight were anti-Japanese works; out of more than 300,000 extras who worked for
these series and films, sixty percent have played Japanese soldiers. Shi Zhongpeng ( 史中鹏), one
extra interviewed by Qianjiang Evening News ( 《钱江晚报》), said that during his four years’
stay at Hengdian, he had appeared in more than thirty anti-Japanese dramas, played more than
two hundred Japanese soldiers and died on camera as many as eight times a day (F. Feng 2013).
In 2013, Zhu Dake ( 朱大可), a professor from Shanghai’s Tongji University estimated that war
stories made up about seventy percent of dramas on Chinese television (Lague and Lee 2013).
Zhou Wei ( 周伟), head of Zhejiang Greentown Culture & Media Co., Ltd., explained his
company’s decision to invest in anti-Japanese dramas, “there’re strict restrictions for ancient
period dramas to get approval from the censors; spy series cannot be broadcast during prime
time. We hardly have any other options besides anti-Japanese dramas” (F. Feng 2013).
On a TV screen flooded with series of the same theme, to distinguish their works from
numerous competitors, some production companies and cultural workers took things to the
extremes and a lot of such series turned out to be “campy, B-movie style productions” (THR
staff 2013). In Together We Fight the Devils (Yiqi Dagui Zi, 一起打鬼子), a woman held
explosives in her crotch (Shi 2015); in Anti-Japanese Knight (Kangri Qixia, 抗日奇侠), a

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communist hero tore a Japanese soldier in half with bare hands and miraculously not a drop of
blood landed on the martial arts master (Murong 2015). After such outlandish plots and scenes
became the target of widespread online criticism, in May 2013, the SAPPRFT “called for a
crackdown on production of inflammatory and inaccurate historical dramas about the country’s
World War II battles with Japan” (THR staff 2013). Even though anti-Japanese dramas will not
be removed from prime time television, “certain excessively entertaining works that are of
frivolous attitude, wide fabrications and disrespect for history exerted negative influence over the
society therefore should be rectified”, according to Wang Weiping ( 王卫平), Deputy Director of
the Department of TV Management at the SAPPRFT (Liu 2013). In 2015, after the crotch bomb
scene aroused great controversies online, the SAPPRFT pulled the series from the screen and
promised to reexamine all episodes (Shi 2015).
Different from Jiang Wen ( 姜文)’s film Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi Laile, 鬼子来了,
2000) that depicted Chinese villagers collaborating with the Japanese army instead of fighting
against them, the new wave of anti-Japanese historical dramas angered the censors and the state
for distorting and ridiculing a period of history that is of great importance to the legitimacy of the
CCP. Unfortunately such excesses brought about by the state’s cultural censorship only led to
stricter control and more micro-management. Scriptwriters, directors and production companies
got one more thing to worry about before they started to create a new piece of work.
Trying to encourage domestic culture industry to get a larger audience share in
competition with its foreign counterparts and to spread core socialist values at the same time led
to a series of confusing decisions from the state. However, these sometimes self-contradictory
behaviors were not completely arbitrary. The state decided when one mission of the culture
industry should be privileged over the other according to its own priorities. For example, after a

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tough decade for China’s film industry despite various reform measures, the state decided to
reintroduce Hollywood to the Chinese market in 1994. At that time, when selecting film imports,
“economics rather than ideology played a significant role”: the Ministry of Radio, Film and
Television (MRFT) “loosely defined the criteria for imports as reflecting up-to-date global
cultural achievement and representing excellence of cinematic art and technique” while “the
cultural achievement and cinematic and technological excellence were apparently measured by
either the target films’ budget scale or star power or their box office returns” (Zhu 2006, 915).
Such a groundbreaking measure did contribute to the recovery of China’s film market in the mid-
1990s since it restored Chinese audiences’ theater-going habit (Zhu 2006, 915).
However, Hollywood blockbusters’ experiences in China were not always this smooth.
“At times when authorities want to reinforce political solidarity and national sentiment,
infiltration of foreign influences is banned, including entertainment products like movies”(Yeh
and Davis 2014, 43). In 1999, no foreign films could be released in China during “the entire
months of May, June, September and October” due to “the tenth anniversary of the June 4, 1989,
Tiananmen Square crackdown and the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s
Republic of China”(Zhu, hinese Cinema during the Era of Reform 2003, 146). Seemingly
random and self-contradictory, the Chinese state’s handling of the culture industry is in fact
rational: decisions and policies demonstrate close connections to national priorities and serve the
state’s different agendas at different times.

