Beijing Censors on the Rampage…or not?

China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (widely known in English by its appropriately awful acronym: SARFT) recently issued new regulations that at first glance appear to be a pretty serious tightening of censorship over video and audio material, both on the airwaves and on the net. Coming as they do around the same time that the film Lost in Beijing (苹果/Pingguo/Apple in Chinese) was banned, the new rules have spooked a lot of people, and not just in the entertainment business. (For a smart take on the practical implications of the new rules, see Kaiser Kuo’s Digital Watch blog here or this at CNet Asia). When I was at the gay club over the weekend, for example, the manager said he and his partners didn’t want us to take pictures in part because they were worried that the rules meant the authorities were cracking down across the board. Basically it seems like it’s too early to tell exactly what the rules mean. A senior exec at one of the Chinese youtube sites says they don’t really know what will happen and are waiting to see how the big boys like Sina.com react. Confusion all around, as often seems to happen, a byproduct of the government’s total lack of transparency. Anyway, for those of you who want to see what may well passes for sensitive material in the government’s eyes, see this clip of a Japanese model filming in a rural Chinese village, tho the real sensitivity may be because she is Japanese, not because she is doing anything indecent.