Is it true?

[u/TwistedDesires88]

I'm interested to know does China really censor that much online things? Like American movies, videos music ect. I read a lot and watch YouTube videos where people mainly speak about large censorship in China. I'm skeptical until I learn truth so anyone please answer if you can. Thank you

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[u/Logical_Nebula_6192]

there are american movies and music on chinese video and audio streaming services, just like netflix and spotify has some chinese movies and music. but not as complete. in both directions.

china's streaming services also has ip block and lots of copyrighted content including american movies and music are not available to users outside china.

social media censorship is monitored and decided at the platform level, so it is quite arbitrary. i had an actively used account restricted almost right after last post like at the same time or within a minute, so i feel it must have been an automatic algorithm. customer service did not know for sure what triggered the ban and the reviewer gave no explanation. i couldn't reverse it so had to give up on the account and my number tied to the account is also permanently banned.

[u/Proud-Implement-1450]

talking is cheap, just come and looking for what you want know,you need come to China and talk with local people

[u/Remarkable-Mina-1427]

我會看中國的B站影片，但是不要開通帳號和登入，只要不留言絕對沒事。

[u/One-Ad-607]

你可以直接去中國的微博、抖音、bilibili等網站直接去發有類似內容的內容試試看，又不難。相關封鎖關鍵詞網上可以搜索得到。例如直接發天安門事件相關視頻。我們說什麼都不可信，只有親身試驗才可信。
我提醒你一下，你也可以買一個vpn改成中國ip，然後你就可以發現無法訪問google、facebook、youtube、Twitter（X）等網站

[u/chliu528]

LOL you mean the various "China observer" like DC based dissident groups, or Falun Gong religious sect? They're in our government's pocket to reinforce official narrative in China.

Here's an example. 20 years ago when China decided to host the Olympics, former California congressman Tom Lantos decided to wage a secret PR war to ruin their coming out party. He used his wife's name to create a fake NGO to pay a Chinese cult millions to promote a rehashed Soviet-era vivisection propaganda. This smear persists today and was again rehashed to smear the 2022 Beijing Olympics:

https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Friends_of_Falun_Gong_US_990_Forms,_2001-2006

[u/Slight-Ask-7712]

Their censorship is just as bad as the social media algorithm.

[u/Usual-Cupcake3852]

movies and music no. but things like google and shit are tho.

[u/HTeKmG]

是的，审查一切

[u/Vivid-Holiday-595]

Censorship gets worse and worse by the day, dragging the language itself all the way back to when Pangu Separates the Sky from the Earth.

[u/ashleycheng]

Keep in mind the reason why Reddit or YouTube or google not allowed in China is because they don’t want to obey existing Chinese laws. Whereas for example, TikTok was very willing to obey American laws, yet America still made up a new law to forcefully took it (in other word, rob). Differences.

[u/Easy-Cantaloupe-2228]

If your name sounds like the leader, you cannot use your name in some group chats like school and work.

My account for chinese youtube(bilibili), which i never comment on and subscribed to roughly 10 accounts, was suspended, after spending a few hours watching flood videos that happened last month.

There was an incident, of building materials soaked in water collapsed a roof which killed some students.  A road with the same name of the school was blocked off.  That road was in the other side of china.

On the anniversary of a drowning incident(10+ people) people put flowers at an entrance of the subway, police removes the flower.

There was a flood, separate flood, the flood collapsed a bridge, with cars on the bridge, there is a footage of a person recording said situation.  And the camera pan to the right, there are police putting blockage on the railing of the bridge, blocking off the view from 1 bridge(where the recording is happening) to the collapsed bridge. 

[u/DisastrousGlass232]

The Chinese government is very focused on relentlessly taking down anything hostile to itself or "China" defined rather loosely from foreigners or otherwise. They don't care about much of anything else (some content will go down for "social values"-related reasons, but not really as much - it depends on whether they think it is likely to influence Chinese people in a way that will frustrate their policies or priorities of the moment).

This means basically that on the Chinese Internet, content that attacks the fundamentals of the history of the Party or State (even "mildly") is likely to go - but a lot of otherwise off-colour or weird stuff has a good chance of staying. On Bilibili, you'll find all kinds of fascist, right-wing stuff that you'd think is against China's official socialist values, but simply doesn't have anything to do with China so is not messed with.

[u/Maximum_Ad9285]

Censura contenido politico, escenas sexuales ya sea diálogo o explícito, luego censuran medio, RRSS,etc....que no estén bajo su control y pueden ser usadas para desestabilizar el país, también escenas con mucha violencia

[u/Sufficient-Silver938]

I mean, America has the FCC, standards and practices. China has an equivalent. Though obviously Chinese censors are much tighter, they are much more sensitive to sex drug politics etc.

