Central Gannan [Tibetan Autonomous] Prefectural Committee Propaganda Department: County and municipal committee propaganda departments: At 9:30 tonight, the international Chinese channel CCTV4 program Focus Today will air the segment “Outside Tibetan Separatist Cliques and the Southern Gansu Self-Immolations.” County television stations, please announce this program continuously on your news ticker; diligently organize cadres and the masses to watch the show. (February 4, 2013)

中共甘南州委宣传部：各县市委宣传部：今晚9:30分，在中央4台中文国际频道《今日关注》栏目播出《甘南系列自焚案真相调查专题片》，请州县电视台以字幕形式连续滚动发出通知，认真组织干部群众收看。

These instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, Censorship Vault, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Gansu, media censorship, Ministry of Truth, propaganda, self-immolations, television, Tibet
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The new policy, which comes into effect immediately, stipulates that all television documentaries for public broadcast, produced by television stations, commercial studios and social organizations, should submit a content summary, cast list and shooting plan to SARFT before filming starts.

SARFT will then review all the information and publish the approved list of documentaries to TV stations. According to the announcement, the purpose of the new policy is to avoid subjects overlapping and resources being wasted.

[…] “I don’t know why they made this policy. Imagine the huge number of documentaries China produces each year, I doubt if they have enough manpower to fulfill this task. It’s almost mission impossible to carry out this policy,” Shu Haolun, professor at the School of Film and Television Arts of Shanghai University, told the Global Times.

[…] “Many documentaries involve sensitive topics which might upset the government. Now they can more easily reject such story ideas through this policy which I think harms our freedom of speech,” the CEO of an independent film production, who asked not to be named, told the Global Times.

The SARFT-unapproved but Oscar-shortlisted documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry will be shown on P.B.S. tonight (Monday, February 25th).

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, documentaries, film censorship, SARFT, television, TV
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Succumbing to a kung fu master: it’s all in a day’s work.

SARFT demand has forced “Anti-Japanese War” film and television productions to saturate the market. Programming on the Sino-Japanese War, part of the Pacific theater of World War II, makes for great patriotic entertainment. While studios try new twists, like World War II kung fu, it’s a struggle to keep this material fresh.

In a February 4 story, the Qiangjiang Evening News reports on the business of war at Hengdian World Studios, China’s answer to Hollywood.

Shi Zhongpeng, a 26-year-old Heng piao [Hengdian World Studios commuter], has suddenly become an Internet star by “dying” eight times in one day while playing the role of Japanese soldier in different productions.

Shi Zhongpeng’s fame rose from widespread online reports on the “Hengdian Anti-Japanese Revolutionary Base.” In 2012, Hengdian Studios received 150 production teams, 48 of which made films of TV shows about the Anti-Japanese War. That amounts to about 30% of all productions. Even Hengdian Studios Entertainment Channel couldn’t help poking fun of the trend on Weibo, writing, “Today, there will be another 300 devils executed.” And the statistics are even more convincing. The Hengdian Studios Actors Guild employed 300,000 extras (including special extras) in 2012, and 60% of them had played “devils.”

Shi Zhongpeng is a case in point.

Shi says he has been in Hengdian for four years, and most often, he has played a Japanese soldier. In 2012, he participated in over 30 Anti-Japanese War productions and played a Japanese soldier over 200 times. On his most productive day, he “died” eight times. As an experienced “devil,” Shi summarizes what he’s learned in one sentence: “The more horrible you look, the better.” The casting teams specifically select people who are less attractive and somewhat vicious-looking to play “devils.” So during interviews, Shi hunches his back, squints his eyes, and presents a fierce, wretched look to boost his chances of being chosen for the part. His biggest wish is to play an Eighth Route soldier [from the Communist army] someday.

Besides the extras, full-time actors are also in on the action. Known as the “number one Heng piao,” Lin Jiangguo, from Xianju, Zhejiang Province, had roles in Jianghu Er’nu, I Want to be an Eighth Route Soldier, and Martyrs last year, all anti-Japanese productions. He has always played the awe-inspiring, righteous lead role or lead supporting role. Though “beating the devils” is indulgently satisfying, he feels exhausted after the three productions. But he still has to defeat more “devils” in 2013.

