Censoring Entertainment: A Look Into Chinese Society and Anime

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Source: Beijing Review
China’s history of censorship is rooted in politics, government, and control. Unlike most countries that have similar histories of tremendous initiatives to destroy certain media or stifle certain outlets of speech, China’s censorship is particularly one of intrigue, and in the United States’ eyes, persistence. With an increasingly globalized world founded on communication technologies, the Internet, and intricate personal ties enabled through technology, China’s breadth of censorship is growing to accommodate and in many cases, push out, international outlets. The action is not without international attention.

From the environmental documentary censored from the public to the New York Times journalists restricted from staying in China for more than one year,[1] the media and entertainment industry has often found itself at odds with the government. The Chinese Ministry of Culture announced a ban this past summer on the distribution of 38 popular Japanese anime and manga titles within the country. The government also requires sites to request approval to stream foreign media.

While the new regulations themselves may not necessarily be effective due to the high chance of illegal streaming and technological loopholes, the reasoning behind the decision marks a shift from popular theories about the effectiveness of a highly censored society. One such argument is that a watchdog media keeps the local officials in check. The risk of being exposed in the media for corruption would ruin an official’s reputation and career. By providing provincial outlets of investigative reporting for corruption and other questionable activities in local areas, potential revolts are avoided and economy is directly improved. However, the Chinese government is careful to prevent investigative reporting from revealing sources of widespread discontent, which could very well be a catalyst to topple an authoritarian regime.[2]

However, the censorship of specific anime and manga does nothing of the sort—it does not work to expose corruption or promote government efficiency. Rather, the Chinese Ministry of Culture based their actions on the reasoning that the titles include “scenes of violence, pornography, terrorism and crimes against public morality.”[3] This does not seem so much a move of strategic censorship as it does of a government attempting to extend its control into other media.

The Chinese Ministry banned the internationally popular anime Death Note, a show about a college student who can kill people by writing their names in a supernatural notebook. The show plays out to be an intellectual and psychological kind of cat-and-mouse game between the student and a detective. Outwardly, the censorship of the show itself is less baseless and more well reasoned based on past events and controversies. In 2005, Death Note stationery notebooks were banned in several schools in Shenyang under the belief that writing in the notebooks had a negative effect on children’s mental health.[4] The event escalated into a nation-wide issue, and after finding no information on the producer, officials labeled them as illegal products. As a result, the banning of the source material itself is not so much a surprise as it is a consequence.

But was this the same “widespread discontent” that an authoritarian government fears? The same “widespread discontent” that was capable of toppling so many governments in history? It is unlikely that an anime, or more precisely, a supernatural notebook whose power is in fomenting fears in adults’ minds, would be the undoing of an enormous nation. Rather, the irrational fear is founded on a possibly false sense of moral values. The act of writing a person’s name in a notebook is not equivalent to killing the person. It is largely a means and expression of the fandom. To assert that students or humans as a whole have never wished that someone died is a slight overestimation of humanity. But it is unlikely that the government felt a need to exert a moral iron fist to instill innocence in its children nationwide. It is more likely that the discontent (mainly stemming from adults) pressured the government to produce tangible results. And what better means than to ban the object altogether?

The all-encompassing umbrella category of political censorship can place some sense into the decision behind blacklisting certain anime, but reflects the rather irrational extent to which the government will go to block certain information.[5] Another banned anime, Zankyou no Terror, is about two teenage boys who plot terrorist bombings and leave intricate clues for police to solve in order to stop the attacks. The show's cover art piece displays the main characters in front of a background with two towers bearing an uncanny resemblance to the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The ninth episode of the total eleven episodes aired on September 11, 2014 as well. Yet, while the United States has yet to express any sort of sentiment about the show, whose audience is considerably smaller than that of more popular shows such as Death Note, China banned the title under the reasoning that it "glorified violence and criminal activities."[6] However, more than Zankyou no Terror "glorifies violence", it criticizes the government in the fictional world for its discreet actions that broach human rights and is a testament and memorial to the lost, unnamed identities of victims.

Perhaps then, the more straightforward argument of "borderline pornography" that the government applies to other anime such as High School of the Dead may have some merit. The earliest type of this kind of censorship of inappropriate materials in fact lies in United States legislation. The U.S. government prohibited transmission of child pornography and attempted to strengthen the legislation with the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which would criminalize "criminally offensive content" to those under 18 years of age. Both the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 were struck down by the Supreme Court under the reasoning that the government had the burden to prove that the Act was no more restrictive than necessary to protect a child from harm.[7]

The interpretation of anime and manga images as child pornography is not exclusive to China. The issue has been brought up in other countries including the United States, Australia, and Japan itself.[8] However, the conclusion that anime is child pornography is like stating that movies are porn. Anime is a medium, not a genre. While China sees it necessary to censor the violence, sexual nature, and other content that is easily visible through other mediums, it begs the question, are animated scenes of sexual nature, violence, or criminal activity different from the legally available live action films in China?

What the Chinese government deems appropriate and inappropriate may very well lie in the social implications of animation, traditionally targeted towards younger audiences, and an inability to understand the culture that surrounds Japanese anime as opposed to live action films and western cartoons. Nevertheless, the paradoxical idea of a strict, elderly ministry official watching an anime to determine whether it should be banned reflects the irrational and ludicrous nature of the blacklist. A significant number of China's younger population is already heavily invested in the increasingly international entertainment of anime and manga. Perhaps they might stay quiet about political censorship, but with the compromise of entertainment and for some, a lifestyle, acquiring anime and manga will persist.[9]  In all practical purposes the ban will simply direct anime fans to raw Japanese shows or illegal means of viewing, but China's move to ban the shows reflects how deeply rooted its governing policy is in media regulation.


References
[1] Osnos, Evan. “China’s Censored World.” The New York Times. The New York Times, February 2014.
[2] Lorentzen, P. (2014), China's Strategic Censorship. American Journal of Political Science, 58: 402–414. doi: 10.1111/ajps.12065
[3]  Tejas, Aditya. "China Bans Japanese Anime, Manga Comics Including 'Death Note', 'Attack On Titan'" International Business Times. June 9, 2015. Accessed October 11, 2015.
[4]  "Beijing Bans Scary Stories to Protect Young." Reuters. May 15, 2007. Accessed October 11, 2015.
[5] Thatcher Dowell, William. "The Internet, censorship, and China." Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 7.2 (2006): 111+. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
[6] “China Cracks down on Violent Anime Online Cartoons - BBC News.” BBC News. Accessed October 11, 2015.
[7] Stevenson, Christopher. "Breaching the Great Firewall: China's Internet Censorship and the Quest for Freedom of Expression in a Connected World." Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 30, no. 2 (2007): 534.
[8] “Anime Not a Big Leap to Child Pornography Images: Judge.” ABC News, November 2015.
[9]  Orsini, Lauren. "How Fans Embrace Japanese Cartoons Over The Great Firewall Of China." Forbes. July 10, 2015. Accessed October 11, 2015.

Lucy Zhang is a freshman at Duke University