TV Censorship in China

TV programmes streamed on China's Netflix-like iQiyi site appear to be blurring the earlobes of male actors with earrings, according to web users in the country.

Doctored images of male actors on a show called Sisters Flower Shop alongside earlier footage where they were sporting earrings have been posted online. In another show, I, Actor , the earlobes of the lead actor and singer also appear to have been edited.

Over the past year people have criticised popular Asian culture for encouraging effeminate standards of beauty for men. A 2018 article published by the state news agency Xinhua said China's pop idols were spawning a generation of sissy boys.

Web users criticised the blurred-out earrings, and thousands have commented on social media under the MaleTVStarsCantWearEarrings hashtag. One user said:

The whole world is moving forward, while China is moving backward.

China wants to expand a ban on foreign TV shows during the evening prime-time hours, according to the latest proposal by the country's media censor.

Since 2004, China has banned foreign TV movies and serials during the peak 7-10pm viewing hours. Now the National Radio and Television Administration is considering banning  programming all foreign programmes during this peak period.

The rules will apply to free-to-air and paid channels, as well as streaming sites.

The censors speak of ideological reasoning but maybe its also to do with China's trade war with Donald Trump.

As China's TV gets ever more censored, many people now use streaming sites like iQiyi and Mango TV for their kicks and they are increasingly willing to pay for it. While these sites offer hit western shows such as Game of Thrones, they have also adopted a similar strategy to Netflix by producing their own content.

But as they gain popularity they may also gain more attention from the censors.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has barred one of China's most popular TV channels from airing the Eurovision song contest after it censored LGBT elements of the competition.

Mango TV was criticised for blurring rainbow flags and censoring tattoos during Tuesday's first semi-final. It also decided not to air performances by the Irish and Albanian entries.

The EBU said the censorship was not in line with its values of diversity:

It is with regret that we will therefore immediately be terminating our partnership with the broadcaster and they will not be permitted to broadcast the second Semi-Final or the Grand Final.

The Irish entry, Ryan O'Shaughnessy, told the BBC that he welcomed the EBU's decision. He will perform at the final in Lisbon on Saturday with a song about the end of a relationship. He was accompanied by two male dancers during the performance that was apparently censored by Mango TV.

One of the most watched TV shows in the world has broken the most basic of PC rules by featuring a sketch that had Asian actors in blackface and black actors dressed as monkeys.

The annual Chinese Lunar New Year gala by CCTV is a four-hour event and is watched by some 700 million people each year. This year, one of the many comedy routines featured throughout the show was one intended to depict China's relationship with Africa.

There were plenty of 'outraged' tweets published from those that know the rules.

China has banned hip-hop culture and actors with tattoos from appearing on television.

The country's TV censor, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People's Republic of China (SAPPRFT), has banned actors with tattoos and programmes featuring hip hop culture and anything else considered non-mainstream culture or dispirited culture.

Gao Changli, director of the censor's publicity department, outlined four new rules:

• Absolutely do not use actors whose heart and morality are not aligned with the party and whose morality is not noble
• Absolutely do not use actors who are tasteless, vulgar and obscene
• Absolutely do not use actors whose ideological level is low and have no class
• Absolutely do not use actors with stains, scandals and problematic moral integrity

The ban follows recent 'outrage' at several Chinese rap stars. Prominent rapper GAI was ejected from Hunan TV's Singer a hit competition show. Wang Hao, aka PG One, another well-known rapper, was forced to apologize earlier this month after one of his songs, Christmas Eve, was criticized for promoting drug culture and insulting women. Rapper Mao Yanqi, aka VaVa, was recently cut from the variety show Happy Camp.

Indonesia has banned television stations from showing male actors behaving effeminately or dressing as women.

The Indonesian Broadcasting Company, KPI, issued a directive banning men from wearing:

Feminine fashion and feminine make-up, and using feminine body language including walking style, sitting style, hand gestures and other behaviour.

Based on the results of monitoring and complaints that we have received, there are still broadcast programs featuring men who behave and dress like a woman.

KPI assess these things are not in accordance with the provisions of respect for the norms of decency and morality prevailing in society and the protection of children and adolescents.

Update: China too

6th March 2016. See  article from newnownext.com

Homosexuality and other abnormal sexual relationships have been banned from Chinese TV dramas.

The China Television Drama Production Industry Association and the China Alliance of Radio, Film and Television recently released a new set of TV content production guidelines , which detail plans to censor all dramas that feature inappropriate sexual behavior, such as incest, sexual assault, adultery, one-night-stands and homosexuality.

There's been a bit of an online backlash in China over censors cutting all cleavage from scenes in a popular TV drama about China's only female emperor.

The drama, The Empress of China , also known as the Saga of Wu Zetian was pulled from the schedules of commercial satellite station Hunan TV for technical reasons late last month, Xinhua reported.

When it returned a few days later, the show, starring the famous Chinese actress Fan Bingbing in the title role of Wu Zetian had been conspicuously edited.

Scenes of female characters, with cleavage showing dressed in period costume, had been cropped out, leaving only close-ups of their heads.

The Global Times insisted that a system of control was necessary. it wrote in a propaganda piece: 

The reality is that censorship exists in many countries and it is unlikely to be reversed in China.

Changes to The Empress of China sparked fury among mainland internet users, who argued that censors had gone too far. An online survey released by the Sina Weibo microblogging service on Monday found that nearly 95% of respondents disapproved of the censorship of The Empress of China.

Some mainland bloggers, who renamed the drama The Saga of Wu's Squeezed Breasts , mocked the decision by censors. They circulated a series of edited pictures on social media, showing people how to highlight the head and hide the breasts when it comes to other characters.

The Global Times newspaper noted the defiance in an editorial:

While the censorship was largely done out of moral concerns, the resulting public outcry should serve as a warning for the future. While it is powerful, censorship lacks authority. In this sense, when using censorship, more considerations should be given to public opinion to garner support and avoid similar incidents.

China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) have issued new censorship rules governing the use of language in China's television shows and advertisements. The new rules require all TV shows and ads to stick to standard Mandarin words and expressions, and forbid them from using internet slang terms.

The new regulations are aimed at stopping the use of internet slang that appropriates or imitates standard colloquial expressions, and particularly the Chinese language's four-character chengyu sayings. The internet has invented or adapted many new chengyu for its own uses, but SAPPRFT's new regulations ban the use of any of that creative language on television.

The regulations order China's television content producers to do a thorough self-investigation and to strengthen oversight and inspection efforts to assure that non-standard language and internet slang doesn't sneak its way into any future television programs.

And before you thinks this is another example of imaginative censorship peculiar to a repressive regimes, I seem to remember a more or less the same edict being issued in France not so long ago, whingeing that English language modern world jargon had become more popular than the French language equivalents.

Censors in China have banned online video sites from showing popular American TV shows as repressive censorship rules are extended to streaming services.

The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, NCIS and The Practice have all been removed from sites including Youku.com and letv.com.

A spokeswoman for Youku said that the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) did not give a reason for the censorship.

Broadcasters in China have had repressive rules about showing Western content, but until recently the rules were not as strict for online streaming sites.

Industry insiders have disclosed some of the hidden censorship rules that restrict TV dramas and movies in China.

Taboo topics involving ghosts and home-wreckers are avoided in accordance to China's film censorship system, a recent NetEase report has revealed . China's administrative provisions on TV content restrict dramas from publicizing heresy or superstition [ie religion], a policy that industries have long struggled with, as stories involving spirits and immortals are deeply embedded in Chinese myths.

Another rule forbids plot lines that threaten social morality, for example, people who break up marriages in TV shows must never be glorified and should always end up in misery.

TV shows with plots involving children born out of wedlock are not allowed, as China's family planning policy looks down on the idea of illegitimate children. Young love and campus violence is also a big no-no, as such topics are believed to have an impact on the psychological health of minors, according to the report.

Chinese cartoon Pleasant Goat and the Big Big Wolf has kicked off another round of ever more repressive censorship.

China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television called out the popular cartoon , which made headlines earlier this year for episodes containing supposedly violent scenes, and the regulator said in a statement that it plans to outline new content standards for TV animation to address violent programming content.

According to China's official Xinhua news agency, under the proposal, cartoons should promote good and lash out at evil, advocate social morality and family virtues, and resist egoism, money worship, hedonism, superstition, pseudoscience and contents containing harmful thoughts and bad habits. It also said cartoons should avoid violent scenes, including depictions of attacks that children could easily imitate, and should not use daily necessities for dangerous purposes. More In Animation