In the beginning of the New Year, Anti-Japanese War productions are still on the rise. According to the managing company of Hengdian Studios, nine out of 19 current productions are related to the Anti-Japanese War. To accommodate the high demand, Hengdian Studios is planning to build more Republican-era [1912-1949] sets. For example, a port city district will be added on Guangzhou Street; in the Revolutionary Expo City, another Republican city will be built.

Read more about China’s anti-Japanese culture from CDT.

Via AmazeNews. Translation by Junebug.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-Japan, Hengdian, television, World War II, Zhejiang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Sharp Arrow Operation (利箭行动) has something for everyone: it is just the latest in a decades-long line of World War II TV dramas, but with a martial arts kick. Shot at Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang Province, Sharp Arrow’s 35 episodes cost RMB 50,000,000 (US$8 million). It is the big-budget, action-packed answer to the demands of state and public.

And so a new genre is born: the World War II kung fu show.

As this gif makes the rounds online, netizens chuckle at the fictional bloodbath:

@hesnet: A Japanese man came to visit China. His first stop was Zhejiang. He found a local guide and gave her 3000 yuan, telling her his grandfather had died fighting in China. He wanted her to take him to the location of the worst Japanese casualties to pay his respects. With money in hand, the guide had him spend 300 yuan on a car, and off they drove. An hour later, she announced that they had arrived. As soon as he stepped out of the car, he saw the sign: Hengdian World Studios.

@钢铁侠Z：有一个日本人来中国旅游，第一站到了浙江，他找了一个当地导游，给了3000块钱，说他祖上战死中国，要求导游带他去国内日本人伤亡最惨烈的地方祭拜，导游收钱后带日本人花300块包了辆车，一个小时后告诉日本人到了，日本人下车一看：横店影视城。

Poster for Sharp Arrow Operation.

@avb001: Q: During the Anti-Japanese War, which Chinese military unit finished off the most devils? A: Bayi Film Studio.

@avb001：问：在抗日战争中，中国军方编制下那个单位消灭鬼子最多？答：八一电影制片厂

Via CDT Chinese.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-Japan, Hengdian, television, World War II, Zhejiang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Like “Mad Men’s” characters, young white-collar workers in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai are often imbued with an alluring sense of living in a nation on the rise, even as they grapple with rapid and disorienting social, cultural and economic change.

“Mad Men” is licensed by Lionsgate for viewing on the portal http://www.sohu.com with Chinese subtitles and is available on some Air China international flights. It is one of scores of American shows benefiting from the increasing popularity and legitimacy of Internet TV, which offers spicier fare than China’s bland state-run channels and gives busy professionals the convenience of when-you-want it viewing in a nation largely devoid of on-demand programming, DVRs or TiVos.

To be sure, “Mad Men” seems unlikely to ever notch the popularity of American crime shows like “Prison Break” or “CSI,” which attract tens of millions of viewers here. And it’s far less of a phenomenon than “Friends,” which spawned a series of books with scripts from each season translated into Mandarin. (Beijing even boasts a Friends Café, modeled after the Central Perk coffee shop on the series.)

Although Chinese businesses remain strongly male dominated — in the World Economic Forum’s 2011 Gender Gap report, China ranked 61, way behind the U.S. (17) and Iceland (1) but ahead of Italy (74) — advertising is among the sectors in China in which women have made bigger strides. Martin Murphy, managing director of global brand management for Ogilvy & Mather’s Shanghai branch, noted that his office is headed by a woman.

While the growing popularity of American sitcoms continues, China Daily reports China has become the biggest TV series producer:

China has become the world’s largest television series producer after making 15,000 episodes in 2011.

The country is also the world’s third biggest film producer, Culture Minister Cai Wu said on Wednesday.

While briefing national lawmakers at a the bi-monthly session (scheduled from October 23 to 26) of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, Cai said, in 2011 China produced 15,000 television series episodes and 558 movies.

It also made 260,000 minutes of animations and 4,000 hours of documentaries.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: hollywood, media industry, Relativity Media, sohu, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Actors in Chinese film and television productions routinely speak standard Mandarin, even when portraying historical figures, such as Chairman Mao or Sun Yat-sen, who are well known for their colourful dialects and accents. Although most Chinese TV and film productions have Chinese subtitles anyway, few directors would choose to inflict an impenetrable—if historically accurate—Babel of dialects, regionalisms and dead languages on their audience.

