The Big [Censored] Theory

What's more striking is what comes out of China's domestic entertainment industry. There are far too many historical costume dramas. Those aren't as heavily censored as modern ones. More modern content looks like it was censored in accordance with the US Television Code of the 1950s. ("The code prohibited the use of profanity, the negative portrayal of family life, irreverence for God and religion, illicit sex, drunkenness and biochemical addiction, presentation of cruelty, detailed techniques of crime, the use of horror for its own sake, and the negative portrayal of law enforcement officials, among others.")[1] That's close to China's list. China also censors political subjects, to the point that nobody dares get near them in film or TV.

The quality is improving, though. A decade ago, there was "Sky Fighters", which is China's version of "Top Gun". That was produced by a film unit of the People's Liberation Army, and it's as heavy-handed as you might expect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Practices_for_Televisi...

What's interesting is in the US that kind of censorship is attributed to the most mainstream religion but China is officially atheist and does the same. Whenever people tell me that it's only one religion standing in the way of equal rights for disadvantaged groups I remind them that there's an atheist superpower that's even less permissive except for on reproductive issues(although, in their case they do regulate it heavily, only in the other direction with limits on the amount of children you can have and forced terminations in the past).

There's definitely a tendency to oversimplify authoritarians by criticizing them for other aspects. American right-wing authoritarians are bad because they're authoritarian, but get criticized for the Evangelical tone through which they enforce it. Likewise with Chinese authoritarians getting criticized for being communist while they do authoritarianism, rather than for the authoritarianism itself.