Main-melody Blockbusters: Closing the Gap
Adjusting the balance between the culture industry’s double missions in China, the state
also tried to close the gap between political propaganda and commercial entertainment. In the

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first decade after the twenty-first century, “main-melody” (Zhuxuan Lv, 主旋律) films, works
“designed to put across, in an easily digestible manner, a view that accords with currently
acceptable official policies”(Ward 2007), took on more attributes of commercial
cinema(McGrath 2011, 181). In 2006, with “a less didactic note”, youth romance, “major stars
from the Chinese-speaking world” and “sophisticated computer-generated imaging”, The Knot
(Yunshui Yao, 云水谣), a film that pushed the PRC’s claim to Taiwan, was a hit in mainland
China(McGrath 2011, 181). One year later, at the end of 2007, Feng Xiaogang’s The Assembly
(Jijie Hao, 集结号), a film produced “in the mold of ‘antifascist’ blockbusters such as Flags of
Our Fathers”(Johnson 2012, 177), also performed well while Hollywood imports were shut out
during that time due to a three-month domestic film protection period imposed in early
December 2007(Yeh and Davis 2014, 43). At the end of 2014, The Taking of Tiger Mountain
(Zhiqu Weihu Shan, 智取威虎山), Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark ( 徐克)’s latest work that
depicted “a communist soldier’s battle of wits with bandits during the Chinese Civil War in the
late 1940s”(Tsui, 'The Taking of 2014), grossed over $150 million and became the 12
th
highest
grossing film in the country according to cbooo.cn
4
(Frater, China Box Office 2015). The film
was adapted from the Beijing opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy with the latter being one
of the eight model plays (Yangban Xi, 样板戏) allowed to be staged in China during the Cultural
Revolution (1966-76). These commercial main-melody films made by mainstream directors and
in the style of commercial blockbusters were proof of the state’s efforts in “closing the gap
between state-sponsored propaganda and entertainment film”(McGrath 2011).

4
http://www.cbooo.cn/Alltimedomestic

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Absence of a Rating System: a Further Complicating Factor
What makes the situation even more complicated is the absence of a rating system in
mainland China. Both commercialization of the cultural market and artists’ creative freedom
could lead to contents that might exert negative influences over children and teenagers. Since
mainland China does not have a rating system for cultural products, all the works screened on
TV, in cinemas and on the Internet need to be suitable for audiences of all age groups. With this
concern in mind, censors banned certain works and forced artists to edit their films, causing
economic losses for cultural enterprises and inhibiting artists’ creative freedom. However, even
though a rating system seems to be an effective solution and has been discussed for more than
thirty years, it might not be feasible in the near future since such a system could clearly expose
the political intent behind cultural censorship, cause widespread unwanted discussions or even
social upheavals.
Due to the state’s concerns for the mental health of children and teenagers, films that
contain ultra-violent or sexually explicit scenes tend to run into trouble with the censors. In 2007,
award-winning director Ang Lee was prepared to cut thirty minutes of steamy and violent scenes
out of his film Lust, Caution so it could be approved and screened in mainland China. After the
film won the Gold Lion Award at Venice Film Festival, the SARFT granted Lee more freedom
and the final mainland version was only seven minutes shorter than the uncensored one screened
at Venice(Y. Yu 2007). Eventually, the film was released in mainland China as scheduled on
November 1
st
, 2007. Despite the cut, it became one of the highest grossing films of the year,
earning more than seventeen million US dollars according to Box Office Mojo.
Other works were not so lucky. As mentioned, the mainland release of Jia Zhangke’s A
Touch of Sin was indefinitely delayed by the SAPPRFT with the censorial organ declaring that

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the film’s graphic violence would inspire copycats to imitate “this violent anti-government, anti-
social behavior”(Roxborough 2015). Moreover, at the end of 2014, The Legend of Empress Wu
(Wumei Niangchuan Qi, 武媚娘传奇), a highly anticipated TV series starring Fan Bingbing ( 范
冰冰), one of China’s most popular stars, was pulled from the screen due to “technical reasons”
according to the show’s producers(Qin 2015). However, when the airing of the show was
resumed a few days later, audiences soon realized that the series was re-edited with the female
characters’ “plunging necklines and tightly squeezed bosoms” cut out(Qin 2015).
However, getting past censorship does not guarantee a film being appropriate for young
children. Stephen Chow ( 周星驰)’s film Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Xiyou
Xiangmo Pian, 西游降魔篇) was a huge hit in China. However, some of the graphic scenes,
“such as human beings roasted alive and people being eaten by river demons”, scared young
children and angered their parents(Coonan, Chinese Cinemagoers Keen on Film Ratings System
2013). Journey to the West: Conquering the Demon was released during the spring festival
vacation, a time when a lot of parents brought their children to cinemas. “A lot of parents
thought the film was an adaptation of the Chinese classic. Since Stephen Chow was the director,
they assumed it was a comedy therefore chose to watch it with their children,” said Wang Ning,
the assistant manager of a Beijing theatre(Zhou 2013). Before buying the tickets, it was very
hard for parents to know the film could be inappropriate for their children: there was no
widespread warning issued from the government, in the film’s promotion or in the cinemas that
screened the film. Since the opening scene of the film was rather bloody, a lot of children were
scared to tears and begged their parents to leave the cinema(Zhou 2013).
It is dubious whether censorship achieves the desired effects of protecting young
audiences, but the commercial and artistic value of cultural products clearly fall victim to such