Analects points out that China inherited most of Qing’s territory and ethnicities, and has to reinvent its rhetoric for a multiethnic nation-state:

Even the very notion of the Qing as an imperial dynasty is difficult for some people to stomach. The story of China as a perennial victim of European, American and Japanese imperialist aggression does not sit easily beside the memory of an expansionist Qing, even if both are part of the same story. The Communist Party draws legitimacy from its historical victory over the twin evils of feudalism and foreign aggression, a victory that was symbolised in part by their claiming and defending the territory of the Qing empire. Awkwardly, the political needs of the present are prioritised above historical nuance.

Few of the million or so people who watch “Bu Bu Jing Xin” or “Zhen Huan Zhuan” this weekend will worry about the fate of empire or about whether the Qing emperors spoke Manchu or not to their concubines and wives. But the Manchus still matter. And with over 10m Manchu-language documents sitting in the Imperial Archives in Beijing, there is much research on Manchu rule and the Qing era yet to be done.

Posted with Blogsy

© Wendy Qian for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, language, Manchu, minorities, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Yang says he wants to “enhance China’s prestige in the world …. He speaks in a gentle, friendly manner — in the precise English he learned as a student in Great Britain. Here too, outside the studio, he remains the consummate gentleman, never rising into the shrill tones favored by many a government spokesperson.

On his Weibo account on Wednesday, Yang showed a different side [zh]. Josh Chin’s translation at The Wall Street Journal reads:

The Public Security Bureau wants to clean out the foreign trash: To arrest foreign thugs and protect innocent girls, they need to concentrate on the disaster zones in [student district] Wudaokou and [drinking district] Sanlitun. Cut off the foreign snake heads. People who can’t find jobs in the U.S. and Europe come to China to grab our money, engage in human trafficking and spread deceitful lies to encourage emigration. Foreign spies seek out Chinese girls to mask their espionage and pretend to be tourists while compiling maps and GPS data for Japan, Korea and the West. We kicked out that foreign bitch and closed Al-Jazeera’s Beijing bureau. We should shut up those who demonize China and send them packing.

The post met with criticism and ridicule from many Sina Weibo users. Charles Custer gathered and translated some responses at ChinaGeeks:

Host Yang, you haven’t gone far enough! We should bring back all the officials’ wives and children from overseas to help build the motherland, we must not allow them to be polluted by foreign trash, yes, and also we should close the borders/forbid international travel, so that there is no contact with overseas forces.

Isn’t your daughter studying in the US?

The fact that this CCTV host isn’t writing editorials for the Beijing Daily is truly a waste of talent.

This is exactly how the Boxer Rebellion started…

Even the state-owned English-language tabloid Global Times paired its translation of Yang’s outburst with some dissenting comments:

@天下乐田: Can we stop this way of governing the country? Public policies come in waves of public campaign and (the effect of which does not last long). How far can it get us to demonize every foreign citizen here who does not have legal residence status? After all, the bad is only a few; the majority of the criminals in the country are Chinese. The point is how to work on efficiency and effectiveness in the public service domain.

@平安08: Should the presenter be more analytical he would realize the we now live in a global village. State border allows for two-way traffic. If others treated the Chinese community with such intense belligerence, it wouldn’t be too good for us. To work hard to make our society a better place starts with us!

Many have wondered whether Yang will now struggle to find foreign guests to appear on his show, with some urging an active boycott. Custer and others went further, quickly putting together a bilingual flyer to be distributed on weibo, calling for Yang’s firing. In response, Yang insisted that he stood against xenophobia, and had been referring only to a small minority of “foreign hooligans” [zh]; but that given his reaction, perhaps Custer was one of them, and his background should be investigated by the Public Security Bureau. “What kind of journalist sets police on to critics?” wondered The Guardian’s Jonathan Watts.

As Custer noted at China Geeks, Yang’s post fits a wider trend:

Yang’s comments come at a particularly sensitive time for foreigners, many of whom are concerned about their safety after a British scumbag and a Russian idiot have stirred up a lot of nationalist, anti-foreign sentiment online (all foreigners are the same, so we’re all guilty by association). Probably related is the crackdown on illegal foreigners in Beijing that Yang was commenting on. This crackdown is perfectly fair in theory — every country has immigration laws and the right to enforce them — but the language and imagery that’s being used to promote it is sort of concerning, as is the idea that foreigners will now be required to carry their papers at all times and submit to random checks. Suddenly, Beijing is feeling a bit like Arizona (that’s not a good thing).

