2015年经济学人 网上娱乐 热潮太洋（在线收听）

Online entertainment

A craze too foreign

China tries to restrict foreign entertainment online

FOR young professionals in China's cities, watching television online has become a part of daily life.

In Shanghai, for example, many office workers watch their favourite TV shows at their desks during lunch-hours,

on the metro on the way home, or even while walking on the city's crowded pavements.

Foreign TV dramas are a particular attraction. They are strictly controlled on terrestrial television stations,

but can be watched free on China's video-streaming websites. This year Chinese viewers have been gripped by “House of Cards”,

an American political drama series, as well as by several South Korean shows and the BBC's “Sherlock”,

which was available with an authorised Chinese translation hours after being shown in Britain.

Yet viewers may soon find their choices more limited. Last week China's TV regulator said that, from April,

any foreign series or film would need approval before being shown online.

Chinese media say that regulators are also considering limiting the number of foreign series shown online to a specific proportion of total output.

The new rules appear aimed at closing one of the biggest loopholes in China's control of its media:

on terrestrial TV, for example, foreign dramas are banned in prime time. Many are forbidden altogether.

It is not clear how strictly the content of foreign programmes shown online will be vetted.

But the regulator's call for “healthy, well-made” works which “showcase good values” seems to echo a recent tightening of controls on terrestrial TV.

These include bans on dramas dealing with topics such as superstition, espionage and—bizarrely—time travel.

Earlier this year Chinese websites were ordered to remove several American TV series; at least one of these, it was announced, would be shown, edited,

on state TV instead. In a hint of what may follow, the government broadcaster recently screened the fantasy drama “Game of Thrones”—minus nudity and violence (ie, the point).

The new controls may simply push younger viewers away from authorised providers and towards pirate sites instead,

says a Chinese academic specialising in media studies. At a time when China has at last begun to bring copyright infringements under control—

the country's main video-streaming websites now pay foreign producers for their TV shows—that would be a step backwards.