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censoring practices. In 2007, unsatisfied with the government censorship, mainland audiences
“flocked by the thousands to Hong Kong to see the full, uncut version of the film Lust,
Caution”(French 2007). Moreover, Dong Yanbin, a graduate student of China University of
Political Science and Law, sued the SARFT and the Beijing Huaxing Cineplex for screening an
incomplete version of Lust, Caution. Disappointed after watching the mainland version of the
film, Dong felt that “the structure of the censored movie was obviously incomplete compared to
Zhang Ailing ( 张爱玲)’s original short story of the same name” and “the psychological portrayal
of the leading lady (Wang Jiazhi, 王佳芝) was clearly flawed because of the seven minutes of
cuts”(F. Wang 2014). In an interview with Jinghua Times ( 《京华时报》), he said that as movie
consumers, the Chinese audience did not lack the ability to appreciate films and make their own
judgments, therefore should be given access to the uncut version of the film which had been
screened in many other countries(Y. Wang 2007). Aside from the audiences, the director Ang
Lee also expressed regrets about having to edit out a scene in which Kuang Yumin ( 邝裕民), the
character played by Chinese American star Wang Leehom ( 王力宏), stabbed and killed another
character with a knife due to censors’ concern of exposing teenagers to graphic violence. “The
scene is like a coming-of-age ceremony for Wang. It completely changed the character’s image
of being a good student,” Lee admitted in an interview. For him, cutting out this scene is harder
than cutting out the sexual scenes since the former is crucial to the development of Wang’s
character(Yan 2007).
Eight years later, the censors’ action of pulling The Legend of Empress Wu from the TV
screen due to the female characters revealing too much cleavage was met with similar audience
outrage and also caused losses in the series’ coherence and overall attractiveness. To avoid
showing female characters’ plump bosoms, medium shots were “hastily converted to extreme

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close-ups that often cut actresses off at the neck”(Makinen, China TV series runs afoul of
censors for showing too much cleavage 2015). After the airing resumed, audiences complained
that the cuts made the actions of the characters more difficult to follow. According to one viewer
who wrote on the popular social networking website Douban.com, in a scene where someone
handed a fan to another person, one couldn’t see the fan at all and could only figure out what
happened through the dialogue(Makinen, China TV series runs afoul of censors for showing too
much cleavage 2015).
The series’ scriptwriter Li Yaling ( 李亚玲) also noted that the cuts influenced the
composition of various scenes and the plot of the series citing that in one scene, to avoid showing
the cleavage of Fan, the head of the male lead was partially cut off(L. Wu 2015). Moreover,
audiences also complained that the lavish costumes that comprised an important part of the
show’s attraction were gone after the re-edit, since only the faces of the female characters were
shown. According to The Beijing News ( 《新京报》), the production company of the show
invested heavily in the costumes of the female characters to represent the lavish dress style of the
Tang royal family. There were more than 3,000 costumes in total for all the characters, and the
female lead alone had more than 260 different outfits. However, the cuts made it almost
impossible to showcase these luxurious costumes to the audience. “With only big heads on
screen, all beauty is gone. Where are the promised hair decorations, lavish costumes and outfits
true to history?” a Chinese netizen lamented(L. Wu 2015).
To protect young audiences from inappropriate contents and to grant filmmakers and
cultural enterprises more creative freedom, a rating system seems to be a feasible solution.
Artists, industry insiders and audiences have all voiced their support for a rating system and the
establishment of such a system has been discussed and experimented with since the

Shao 22 of 53
1980s(en.people.cn 2003). “On March 1, 1989, the former administration of the Ministry of
Radio, Film and Television (MRFT) issued the “Circular Concerning The Examination and
Rating System for Certain Films” that “specified four types of films as ‘unsuitable for child
audiences”(en.people.cn 2003). However, after a cinema in Fujian promoted The Village of
Widows (Guafu Cong, 寡妇村, 1988), a film rated “unsuitable for child audiences” using “the
first sex film in China” and “not suitable for children” as the advertising slogans, the MRFT
concluded that the test rating system was “not appropriate and effective for the Chinese film
market, and it actually created some unexpected problems such as the abuse of the publicity of
the rating for commercial purposes”(F. Wang 2014, 403-404).
Twelve years later in February 2001, “64 Chinese filmmakers signed a joint proposal
entitled ‘China Must Have Its Movie Rating System’ in Beijing”(en.people.cn 2003). One month
later in March, Wang Xingdong ( 王兴东), a member of the National Committee of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference and a renowned scriptwriter, submitted a proposal
about the introduction of a film rating system in mainland China(en.people.cn 2003). Despite
receiving “a lukewarm response” in 2001, Wang decided to submit his proposal again in 2003
after “seeing a film full of scenes depicting homosexual activity and incest in a primary school”.
This time, many film industry insiders including renowned film directors Zhang Yimou, Feng
Xiaogang ( 冯小刚) and famous film star Gong Li ( 巩俐) voiced their support for the
proposal(Shen 2003).
In 2004, it seemed that a long overdue, national rating system was in the
making(en.people.cn 2003). Wu Ke ( 吴克), Deputy Director of the Film Bureau of the SARFT
said: “The drafting of the film rating system ‘has entered the substantial stage’”(en.people.cn
2003). According to him, a major workshop on the matter was held in Beijing in April that year

