Censors in China clamp down on micro-dramas
BEIJING – Censors in China have imposed their toughest restrictions to date on micro-dramas by requiring all content to be vetted before release, following the short-video format’s runaway popularity in recent months.
The new regulations will kick in on June 1, and are aimed at making sure production companies and streaming platforms do not overstep the existing boundaries established by censors for video content in a race to grab eyeballs as competition hots up, analysts said.
Micro-dramas are low-budget productions that are mostly shot in vertical format and promoted on popular short-video streaming platforms Douyin and Kuaishou. They often have cheesy but fantastical plots about everyday people with superpowers or secret identities.
Each micro-drama episode can be as short as two minutes or as long as about 20 minutes. A single title can run for more than 100 episodes.
Each micro-drama title reportedly can cost as low as 5,000 yuan (S$958) to produce but draw revenues of more than 2 million yuan per title thanks to subscriptions.
A recent hit, I Became A Stepmother In The 1980s, a story about a young woman who travelled back in time to find herself being forced to marry a pig farmer, earned over 20 million yuan on the first day of its release on Feb 12, during Chinese New Year.
Users can usually watch the first 10 episodes of each title for free, before they have to pay for the remaining episodes. Some platforms charge a monthly fee, similar to Netflix.
Shanghai news outlet The Paper reported on April 19 that production companies of micro-dramas had already started submitting their content to regulators for review in order to meet the June 1 deadline.
Previously, micro-dramas were allowed to air under a self-regulatory model. But this had led to questionable content – including sexually suggestive and violent material – being uploaded before it was yanked off-air.
In March, regulators took down a micro-drama series titled Teacher, Don’t Run for pornographic scenes.
The removal came after a three-month censorship blitz that ended on Feb 28, 2023, with regulators stepping in to take down more than 25,300 micro-dramas, totalling 1.37 million episodes, due to pornographic, vulgar and violent content.
Producers in China have also reportedly tried to pass off titles with full-length episodes as micro-dramas to take advantage of the format’s self-regulatory model.
In one instance, The Spirealm, a horror-fantasy drama based on a web novel that contained gay romance, reportedly had its full-length episodes of 40 minutes each chopped up to try to be re-categorised as a micro-drama. The Spirealm, which originally had 36 episodes, ended up with 78 20-minute episodes.
The title was taken down two hours after its premiere in February on a popular streaming platform in China, with netizens speculating that censors had come down on the series because regulators had banned works based on dan mei, or gay romance, in 2022 as part of a clean-up to police social mores.
A number of China’s top male celebrities, including Johnny Huang, Xiao Zhan and Gong Jun had their start in dan mei shows such as Addiction (2016), The Untamed (2019) and Word of Honour (2021).
Regulators had also warned producers in 2011 not to have time travel shows, as the format “disrespects history, promotes feudalism and reinvents myths”, but the plot of I Became A Stepmother In The 1980s included a protagonist who went back to the past.
With the rule change, it is unlikely that dan mei or time travel content will be allowed in micro-dramas to ensure parity with the rules on full-length content, analysts said.
The new micro-drama regulations are necessary to ensure the industry’s sustainable growth, given that the format has become so popular with viewers and has attracted investors’ interest with its high returns, Mr Zhang Yi, chief analyst at iiMedia Research Group in Guangzhou, told The Straits Times.
Without regulation, there is a chance that the quality of content “may further degrade, and audiences may abandon micro-dramas as a result”, added Mr Zhang, who is also the group’s chief executive.
“Regulations mean greater certainty and protection for investors, which will benefit the industry’s growth,” he added.
Analysts pointed to regulators’ concerns that the unabated growth of the micro-drama industry could potentially lead to more violent or sexually suggestive content being uploaded just to attract subscriptions, which is primarily how the short-video format makes money.
In 2023, the micro-drama market in China hit 37.4 billion yuan, up 268 per cent from 2022, according to data from iiMedia. The market size is expected to surpass 50 billion yuan in 2024 and hit 100 billion yuan by 2027.
China’s most popular short-video streaming platforms have pledged to invest in the industry, with Douyin, China’s TikTok, earmarking 5 million yuan in cash to produce micro-dramas with industry players such as production companies, individual creators and multi-channel networks.
Kuaishou, another short-video streaming platform, said that it will roll out 200 micro-dramas in 2024 to make the most out of the format’s skyrocketing popularity.
Mr Yap Seow Choong, adjunct senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore, said micro-dramas must raise their quality standards to remain popular among viewers, and investment can help attract better scripts, actors and crew.
So far, the plots of micro-dramas – which tend to be based on web novels – have “been more or less the same”, said Mr Yap, who teaches a course at the university on Chinese media and cultural industries.
“But scriptwriters or producers are likely to limit the range of themes that they will explore due to the need for regulators’ approval,” he added.
Still, Mr Yap does not expect the new regulations on micro-dramas to have “too big of an impact”, given that production companies and streaming platforms in China are “familiar with the regulatory environment”.
For example, television writers for drama hits such as The Story Of Minglan (2018), Joy Of Life (2019) and My Heroic Husband (2021) had removed time travel from the web novels the shows were based on, but that had not stopped the shows from hitting the top of viewers’ charts.
Micro-drama fans told ST that they enjoy how such shows get straight to the point. They also said that they enjoy how the underdog always wins, and villains always end up being humiliated or losing everything.
“The producers don’t waste time on developing the secondary characters. I’m not watching the shows for them,” said purchase manager Ye Jiuyi, 25, in Beijing, who has subscribed to three micro-drama platforms since she discovered the format in November 2023.
Operations executive Li Bing, 34, who has bought four titles for about 300 yuan, said: “Sometimes, I just want a quick drama fix, but I don’t have so much patience to go through the plot twists.”
“Even with micro-dramas, I sometimes fast-forward to the showdowns because it’s so ‘shuang’ (similar to shiok in Singlish) to see the villains cowering in front of the protagonists,” she added.
