China’s TV regulator orders drama industry to reject beauty worship and embrace state cultural doctrine

The National Radio and Television Administration, the government body that oversees all broadcast and streaming content in China, convened a symposium on what it called “healthy aesthetics in TV drama production,” bringing together executives from the country’s most powerful platforms: iQIYI, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV, alongside major production companies including Daylight Entertainment, Linmon Media, and Huace TV. The meeting produced a formal directive published on the NRTA’s official WeChat account.

The document’s central demand is unambiguous: productions must shift from a “star-centric” to a “script-centric” approach, prioritising acting skills and narrative quality over the casting of actors primarily for their looks or online following. The directive states that costumes, makeup, and props must serve character development and story, not visual spectacle, and that the most basic requirement for any production is that characters should convincingly resemble what they are supposed to portray.

The timing of the symposium was widely understood to be a direct response to a controversy that had been building for weeks around 玉骨遥 (Yù Gǔ Yáo / Pursuit of Jade), the hit fantasy costume drama that had just concluded its run to massive viewership figures on iQIYI. Actor 张凌赫 (Zhang Linghe), who plays a battle-hardened military general in the series, attracted intense mockery from Chinese netizens who dubbed his character the “foundation-wearing general” — a reference to the heavy, flawless makeup applied to a figure who was supposed to embody battlefield grit. The criticism escalated sharply when Jun Zhengping Studio, the official social media account of the People’s Liberation Army Daily, published a piece arguing that drama generals wearing heavy makeup cannot bear the social responsibility of embodying masculine vigour.

You May Also LikeNetflix’s Mantis: The Rules Are Broken. A New Killer Takes the Shadows

The NRTA directive goes further than the immediate controversy. It explicitly invokes Xi Jinping Thought on Culture — the current official ideological framework for Chinese arts and media — as the guiding doctrine the drama sector must study and implement. Productions are instructed to reflect what the document calls “the beauty of simplicity, the beauty of nature, and the beauty of meaningful content,” and to move away from what regulators describe as distorted aesthetics driven by traffic and idol culture.

The directive has immediate commercial implications for an industry that has built much of its recent global success on visually polished fantasy productions with idol-cast leads. Platforms such as iQIYI, Tencent Video, and Youku have invested heavily in exactly the kind of xianxia and wuxia dramas — elaborate historical fantasy epics with immaculately styled casts — that the new standards appear to target. How strictly the guidelines will be enforced, and whether they will extend to productions already in development, remains to be seen.

For Zhang Linghe personally, the episode closes an otherwise triumphant chapter: Pursuit of Jade drew enormous audiences and cemented his status as one of C-drama’s leading male stars, even as the controversy over his portrayal drew government-level attention.

The NRTA’s next scheduled review of drama production standards is expected to follow in the coming months, with industry observers watching closely for any concrete enforcement measures.

More Like This

Fate Chooses You (佳偶天成 / Jiā Ǒu Tiān Chéng): iQIYI and Tencent Video’s most anticipated fantasy romance of the season

“The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call”: Netflix’s Adrenaline-Fueled Korean Medical Drama

‘Wave Makers’ (2023). Netflix Series: The World of Politics, Behind the Scenes

Beauty And Beyond: Women In Chinese Art At Bonhams

冰湖重生 on iQIYI is the Princess Agents sequel nine years of C-drama fans have been waiting for

“Eye of the Storm” (2023) Movie on Netflix. Movie Review: Gloomy Chronicle of a Contagion