Shao 23 of 53
and “most participants reached a consensus that a film rating system was vital for protecting the
rights of minors and young film-goers”(en.people.cn 2003). In fact, as early as July 2003, Wu
had already told a press conference that a survey among 2,060 movie audience members would
be held to “judge the popularity of a system of movie ratings”(Shanghai Star 2003). Tong Gang
( 童刚), Director General of the SARFT, also confirmed the adoption of a movie rating system in
2004, saying that his administration was investigating the practicality of film rating and
classification, aiming at altering the original criterion of movies being made ‘suitable for
all’(Chinadaily.com.cn 2004).
However, a few months later, in January, Tong warned the public that a rating system
was not a panacea to the Chinese film market and declared that it might be too early for China to
adopt such a system due to many unsolved problems in the implementation including how to
adapt a rating system to China’s conditions and the needs of the Chinese film market, how to
manage the system after its adoption and how to make sure the system will develop in a healthy
and orderly manner(Z. Wu 2005). A similar message was repeated by several SARFT officials in
2010. Zang Zengxiang ( 臧增祥), Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Radio,
Film and Television, said that the bureau’s research “proved clearly that Beijing couldn’t carry
out a movie rating system for many reasons” without explaining any of those reasons(Xu 2010).
Zhao Shi ( 赵实), Deputy General Director of the SARFT said in a press conference that
according to the SARFT’s research, a film rating system could only meet the needs of audiences
of different ages and levels in theory while in practice not a lot of successful cases can be found
in the world; even in some developed countries, it is still hard to stop teenage audiences from
watching certain films in theatres and Internet cafes(S. Wen 2010).

Shao 24 of 53
The repeated delays and rejections did not stop artists, scholars, industry insiders and
audiences from voicing their support for a rating system. In 2012, renowned director Xie Fei ( 谢
飞) published an open letter using his weibo account to ask the authorities to replace
administrative censorship with a film rating system that is “bounded by law, supervised by the
administration, managed and disciplined by the industry”(mentuse 2012). In 2013, according to a
survey conducted by the Chinese research group Entgroup, “more than 90 percent of Chinese
filmgoers support a film rating or film classification system”(Coonan, Chinese Cinemagoers
Keen on Film Ratings System 2013).
Aside from the audiences, studio heads also acknowledge the necessity of a film rating
system. In November 2013, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Yu Dong ( 于冬), chief
executive of the Chinese movie studio and distributor Bona Film Group, said that in mainland
China some horror films and violent films should come with a sign to warn parents before they
take their children to see them(Makinen, China studio boss likes 2013). In January 2015, China’s
Film Director’s Guild, the organization that retweeted Xie Fei’s open letter in 2013, issued an
online manifesto using its official weibo account calling for the establishment of a film rating
system in China “to protect young people’s physical and mental health and the filmmakers’
artistic creative space”(Coonan, Chinese Directors' Guild Urges Reforms, Launch of Film
Ratings System 2015).
In fact, some Chinese cinemas have already taken it on themselves to issue age
restrictions for the movies they play”(Frater, Multiplex Launches Own Film Rating System
2014). In 2015, a cinema in Urumqi, Xinjiang started to issue ratings to different films screened
in the multiplex. According to their criteria, a Chinese horror thriller The House That Never Dies
(Jingcheng Bashi Yihao, 京城 81 号, 2014) received a “PG-13” rating, meaning that the cinema

Shao 25 of 53
staff would remind parents that the film was not suitable for children younger than 13 years old.
Parents who had already bought the tickets could either get a refund or exchange for tickets of a
different film(Wei 2015). The House That Never Dies’s distributor Heng Ye Films ( 恒业影业)
believed the box office revenue of the film would not be influenced by being labeled as PG-13
by this cinema since the target audience of the film was people over eighteen years old and
children and teenagers only comprised two to three percent of the audience(Wei 2015). As for
the rating standard, the manager of the theatre admitted that since there was no government-
issued guideline, the theatre team could only rely on its own judgment: if a film was already
rated in other countries, the cinema would simply adopt the original rating; for domestic Chinese
films, a rating team that consisted of the operating manager of the theatre and other members
from the market department would watch the film and decide the rating. However, the manager
also pointed out that the theatre’s rating team was not professional enough and there weren’t
experts who specialized in children psychology in the team(Wei 2015).
Despite support from the audiences and the appeal from various sides of the culture
industry, as late as June 2015, China had not adopted a rating system for cultural products yet.
While official explanations were ambiguous and unconvincing, a quote from Yao Lin, the
manager of the Urumqi multiplex that took matters into its own hands, might serve as a key to
solve the mystery: when asked about the relationship between censorship and a film rating
system, Yao stated that the SAPPRFT censoring process and a film rating system are two
completely separate areas; “what the SAPPRFT does is judging whether a film meets the state’s
political requirements. Therefore, there isn’t sufficient control over sex and violence”(Wei
2015).