Beijing’s campaign against illegal foreign residents has indeed taken what many feel is an alarming tone. Its “cleaning up” rhetoric has been widely embraced, while a group of web companies including Sina and Baidu is encouraging users to report and publicise bad behaviour by foreigners, whether their papers are in order or not. Relatively trivial incidents risk being blown out of proportion: the verbal abuse flung at a female Chinese train passenger by Russian cellist Oleg Vedernikov was certainly obnoxious, but might ordinarily not have dominated the front page of the Beijing Morning Post. The apparent wave of anti-foreign sentiment, and various parties’ vigorous stoking of it, has fed suspicions of ulterior motives. From Global Post:

Some suspect that the policy is intended to whip up xenophobia to cement the Party’s control after an unprecedented series of snafus embarrassed China on the international stage. Years of carefully sculpting Beijing’s image flew out the window when Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal-rights activist, and Wang Lijun, an iron-fisted police chief, each fled to the US embassy for protection from their own government.

And with the Party preparing for its transfer of power this autumn, the crackdown may be intended to serve as a way to unite popular support.

“By deputizing the populists against the foreigners, it’s a way for the authorities to say we’re all in this together — the government and the people — against the illegal aliens,” says Jeremiah Jenne, a PhD candidate at the University of California-Davis, who has lived in Beijing since 2002.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV, immigration, immigration law, racism, sina weibo, soft power, television, xenophobia
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In Henan Province, in central China, millions of people have been tuning in every week to watch an extraordinary talk show called Interviews Before Execution, in which a reporter interviews murderers condemned to death. The show ran for just over five years, until it was taken off air on Friday.

Every Monday morning, reporter Ding Yu and her team scoured court reports to find cases to cover on their programme. They had to move quickly, as prisoners in China can be executed seven days after they are sentenced.

To Western eyes the show’s format may seem exploitative, but Ding disagrees.

“Some viewers may consider it cruel to ask a criminal to do an interview when they are about to be executed.

“On the contrary, they want to be heard,” she says.

“Some criminals I interviewed told me: ‘I’m really very glad. I said so many things in my heart to you at this time. In prison, there was never a person I was willing to talk to about past events.’”

An article in The Independent further describing the program mentions that some episodes previously available online have disappeared, and suggests that the BBC coverage may result in the show’s cancellation:

There were question marks yesterday over the future of one of China’s most popular television shows, “Interviews Before Execution”, in which death row prisoners are interviewed shortly before their execution, after its presenter was the subject of a BBC documentary.

The aim of the show, which has been broadcast by Legal TV channel for the past five years and is anchored by Yu Ding, is to highlight the deterrent effect of the death sentence by showing prisoners, sometimes minutes before they are shot or killed by lethal injection.

However, the show may have become the victim of its own success after international TV stations, including the BBC, made documentaries about the programme.

[...]There was confusion last night about the future of the show. News reports yesterday that suggested it was being cancelled because of “internal problems” were denied by officials at Legal TV.

NBC News’ Behind the Wall provides some translated dialogue, and describes the controversy surrounding the show in China. The article also suggests that rumors of the show’s cancellation may not be reliable:

Ding was particularly blunt with one unrepentant interviewee, saying: “I’m glad you got caught. You are a scumbag.” One episode featured a man yelping, “I’m sorry,” and kneeling down on the ground hours before his execution. In another, right before his execution a convict asked her: “Can I shake hands with you?”

[...]“Many people say I’m an angel and devil. I never thought myself as an angel, because it’s work that puts me into contact with these people. I see myself more as a witness,” Ding told the BBC in their 50-minute-long documentary.

[...] A BBC report on Monday claimed the show was taken off the air by Henan TV last Friday. When NBC News reached Henan Legal Channel and asked about it, we were told that was not the case.

The temporary “disappearance” of the show is apparently only making room for a new show, and “Interview before Execution” will come back on air in about six weeks.

However, on the channel’s official website, no links to Ding Yu’s program can be found, while information about other shows is available.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: death penalty, execution, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

MSNBC’s Behind The Wall blog describes the scale of the migration:

It’s as if the entire population of the United States took to the road several times over. During China’s “chunyun” or Spring Festival travel season, the 40-day period that began earlier this month, more than 3.2 billion passenger-trips will tax the country’s transportation system in what is thought to be the world’s largest human migration ever ….

About a quarter billion travelers will load onto China’s over-burdened rail network. Despite a new online ticketing system and hotlines, many have complained of difficulties and delays in buying train tickets. Still, for many Chinese, the ticketing problems and prospect of long ride in crowded condition are small price to pay for the once-in-a-year family reunions.

