China And Censorship: An Undefined System Provides Uneven Results

[HuckleB]

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21679842-unusually-some-chinese-want-more-censorship-blood-and-cuts

"A FLYING dagger stabs a Japanese soldier in the heart. Another fighter has his neck slit by a Chinese secret agent. Others are shot at close range, gassed or drowned. Like war dramas everywhere, “Royalty in Blood”, a 36-part television series about the war between China and Japan from 1937-45, is pretty gory. Yet unlike elsewhere, the on-screen violence is not just for adult viewers. It is aired each week at 7.35pm, the most popular television-watching hour, when even very young children in China have yet to go to bed.

All films and TV shows are vetted by a government committee. Oddly, however, China has no ratings system to denote a film’s suitability for certain age-groups. It has no TV “watershed” either, as many countries do, dividing the day into family-oriented programming and late-night viewing with more adult content. Violent TV dramas are sometimes shown on public transport. Ticket sales at cinemas increased nearly 50% in the first 11 months of 2015 on the previous year to reach $6.3 billion, a total surpassed only by America. Yet questions are often raised about whether films are safe and appropriate for children, who can watch any of them.

The government does not want ratings or a watershed because it does not want to be seen to be permitting sex and violence for anyone. Its constraints on what may appear on screen represent a laundry list of the state’s anxieties. Content must not “endanger” China’s unity, security or honour. It also should not “twist” history, feature explicit sex or gambling, advocate “the supremacy of religion” or “meticulously describe fortune-telling”. Playing up violence is prohibited, in theory.

But to attract adult audiences, makers of film and TV entertainment often like to push the boundaries of what the Communist Party regards as good taste. And even the prudish standards of the censors are sometimes flexible enough to allow content that might shock children, who are just as impressionable in China as anywhere else. In apparent response to demand from anxious parents, a handful of cinemas in the far western province of Xinjiang introduced their own unofficial ratings in 2014.

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Interesting, or so I think.