Shao 26 of 53
In an article published in the weekly magazine New Century ( 《新世纪》), Wang Yong
( 王涌), a professor from China University of Political Science and Law, drew a similar
conclusion by stating that a film or TV rating system was inappropriate for China because it is
inappropriate for the state’s needs and the government did not like it. “A rating system will
expose political elements in film censorship; authority’s handling of politically sensitive films
will lose its cover”. For example, the authority attributed their decision of banning Jiang Wen’s
award-winning film Devils on the Doorstep partially to the fact that film contained rude
languages and shots of nude female bodies, and was vulgar in style. Such concern over erotic and
vulgar contents might be genuine but was also used to cover and distract people from the state’s
political intent behind banning a film whose description of the 2
nd
Sino-Japanese War (1937-45)
strayed from the state-approved party line. Only by using criticism of eroticism to assist and
cover political persecution can the state, which is well aware that its reputation will be damaged
by outright political persecution, criticize or ban a film without disgracing itself(Y. Wang 2011).
Despite the obstacles posed by China’s political system and the level of control the state
wants to exert on the society, in January 2015, after the Legend of Empress Wu was pulled from
the screen, the SAPPRFT once again brought up the issue of a possible rating system for TV
programs. According to the Legal Daily ( 《法制日报》), the SAPPRFT had been conducting
investigations and research on TV rating systems from more than ten different countries in the
world and was considering both designated time slots and channels(X. Li 2015). In April, Song
Jianxin (宋建新), Vice Director of the Department of Digital Publishing of the SAPPRFT, also
emphasized the necessity of a game rating system to protect children and young players from
potential negative influences(Shao 2015). It is still unknown whether the SAPPRFT’s
commitment will bring about any substantial progress this time, but even if a rating system was

Shao 27 of 53
successfully adopted in mainland China, it will co-exist with censorship instead of replacing it.
Works that touch on sensitive political matters will still have a hard time getting past the censors.

The Most Revolutionary Art under the Strictest Censorship
To Live, Zhang Yimou’s 1994 masterpiece that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes Film
Festival, was banned in China since 1994(Natale 1994). However, the book from which the film
was adapted was published legally and openly in the same country; Chen Kaige ( 陈凯歌)’s
Goodbye My Concubine (Bawang Bieji, 霸王别姬, 1993) and Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin
shared the same story: while both films have never been allowed to be released in mainland
China, Hong Kong author Li Bihua ( 李碧华)’s novel on which Chen’s film was based and the
script of A Touch of Sin written by Jia have not been blocked from the country. The Chinese
censoring authorities apparently apply different standards to different cultural products: films,
deemed as “the most revolutionary of all arts” by Lenin, are put under the strictest control due to
their popularity and direct influence over audiences; different censoring and approval procedures
also contribute to this discrepancy(T. M. Chen 2003, 154).
Ever since the establishment of the PRC in 1949, film has been “appropriated by the CCP
as a fundamental propaganda and educational tool”(Latham 2007, 165). Compared with other
media forms, films “acquired a privileged position” since they “evoked stronger responses than
other media such as newspaper articles, short stories, music, opera and posters”(T. M. Chen
2003). The fact that films “could be easily controlled from the center in terms of funding,
censorship and distribution” made films the ideal means for the state to communicate with the
Chinese people(Latham 2007).

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Moreover, the limited number of films screened in China every year makes it possible for
the censoring apparatus to pre-approve all the works before they hit the silver screen. In 2014, a
total of three hundred and eighty eight films were screened in China, out of which eighty were
imported(entgroup 2015). All of these works were reviewed and pre-approved by the SAPPRFT;
in fact, all of the domestically-made films went through two rounds of review since the scripts
needed to be cleared by the authority before productions started. On the other hand, it is very
difficult to apply similar procedures in the publishing world. In 2012, 7.925 billion copies of
414,005 different books were published in mainland China(Ma and Jiang 2014). Instead of being
routinely subject to review by the authorities before publishing, “the review process relies more
on the discretion and self-censorship of individual authors and publishing houses”(Shambaugh
2007, 53). Therefore, if one book is rejected by one publishing house, there is still a chance
another publisher with a different editor-in-chief will take it(H. Yu 2013).
Another factor that also influences the censorial organs’ consideration is the popularity of
a certain work. For example, “because academic journals have such small circulations, they are
given somewhat more latitude than other publishing media”(Link 2002). Since every year there
are around 400,000 kinds of different new books for Chinese citizens to pick from in bookstores
while the number of new films available in cinema is less than 400; a single film has the
potential of reaching more people than a single book and is therefore subject to stricter
inspection.