The accompanying video report describes frustration at a train booking site overwhelmed by over a billion hits per day in early January:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Online ticket sales have also plucked the increasingly raw nerve of China’s deepening economic inequality. Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz reports from Shanghai, where he attracted an agitated crowd of would-be travellers:

… They’re mad it’s becoming more difficult to buy tickets. This year the government thought it would make buying train tickets easier by making tickets available online. Bad idea.

… Because there are hundreds of millions of people in China, like these guys, who live on less than a few dollars a day. They just don’t have the means or the know-how to hope online and buy tickets. Here’s some tape from one man I spoke to about this, Zhang Weishang …. Zhang’s simply saying it’s not fair. He’s poor and uneducated and he has no access to a computer, much less the internet. As he’s telling me this, a swelling crowd of people watch us and start chiming in-so many people that the police finally are called in.

… [W]hat’s clear is it’s a bigger issue than just train tickets. It’s a reminder that the wealth gap is widening in China. And this train ticket fiasco really hits a chord because train travel has always been within the means of many working migrants in China. Now you’ve got these luxurious bullet trains, online ticketing — it’s becoming a system that favors the rich.

For some, impatient parents are a greater problem than lack of money. The Guardian’s Tania Branigan explains one way for single Chinese to deflect family pressure to get married:

Taking a boyfriend or girlfriend home is a fast way to curb the speculation, which is why Li, like other twentysomethings, has hired a fake partner through an online agency ….

Li will pay him between 500 and 700 yuan (£51-£72) a day – they are still haggling – to accompany her from Beijing to Hunan to meet her parents.

“I don’t need him to stay long, just one night, New Year’s Eve, and he can just say work is busy and he has to go back the next day, like [the guy I hired] last year,” she said.

She is keeping the meeting deliberately short to prevent her parents learning too much about him. Although she has vetted him over a coffee, she does not really know him and worries he might turn out to be a thief and steal from her home.

See a photo and video montage of the long journey home for many in China, by Jordan Pouille and Lei Yang:

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CCTV, censorship, chinese new year, e-commerce, income gap, marriage, migrant workers, New Year's Gala, online, railways, SARFT, Spring Festival, television, trains, transportation
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The manuscript of a book usually needs to be reviewed at least three times by the publishing house. Depending on the subject matter the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), various propaganda departments and other government agencies may also be involved in the approval process. Television and movie productions require the approval of the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) ….

“I stay away from sensitive topics, because I don’t want my work to go to waste, nor do I want to be forced to say what I don’t intend,” said Qiu.

Qiu said he has turned down requests to write about China’s civil war. His father was on the side of the communists, while his in-laws supported the nationalists. “I know quite a bit about both sides, but I can’t write about it in a way I would approve of myself,” he said.

“It’s not possible to comply with the rules and stay true to yourself,” said Shi Kang, whose novel Fendou (Struggle), about the post-1980s generation, was made into a popular TV series. “We are the mouth and throat of the government, have to be,” he said fatefully.

See also Murong Xuecun on the “absurdities” of Chinese censorship, and another Global Times article on censorship of imported materials, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, film censorship, history, SARFT, television, writers
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Smart TVs and other set-top internet-to-TV streaming boxes provide a bit of a challenge to China’s government, which prefers to control content carefully, especially the content that appears on televisions, since — unlike computers — nearly everyone in China has one. Internet video companies like PPTV have a license from the government that allows them to provide streaming video services to computers but apparently SARFT does not extend that to net-enabled TV devices, and in fact had expressly forbidden Chinese video companies to support that kind of streaming. PPTV ignored that order, and now they’re being warned that another incident of noncompliance could result in heavy fines, forced restructuring, or even the termination of their license to broadcast video on the internet (which would effectively destroy the company).

See also a possibly surprising—or possibly not—attack on SARFT’s TV content restrictions from Global Times.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet video, SARFT, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

There’s no doubt of the influence TV, video games and online content has on people. But can we really blame a TV show involving desperate single men and women finding dates on the moral decay of our society? Are we to understand that the reason people turn a blind eye to car accident victims is because they have been watching too much China’s Got Talent …?

Have the regulators ever considered the possibility that the reason there are too many similar shows is because creativity has been restricted? Afraid of breaking the rules, producers just follow the bland yet safe and successful route of copying others.

