There is so much headdesking here I don’t know where to start. Let’s just go down the laundry list of future prohibitions a C-ent insider claims is about to be handed down by the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) of China. The first part is the rule, in parenthesis I try to make sense of it. (1) No romance in any military themed drama (because soldiers are robots who don’t have feelings). (2) Costumes in historical dramas must be correlated to a real Chinese dynastic period (because everything was China created as opposed to influenced by travelers and cultural exposure), (3) No star with either sickly looks or plastic surgery can be used, especially not in military or police themes dramas (because every soldier and police officer looks like they wouldn’t recognize face wash and moisturizer if it fell on their head), and no feminine looking makeup on male stars. (4) Liulang stars, any singing or dancing variety show idol cannot be cast as the first male or female lead (because our legit actors or actresses cannot also know how to sing or dance well).

(5) Strong encouragement to produce real life inspiring themed dramas (because that’s all that is worth watching). (6) Supernatural mystery, excessively sweet and charming relationships, and demons and monsters – those dramas are to decrease and no such drama can have less than 60% content be actual real life uplifting material (I can’t even commentate on this…..), (7) Drama titles must be inspirational and likely for audiences to approve of (yes, because the title is so important). (8) No shipping CPs (why even watch dramas at this point). (9) Decrease in volume of streaming dramas, especially targeting period dramas and xianxia dramas which will be hard to get airing permits now (death knell of C-dramas, start sounding). And lastly (10) If it doesn’t pass permit review three times, it will be permanently denied (three strikes, you’re out!). And let’s not forget all prior regulations in recent years from ban on time-traveling to real historical periods and ban on BL novel adaptations into dramas.