Double Standards: Heated Competition between SOEs and Private Enterprises
Limiting contents that reflect badly on the society it governs and producing or promoting
materials that disseminate approved values could easily be linked to the Chinese state’s attempt

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to prop up its legitimacy and strengthen its control over the country. However, some of the
censors’ recent decisions strayed away from this principle and therefore caused some confusions.
On April 26, 2014, the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory, together with The Good Wife, The
Practice and NCIS, were removed from Chinese websites that paid licensing fees to legally
stream these series online at the request of the SAPPRFT without explanations(Sun 2014).
Chinese netizens together with the staff members working for these websites expressed their
confusions over the SAPPRFT’s move. “If it is because of violence and sex, Walking Dead and
Hannibal are still there; if it is because of vulgarity, 2 Broke Girls could still be streamed; if it is
because of sensitive themes, House of Cards is not banned,” China Economic Weekly (Zhongguo
Jingji Zhoukan, 《中国经济周刊》) quoted a person in charge of a related department in one of
these websites; he stated that he could not understand such “selective law enforcement” and
could not decipher the intentions of the officials(Sun 2014). Moreover, when journalists from the
same magazine contacted the SAPPRFT, officials from the institution replied: “not all the
information could be made public”(Sun 2014).
However, this puzzle did not remain a puzzle for long. Two days after the four series
were removed from the Internet, CCTV confirmed that they were translating The Big Bang
Theory and planned to broadcast a cropped “green” version (Lvse Ban, 绿色版) of the show.
Therefore, this seemed to be another case of China’s ruling elites “double-dip by taking
advantage of both the new opportunities offered by the market and the rents provided by the old
unreformed system” and “rely on their administrative power to create new monopolies”(Pei
2008, 24). An article from the official website of the Hong Kong based Phoenix Satellite TV
used the Chinese saying “the magistrates are free to burn down houses, while the common

Shao 30 of 53
people are forbidden even to light lamps”
5
to describe the state’s actions (ifeng.com 2014) while
an article in Foreign Policy concluded that it was dangerous to compete with state-owned
companies(Lu and Fu 2014).
Unfortunately, this was neither the beginning nor the end of similar incidents. In 2011,
the SARFT told Hunan Satellite TV to stop broadcasting its immensely popular singing
competition reality show Super Girl (Chaoji Nvsheng, 超级女声). The reason provided by the
SARFT is that the program extended the time limit for this kind of shows. However, a senior
employee at the TV station told BBC “regulators were jealous of the popularity and financial
success of Super Girl”(Bristow 2011). Three years later, a week after the four harmless-looking
series were made unavailable online, Game of Thrones, the popular HBO series that contains
violence and nudity, was broadcast by First Theatre (Diyi Juchang, 第一剧场), a pay cable
channel of CCTV and the channel even promised through its weibo account that the version they
broadcast was uncensored(Yang 2014) even though what was eventually aired was a heavily
edited mess (Blum 2014). Such double standards evoked widespread doubts and criticism.

Fans in Higher Places: Personalization or Institutionalization of the Decision Making
Process
The only people whose wills could override both the concerns of the censoring body and
the wishes of the politically well-connected elites are top CCP leaders. Interestingly, in recent
years, their personal preferences tend to go against the conservative tendency of the censors. In
2014, a lot were surprised when the Chinese censors showed tolerance for the Netflix dark
political series House of Cards, especially season two of the show that did not make China look

5
Zhixu Zhouguan Fanghuo, Buxu Baixing Diandeng, 只许州官放火，不许百姓点灯

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great by featuring a Chinese billionaire whose grandfather fought side by side with Mao Zedong
and who alluded to “scheming with members of the Chinese government to force a more liberal
financial policy, not to mention bribing high officials outright” (Wertime and Chen); in fact the
line that went viral on the Chinese Internet was an exposure of rampant corruption within the
Chinese system: “Everyone in China who works on this level pays who they need to pay,” said
the above-mentioned billionaire. The fact that such explicit description of China’s “Communist
Party corruption, elite infighting and the often-oversized influence of the moneyed
class”(Wertime and Chen 2014) eluded the censors’ axe is extremely unusual, since according to
people who worked for Chinese websites that streamed foreign TV series, numerous themes—
including violence, sex, China’s one child policy, the gap between the rich and the poor, Chinese
cyber hackers, the poor quality of Chinese manufactured goods, poor service in Chinese
restaurants, Chinese academic scandals, the “black” coal mines in Shanxi Province, the “ghost
city” of Ordos, wealthy Chinese businessmen who acquired American companies—could all get
their shows into troubles with the censors(Sun 2014). The unlikely survival of House of Cards
was traced by many to Wang Qishan’s ( 王岐山) personal preference for the show. As chief of Xi
Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Wang
“publicly cited the dark political drama based in Washington D.C. as one of his favorite
shows”(Lu and Fu 2014); it is also said that he was “so transfixed by early episodes that he
instructed underlings to check the release date for season two”(Campbell 2014).
Aside from Wang Qishan, Li Changchun ( 李长春) is another top CCP leader that kept a
controversial cultural product afloat. When City of Life and Death (Nanjing Nanjing, 南京! 南
京! ,2009), a film set in The Nanjing Massacre during the 2
nd
Sino-Japanese war directed by
young Chinese director Lu Chuan ( 陆川 ), hit Chinese theatres, the film evoked huge

Shao 32 of 53
controversies and incited heated hatred towards the director himself for “the fact that one of the
film’s protagonists, a Japanese soldier witnessing the atrocities committed by his countrymen
during the occupation of Nanjing, is shown in a sympathetic light”. Angry audiences sent emails
to the director threatening to dismember him and wishing his parents slow and painful
deaths(Wong, "Showing the glimmer" 2014). The vehement attacks put the SARFT under
“enormous pressure to halt all screenings” but the personal support of Li Changchun, the
Communist Party’s propaganda chief and member of the Politburo Standing Committee, kept the
film in cinemas(Wong, "Showing the glimmer" 2014). Moreover, on a webpage dedicated to
films and TV series that commemorated the 60
th
anniversary of the founding of the PRC, the
state news agency Xinhua featured two positive reviews for the film
6
.
Interestingly, both cases of top CCP officials’ personal preferences trumping censors’
concerns were against the Chinese censorship’s conservative tendency. It brought up the
question whether generational change would lead to future liberalization of the country’s cultural
sphere: when new generations of Chinese people who grow up enjoying Hollywood films and
American TV series and are influenced by liberal ideals start to occupy important positions in all
walks of life, including those in the party leadership, more opportunities of liberalization might
emerge naturally in the cultural sphere.

Pushing the Envelope: Future Opportunities for Further Cultural Liberalization
Aside from wishing future CCP leaders harbor liberal ideas, the commercial potential of
controversial works, the fact that censorship could be discussed and debated in the public sphere,
the delay of state polices in the face of rapid changes in the cultural industries and the

6
http://www.xinhuanet.com/ent/dsdyzb/

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complexity of the task of censoring the intellectual world of a huge country all provide
opportunities for artists and cultural enterprises that want to push the envelope.
Chinese director Lou Ye’s ( 娄烨) dealings with the censors in 2012 spoke volumes about
how public attention could influence the censoring authorities. In the past two decades, Lou
angered the censors “by making movies that touch on sensitive subjects like sex and the 1989
Tiananmen Incident and then by screening them at foreign film festivals without official
approval” and ended up having multiple works banned in China and being barred from making
movies for years(Makinen, Director takes Chinese censorship, business battles public 2012). In
2012, when he received approval from the censorship body before screening his then latest work
Mystery (Fucheng Mishi, 浮城谜事, 2012) at the Cannes International Film Festival and secured
a release date in mainland China, it seemed that “a chance for the 47-year-old to come in from
the cold” finally arrived(Makinen, Director takes Chinese censorship, business battles public
2012). However, weeks before the film’s opening in Beijing, the censors told Lou to edit two
scenes and canceled the coproduction agreement even though he registered the film as a French
Chinese coproduction months ago(Makinen, Director takes Chinese censorship, business battles
public 2012). Frustrated by the censors’ inconsistent moves, Lou started to post his back-and-
forth with the censors on the Chinese microblogging site weibo.com.
In an interview with the Chinese website Sina.com, Lou admitted that posting his
negotiations with the censors on weibo.com was his last resort: “I don’t know what to do. This is
the only way I know to demand communication,” said the director(G. Chen 2012). This last
resort soon proved very effective: after he posted his second weibo entry, Lou’s producer
received a phone call from the Beijing film authories (G. Chen 2012).What followed was a new
round of negotiations and compromises from both sides: the censors ensured Lou that he didn’t

Shao 34 of 53
have to reduce the number of hammer blows in a scene from 13 to 2 as the Beijing film
authorieis requested earlier and could seek a different plan that did not involve re-editing the film
and could ensure the film make its scheduled premiere; eventually Lou darkened the scene for
three seconds, edited out some sex scenes and removed his name from the film’s credits when
Mystery was screened in Chinese cinemas (Makinen, “Director takes censorship public”).
However, “the officials’ acceptance of only making small revisions” and the experience of
“taking a small step forward” gave the director more confidence of making quality films within
the censoring system(G. Chen 2012). In fact, Lou succeeded in getting his lastest work Blind
Massage (Tuina, 推拿, 2014), a film that told the story of blind masseurs who worked in
massage parlors, a marginal group in the Chinese society, past the censors after four or five
months of discussions(Blanc 2014).
Censorship of domestic and foreign films has been well institutionalized with state
policies and adminstrative processes, therefore, every little step forward could be a long and
painful processes. However, the state respnded with a delay to new forms of cultural products,
and this provided opportunities to make public controversial or sensitive products and send out
bold messages. Since films made or imported by studios or series made by TV stations have to
be licensed by the SAPPRFT, Chinese Internet companies started to acquire copyrights of
American series, stream them on their websites and make money from advertising revenues(Sun
2014). From 2010, around three to four hundreds Amerian TV series have been streamed by
Chinese websites. For around four years, such contents could be streamed as long as the Internet
companies informed and got approvals from the state when they decided to import a certain
series. It was not until March 2014 that the SAPPRFTissued a statement on its website
requesting online companies to “employ government-approved censors to vet content and obtain