What if Michelangelo was told he couldn’t make nude sculptures, or if Michael Jackson was banned from performing because of his crotch-grabbing antics? China just isn’t a country where outlandish thinking or creativity is encouraged. As for plans to emulate a genius of the late Steve Jobs’ caliber in China? Good luck with that.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Global Times, media controls, Michael Jackson, SARFT, steve jobs, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The restricted programmes include talent, dating and game shows, as well as evening performance galas, talk shows and reality shows.

No more than nine such shows will be allowed to be aired on the 34 cable channels between 7.30pm and 10pm each day. Each television network will be limited to two such shows each week and to no more than 90 minutes of such shows between 7.30 and 10 on any given night ….

Each cable television channel must air at least two hours of news-related programming from 6pm to midnight every day, plus two independently-produced news programmes, each at least 30 minutes long, from 6pm to 11.30pm each day. Every channel should broadcast a programme on ideology and morality to promote traditional Chinese culture and “socialist core values”.

The measures are believed to be an attempt to remagnetise the nation’s drifting moral compass, but may simply drive bored younger viewers to seek out foreign programming online. From The Guardian:

Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, said he had heard of similar edicts being sent to film companies.”People were told by SARFT that they needed to do less entertainment content and improve the balance, with more wholesome content or content conveying messages endorsed by government organs,” said Natkin, who focuses on media and telecoms ….

“[Official concerns] are that left entirely to the market, there are no limits to the levels that programme producers will sink to as they try to attract new audiences and good ratings ….”

Bill Bishop, an independent internet analyst based in Beijing, said video-sharing sites hosting foreign reality shows may receive a boost in traffic, and suggested that authorities might seek to curb this. “If they are neutering traditional television, you have to wonder why they are not going to do something about online [access] – at the moment there’s all the stuff that doesn’t get broadcast,” he said.

China Real Time Report included some prominent netizens’ reactions to SARFT’s new restrictions:

Online reaction on China’s Internet was largely critical, both of the new rules and of an editorial in the People’s Daily official Communist newspaper that supported such a move. “Cultural reform has mutated into the Cultural Revolution,” said Wu Jiaxiang, political commentator and former visiting scholar at Harvard University, on his verified Sina Weibo microblogging account.

“Don’t take this lightly. The Cultural Revolution started with the criticism of ‘Hai Rui Dismissed from Office,’” Zhao Chu, a military expert and newspaper columnist, wrote on his verified Weibo account, referring to a 1959 Peking Opera play about an upright Ming Dynasty official that was criticized by the Gang of Four in 1965 as a veiled lionization of one of Mao Zedong’s political rivals. “If we don’t resist this so-called cultural revolution and cultural construction, it could quickly turn into the most violent and cultureless of movements. Cultural and intellectual tyranny is the foundation of despotic violence.”

See more on SARFT’s rulings and the government’s recent emphasis on cultural development, on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cultural consumption, ideological vacuum, media controls, moral crisis, moral vacuum, news media, SARFT, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The BIFF opening was held outside because the police forced at least two changes of venue, first from a local arts center and then from a hotel. The courtyard of the Li Xianting Film Fund, which is run by an arts critic and independent cinema backer, was lovely, though not an ideal spot for showing the opening film, Embracing Not Sleep, a fictional work about the relationship between two men forced to work in an illegal brick kiln. After Wang Hongwei, an actor who often appears in Jia Zhangke’s films, introduced the directors, the group squeezed into two rooms to watch the opener.

Then the cops arrived. A local official walked into one of the makeshift theaters and demanded, “What are you doing here? What are you watching?” The audience didn’t respond. Outside in the courtyard about a dozen police officers milled around, demanding identification from attendees. I watched as one young security guard who was helping the police walked up to a director and asked for his ID. “I don’t have it with me, and you don’t have the power to ask for it anyway,” the director told the security guard, who walked off with a confused look on his face.

Ramzy notes that none of the festival’s fifty-plus films was submitted for vetting by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), their makers opting to trade ease of distribution for creative freedom. China Media Project recently translated part of an interview in which Han Han blamed this burden for a decline in quality in China’s mainstream film industry:

Southern Metropolis Daily: … You’ve talked before about how you have played with the idea of directing. So why have you not started? These past couple of years, film has been hot, and the money has flowed. On the surface, it seems to be flourishing, with box office numbers breaking hundreds of millions. Do you think there is a higher proportion of good films on the silver screen today?

