ChinaWatch: Time Travel Banned

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Past Perfect Protected

Broadcasters and program makers will have to tread carefully after the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (Sarft) issued a warning about the way shows were treating the past.

An effective ban is to be placed on showing time travel on TV and at the cinema in China, so the iconic Michael J. Fox flick “Back To The Future” isn’t likely to be seen again anytime soon.


“Many stories are totally made up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged any longer,” Li Jingsheng, head of television drama at Sarft, says.

It has been stressed that the censorship is not an outright ban but rather a clamping down, which means program makers will have to adhere to stricter rules.

Professor Nie Wei, of the School of Movie and Television Drama Studies at Shanghai University, says scripts for popular drama “The Palace,” which is about a 21st century girl who is sent back to the Qing dynasty, are being rewritten in time for the next series.

He added that although some of the time travel shows are “irresponsible in not respecting history,” it is more complicated than Sarft is making it sound.

However, when it comes to misrepresenting history, China's state TV station knows a thing or two.

The broadcaster was previously accused of airing dogfight scenes from the Tom Cruise flick “Top Gun” and billing them as a training exercise undertaken by the country's air force.

Driver’s Licenses Faked

Customs officials at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport have seized more than 1,700 high-quality counterfeit U.S. driver's licenses this year that were sent from China, federal authorities say.

Most of the counterfeit licenses were addressed to college students, and federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have been investigating some of the intended recipients, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say.

The fakes are high quality forgeries of licenses from seven states: Illinois, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

“Our greatest concern is the ease at which these high quality fakes can be ordered over the Internet,” says David Murphy, CBP Director of Field Operations in Chicago.

Agents at the airport's International Mail Facility have found licenses hidden in electronic or gift items, as well as in envelopes. Shipments contained between two and 48 licenses, according to officials.

Shale Drilling Eyed

China, the world’s biggest polluter, may start producing shale gas within five years to meet rising demand for cleaner-burning fuels.

Production of gas in shale rock may begin before the end of 2015, Che Changbo, deputy director of the Ministry of Land and Resources’s oil and gas strategy center, says.

The country has drilled more than 10 wells and signed several cooperation agreements with foreign companies to develop the resource, according to Che.

China wants to triple the use of natural gas to about 10 percent of its energy consumption by 2020 as it cuts reliance on more polluting coal.

China has brought in foreign partners including Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) to assess its shale potential and acquired overseas shale-gas assets to gain expertise in producing the hard-to-extract resource.

“We need to accelerate the verification of reserves, improve technology and enhance the ability of manufacturing equipment” needed to extract shale gas, Che says. “We should expand cooperation with foreign companies to achieve all that.”

China’s state-owned energy companies have spent more than $6 billion on North American shale-gas assets in the last three months, six times as much as the whole of 2010.

China National Petroleum Corp., China Petrochemical Corp. and China National Offshore Oil Corp. are currently leading the country’s shale-gas projects, according to Che.

ChinaWatch

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