Shao 35 of 53
a censorship license, then monitor content before it is broadcast” (Coonan, “Censors Clamp
Down on Internet Video.
Mirco-films, “short, low-budget videos produced by amateur film makers and meant
solely for online consumption on… video sites”, also posed a challenge for the censors(Lin
2014). The populaity of micro-films started from Old Boy (Laonan Hai, 老男孩, 2010 ), a 43-
minute micro film directed by a duo called Chopsticks Brothers(Kuaizi Xiongdi, 筷子兄弟). The
film that “spoke to the hopes, aspirations, and crushed dreams of those who came of age in the
1980s and 1990s” was lauched in late 2010(Montefiore 2013) and has since received more than
80 million views(Lin 2014). This relative new form of enterntaiment became immensely popular
among the Chinese audiences since micro-films, which can be watched on moble devices, gave
them a little escape in their hectic urban lifestyles which frequently involved “heavy traffic jams
and long commute times”(Montefiore 2013). Moreover, micro-films also provided young
filmmakers with unprecedented opportunities since directors received instant feedbacks after
they posted their works online and their works could be picked up by professional
studios(Montefiore 2013). As an outlet that “bypasses the strict film censorship of the
state”(Montefiore 2013), some micro-films pushed boundaries “on sensitive issues like pollution
or the wealth gap, often going further than would be allowed on television”(Lin 2014).
“The lack of a standard distribtuion channel” and the sheer number of micro-films made
every year “make monitoring the vedios a daunting task for local regulators”(Lin 2014). The task
of supervising micro-films fell among a number of government departments including the
Propaganda Department as well as the Ministry of Information and Technology and the Online
Information Department of the SARFT(Lin 2014). In 2012 and 2014, the censors tried twice to
tighten their control over the relatively new genre, requesting video sites to censor micro-films

Shao 36 of 53
before posting them and users to submit their real names when posting the vedios online(Lin
2014). However, for vedio sites, the censors can only manually censor the contents of the vedios
instead of relying on the technology that applies to written words(Lin 2014). Since there were
more than 2,000 micro-movies produced in 2011 alone, it was very difficult for the censors to
manually view all of them. As one user commented on weibo.com: “The SARFT still wants to
approve [micro films] one at a time. Apparently, they’re not afraid of dying of
exhaustion”(Montefiore 2013).
The Chinese state has issued numerous directives and notices to incorporate new
distribution channels and new forms of cultural contents into the existing censorship system.
However, before these regulations were issued, these new forms and channels of cultural
contents had already achieved popularity, especially among young Chinese people. Therefore,
their battle with the censorhip will continue—Tencent just signed a deal with HBO to distribute
films and TV dramas produced by it in November 2014(Osawa 2014); and new channels of
disribution keep emerging: nowdays a lot Chinese film archives and cafes host regular film
screenings and movies they pick did not have to go through the censoring and licensing process
for films screened by commercial threatres(Muweier 2013).

Conclusion
Dating shows, time travels, nerd comedies, singing competitions: a general look of the
themes that ran into trouble with the Chinese censors made the state’s behaviors seem random
and inconsistent. However, such paradoxes could be explained by conflicts in contemperary
Chinese politics and economics, including those among commecial interests, concerns for young
audiences and political control, between ruling elites and a free market, between

Shao 37 of 53
personalizalzation and institutionalizaton of decision making; and these conflicts led to plenty of
opportunities for cultural workers and enterprises who wanted to further liberalize the country’s
cultural sphere. Since cultural products can have powerful influence over people’s minds, and
the behaviors of Chinese censors could shed light on the government’s intentions and reasoning,
further researches on the interactions between the Chinese state and the coutnry’s cultural
industires could also make meaningful contributions to the hotly debated theme in the academic
world: wehther and how will democritization happen in China.

Shao 38 of 53
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Creator Shao, Yi (author)

Core Title Chinese cultural censorship: underlying contradictions and future opportunities

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 07/24/2015

Defense Date 07/24/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag censorship,Chinese films,film,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Rosen, Stanley (committee chair), Cooper, Eugene (committee member), Wang, Jay (committee member)

Creator Email xiaoxiaoyi311@gmail.com,yishao@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-606917

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Legacy Identifier etd-ShaoYi-3704.pdf

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