Han Han: Films aren’t the work of a single person. If a film can’t make it into theaters, there’s no way I can face my investors and partners. The film market is flourishing, but it’s even harder to make decent films in China. The quality of Hong Kong films has been pulled lower as cooperation has been sought [with mainland film partners to reach both markets]. The film censorship system means current material [relating to life today] is avoided altogether ….

Southern Metropolis Daily: Do you think the film censorship system is the chief reason we have so many bad Chinese films?

Han Han: It’s an extremely important reason. When I was writing my book I found myself self-censoring, taking a lot of content out myself. And then the editor would take out more. This is even more the case with film. It may be the case that the government in a country with cultural censorship no longer has to fear criticism or satire at the hands of its own creative works. But then the whole world subjects it to criticism and satire.

The Los Angeles Times reviews a busy year for SARFT on the televisual front, which has seen a crackdown on time travel, transsexuals and assorted “magnifications of distorted ethics and moral values”:

People in the television industry complain that the watchdog’s rulings often come out of the blue, leaving them scratching their heads trying to fathom the reasoning.

“They don’t have any detailed standards for what you can do and what you can’t,” said Miao Di, a professor of television arts at China Communications University in Beijing. “Fundamentally, it’s just, whatever they say goes ….”

The heavy hand of the censor may be backfiring on the Communist Party by making television increasingly irrelevant. A report by Stanford University and Beijing-based consulting firm BDA blamed the government watchdog for pushing viewers onto the Internet, a significantly more difficult medium to control. According to the report, China had 240 million online TV viewers in 2010, an increase of 38 million over the previous year.

See also China TV Struggles to Break Free of State, and Global Times’ take on the anti-time travel guidelines, “Popularity Does Not Always Rhyme With Quality”, via CDT. PBS has posted a non-SARFT-approved guide to Essential Documentaries About China, which may also be of interest.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cinema, film censorship, film festivals, Han Han, media control, SARFT, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

In 2009, the government allowed provincial TV networks in principle to build their content production and marketing operations into commercial businesses, as long as they separated them from news and broadcasting, which needed to remain under government control ….

Last year, HBS set up Mango TV, a separate company under which it wants to run its new media, content production and marketing operations. “We plan to transfer all assets related to these areas to Mango before the end of this year,” says Ouyang Changlin, HBS director and party secretary.

“News operations and the broadcasting platform will remain at Hunan TV and will not be commercialised. But the two will be linked in so far as our broadcasting platform will get priority access to the content produced under Mango ….”

Last year, HBS entered an agreement under which it took over content production and gained management rights for Qinghai Satellite TV, the broadcaster of a poor north-western province whose ad income is only a fraction of Hunan’s. The news operations and broadcasting platform remained in the Qinghai government’s hands. Shanghai Media Group, another leading regional broadcaster, has entered a similar deal with Shandong Education TV ….

Analysts are also pessimistic about the prospects for actual merger activity. “It is very unlikely that the government would allow consolidation between the broadcasters across provincial borders in the near term, because they would first have to change how they regulate the industry,” says Ms Redl of CMM.

Even if content production is removed from the government’s direct control, it will remain subject to politically-driven broadcasting “guidelines”, which have shown signs of becoming stricter ahead of the 90th anniversary of the Party’s foundation. From the second FT article:

In the latest evidence of tighter political controls, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television told HBS and other television stations that benchmarks for measuring the success of programmes had to change. It said broadcasters should let “quality, responsibility and values” guide their programming.

In 2005, the regulator told HBS to stop running ”Super Girl”, China’s first televised talent show which was the closest thing the country had to American Idol, and on which the station made its name and fortune.

Some officials saw the programme, which many people would consider innocent, as subversive because it propelled individuals to fame based on audience votes. It demonstrated the power of popular opinion in China – a constant concern for the Communist party in a country where people cannot elect their leaders ….

Mr Ouyang, who also serves as HBS’s Communist party secretary, denied rumours that the regulator had asked the station to follow Chongqing TV, the broadcaster of a western Chinese municipality which has replaced commercials with “red” programming.

“The government may like ‘red’ programmes, but if nobody watches your programme, that’s good for nothing,” he said in defence of his pro-market approach.

SARFT attracted ridicule earlier this year with its guidelines discouraging time travel themes on TV, but the Global Times leapt to its defence.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hunan, Hunan TV, qinghai, SARFT, television
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall