So this story struck me as oddball, even coming from China. Apparently, the ministries have decided that no stories depicting "fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking."

Now, if I'm not mistaken.. that's pretty much everything that's on TV today, to some degree. But beyond the scope of the ban, I'm not sure what China feels it will be getting out of keeping that stuff off TV other than the simple fact that every aspect that is covered in their ban involves the imagination.

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/14/c...for-television/

Did the ending of Lost really tick them off that badly?

Probably one of those "imagining better societies implies this one isn't perfect" things.

Good on China for reminding us every now and then they're a brutal, authoritarian dictatorship.

Can't help but wonder if something like this could affect future product and media here: toys, TV shows, books, movies, what have you. China's a substantial market these days after all, and plenty of large businesses have cow-towed to their demands in the past.

(I know they're just guidelines, but still.)

...Yeah I don't think China's stint as the world's largest economy will be all that long-lived. These sort of policies don't really promote the innovation needed to create new technologies and scientific understanding.

So are they going to ban any adaptations of "Journey to the West", one of their most revered literary fantasies?


That'd be... kind of an odd thing to ban; like Greece banning "The Illiad".

All things considered... china can be a pretty odd place.

There are a lot of fiction with time travel. Seems like a waste to ban it all.

Things being as they are, I would think that sodomizing creativity and imagination would be the least of their priorities.

So what, they tried and failed to make their own clear rip off Doctor Who and decied they should just outright ban it?

Wow, so, in essence they've decided to ban science fiction and fantasy as a whole. I can see why, though. It's been long known that you can deal with a subject in science fiction and fantasy, using disguised concepts that you couldn't otherwise deal with. Using an alien race as a metaphor for an over zealous, overbearing, authoritarian government, for example.

Time travel in particular gives you the chance to go back and reexamine, even change key events in history, allowing for speculation about the validity of past actions and their impact on the future.

It's a pretty clear message they're sending with this, and I hope the Chinese people fight back, one way or another.

And next week, China bans "Fun". One month later, those deplorable "Colours" shortly follow.

I don't think the reasons are that complicated, I think this ban came about simply because sci-fi and fantasy go against communism's atheist principles.

I'm more curious as to how the Chinese Government plans to enforce this ban. I mean, if the whole point is to ban anything frivolous or fantastic...well...that's effectively everything ever.

What?

Soviet-style communism has always been about rejecting fantasy in all forms because fantasy is considered the opiate of the masses.

Hornet, I'm going to give you an option Be banned or use this as your avatar.

I thought it was religion that was supposed to be the opiate of the masses... in fact... yeah, that was it.

And I learned that from an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot, no less.

In any case, that just strengthens what I was saying, which is that the fantasy environment is one of the few safe places for the oppressed to write about their oppressors. That is to say: The Chinese government wants to stifle any fiction that could plant non-conformist ideals into the minds of the masses.

Granted, there could be some other, less outright evil reason for banning two whole genres of fiction, but I really don't see it. Not when it's those particular genres.

Is there nothing that show can't do?

I dunno, Beijing was a nice place to live, and my friends still there tell me not much has changed.

Aw do I have to?

You'd think they'd want the people to get lost in fantasy worlds.

No, if you can dream of a fantasy world, you can dream of a better world. Which means you can dream of A.) improving the existing world and B.) revolting against the existing world. Since neither of those fit in with a government that has decided it's perfect and all controlling...

Yeah, you get the idea.

Huh, and yet there was a whole set of OZ books written in the USSR that the Communist government there had no issues with. Or all the various ballet's performed there such as "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty". You can't get more fantastical then that. The Moscow Ballet was the premier one int he entire world during the Soviet years, and all the subject matter they tackled were based on FANTASY STORIES.

Then again this is a reply to a Hornet post, they are never accurate.

The Oz series was written by a Russian author? I thought Frank L Braun was German because of his name.

A whole set, not the all OZ books. OZ fiction has had many writers, and there was a complete original set of books written in the USSR by Volkov after Baum made the original story.

Oh wow, I didn't know that. I guess the Oz books are more of a mythos.

... so if someone made a time travel device that works, and is currently living in china, that means he/she would be unable to use it.


"I can't travel back in time because it's illegal"

If someone is that willing to mess around with the laws of time, space, and causality, do you honestly think the meagre laws of a sovereign nation would matter one bit to them?

Red Alert 4's plotline?

The thing about using time travel to change the past is if you do it often enough, you'll destabilize the time stream to the point where everything in the affected era will "melt" into a mass of subatomic particles in a constant state of temporal flux, creating a space-time abnormally.

Pics or it didn't/won't happen.

That made me lol.

So someone in the Government has seen Fringe then.

I note this doesn't ban Slider technology.

Well, it just sounds like they're banning the concepts from being used in fiction; not so much the technologies themselves.

If, you know, anyone was actually working on this stuff, lmao.

So, China is run by Kromaggs?

Or leaping of the quantum variety.

What about "Emergency Temporal Shifts". Are they banned too

If he/she is Lawful good, yeah.

Time travel should be banned in more places.

I hate time travel.

It should've been banned while ST:VOY was in production, that's for sure.

Oh, I don't really mind Time Travel in fiction(Aside from jokey grousing, that is.), but the idea of letting it happen in the real world is a terrible, terrible idea.

Well, as much as the idea of time travel fascinates me personally, I find it hard to argue with that. Assuming it was possible, and that it was also possible to change the past directly and just wipe things from the present, it could potentially be the most dangerous technology ever created.

Still... so tempting.

It's impossible though, because either A: you're changing things which have already being changed which means why would you change them...? or B: It just creates multiple universes in which case we wouldn't know if it worked or not.

Or something.

Ah, screw time travel.

Ok, A) How can anyone hate temporal mechanics when it gives us our first real chance of hot O'Brian on O'Brian action?

And B) China, I was with you through the human rights violations, the way you undervalue your currency to cheat at world economics, and the screw-you-earth way you pollute, but if you won't let me have my Timecop, then VanDamme you, China. VanDamme you straight to hell.

Because at that point O'Brien was probably so confused by all the crap that was happening to him that he just wanted it over with? On a side note, I believe that the DS9 writers have admitted in interviews that they had an unofficial policy of making sure something horrible happened to O'Brien about once per season.