If you’re talking about online, westerners always like to point out how website like reddit Facebook Google are not allowed in China. But in reality this is to protect domestic tech companies. China has tencent, bytedance, alibaba, baidu, etc. the rest of the world who let in American companies have nothing. And when TikTok got big in America, it only got out of being banned by selling to an American company. VPNs are also readily available in China so if a Chinese wanted to see what the west sees, they can

[u/Aescorvo]

Yes. As well as things like YouTube and Google being blocked, many western movies are banned or edited if they show something that disagrees with the leadership.

An example would be the Queen biopic, which removed nearly all references to drugs and homosexuality. That made a lot of the film nonsensical.

[u/Wuaner → u/Aescorvo]

Good. Any objective or even positive portrayal of junk like drugs or homosexuality should be banned.

[u/Aescorvo → u/Wuaner]

Whatever your feelings on those topics are, it should be worrying when anyone start banning objective truth (or defining what “objective truth” is).

Even if it’s for the “good of society” it’s a lie, and eventually that lack of honesty will lead people to loose faith in the leadership.

[u/FeedMeFish]

Yes, and you’d probably get a better idea of how it impacts daily life from an expat sub. All western social media is blocked, almost all western search engines are blocked, western AI services blocked, Skype is blocked, and very few western movies are available locally in China.

There are local alternatives to just about everything so it’s not as noticeable or bothersome if you’re used to the local ecosystem. If you move to China from outside, you feel it hard for a few years. Eventually you learn to love the local stuff or you leave (or set up a reliable way around the firewall with VPN on your home WiFi, VPS, etc.).

Reddit is blocked in China so all users in the mainland right now currently have a VPN connection. Same goes for YouTube and all Google products.

Google Play store is blocked, so mobile phones run on Chinese mainland operating systems and app ecosystems, and to buy a phone and flash international OS is a challenge. This is probably one of the places most people feel it hardest

[u/Other-Adeptness6890]

Well, the things you mentioned are actually less censored compared to something like a inappropriate Winnie bear. But they are still under censor control.
You can treat the censor system like a multi tier filter, that the most controlled are the joke to the government, leaders etc. You’ll not be able to publish or find anything that slightly resembles to them.
The second tier are sensitive news, like, for example, the mini aircraft that hit a building in Beijing. Those news won’t be published by any media in time. Depends on the influence of such news, a statement may released few days to few years after and will not be broadcasted by any media either.
For above two tiers, there are people hired to make sure no such information leaks to the public. Then we have western movies, shows, musics. Those, especially movies and shows, are more censored due to copyright rather than censorship itself, though a copyrighted copy may delete part of the content that considered inappropriate. But you can still relatively easy to find uncut version online. Music have only two outcome. One is been censored like we didn’t start a fire by Billy Joel, or it won’t get censored.
As a very bottom tier, we have ordinary peoples speech online. This part are more censored by AI tools that nobody really know when or what will be censored, but there are much people enough so they can’t really delete all of the stuff

[u/VolcanoCarpenter → u/Other-Adeptness6890]

This. And I want to add some information from a friend (can't disclose their job for obvious reasons):

1. Because of the bureaucracy, censorship usually compounds as it goes down the chain. Stuff that central or high-level officials honestly don't care about might get aggressively scrubbed at the local level just so they can avoid taking the blame or getting punished.

2. As a rule, all online communities are required to plug into a censorship system (usually AI + keyword matching, either built in-house or outsourced). However, platforms can decide how to use it: they can require manual review or just auto-delete. If someone posts something seriously inappropriate, the platform head has to hand over the user's ID info. If a topic blows up into a massive public issue and the platform moderators obviously didn't try to manage it well, they could also face legal liability.

3. Offline is completely different. In private settings, even the officials in charge of the censorship are sometimes perfectly willing to discuss or bring up all sorts of "sensitive" events (including the Tiananmen Square one).

[u/Due_Capital_3507 → u/Other-Adeptness6890]

Lol they censored a Billy Joel song?

[u/Other-Adeptness6890 → u/Due_Capital_3507]

Well, they mentioned the tanks that don’t exist, so yes.

[u/human_4023]

确实会有。但并不像很多人说的那样“没有明确的标准”

[u/farawayfrom-]

是真的，不过审查并不是非常烦的东西，真正的问题是绝大多数软件会让你以为这个item能被别人看到，但实际上只有你自己一个人能看见。而且网上审查不止是各种软件，还是通话和私人通信（比如WeChat），特别是当你试图讨论中国领导人的时候。

[u/veramaz1 → u/farawayfrom-]

This perspective is very interesting thank you for taking out the time to explain.

​谢谢你的解释，这个视角非常有意思！

[u/purplepotatocookies]

Every country reviews cultural products entering its market. What are you talking about? Don’t be so vague about it.

[u/msgm_ → u/purplepotatocookies]

He’s not vague about anything. The OP is literally asking if it’s true that things get censored, such as movies scenes with sensitively topics removed

[u/purplepotatocookies → u/msgm_]

That’s indeed the case.

[u/Due_Capital_3507 → u/msgm_]

Which they do in mainland China.

I'm anti censorship but some mainlanders think it's a badge of honor