No one can start making a film in China without submitting the plot to the State General Administration of Press, Publication,Radio, Film and Television (SGAPPRFT), an agency set up to administer government-owned media but best known (and feared) as a committee of censors.If any organization from outside mainland China is involved, including Hong Kong partners, a full screenplay must be submitted for review. Once approved,it can't be modified, meaning actors and directors must resist any urge to improvise during filming.At irregular intervals the agency providesa list of unmentionables. Sex scenes or depictions of "excessive drinking,smoking and other bad habits" are a no-go. “Propagating passive or negative outlook on life, world view and value system" is banned; so is "stirring upambivalence and conflicts between different religions or sects, and betweenbelievers and nonbelievers, causing disharmony in the community."

The vetting committee might reject a storyline for being "unscientific," because, say, it features time travel. It also bans"historical untruths," which, this being China, often means historical truths.The ethnicity of villains is a major concern as well. "If it's about international crime, the bad guy must not be Chinese," explained a Hong Kong screenwriter with 25 years' experience. (Heasked not to be identified for fear of being blacklisted.) Further more, thecrime must not be initiated within China's borders, as if the land itself were somehow pure. All characters in the uniformed services must be good guys.Government employees may never be corrupt. There are no prostitutes in China.Getting a SGAPPRFT permit is just the firsthurdle. If the hero is a monk or the setting is a temple or a church, the script will also require a permit from the State Administration for Religious Affairs. If it's a spy movie, national security agents will have to vet it. Forcop shows, you need approval from the police's so-called art department.Ghost stories are farcically problematic.In the spring of 2006, an online novel by Zhang Muye called "Gui Chui Deng"(literally "Ghost Blows Out the Light") was enormously popular. It was read by millions. There was much excited discussion about a print version and aninternational movie adaptation. Then the project stalled. The government-licensed version of the book published in print was purged of any reference to thesupernatural, and with that, the film project vanished, too.

At least half of Hong Kong movies today areco-produced with mainland organizations, and screenwriters here are also having to toe the Beijing line. "That's why we usually make 'ancient swordsman' films,or stories that happen in the period before the founding of the New China," the Hong Kong screenwriter explained. He meant that you can show something negativein mainland China only so long as it happened before the Communist revolutionin 1949 — but be careful not to portray that period as a golden era, because for that you might get censored.Can a good story be written under suchconditions? It's difficult. Some screenwriters have managed through cunning:One director squeaked a crime movie set in Hong Kong past the censors afterclaiming the action took place before the transfer in 1997, while the territory was still under the rule of those evil Brits.

More often, the rules kill creativity. The 2002 Hong Kong movie "Infernal Affairs," a gripping tale about a triad member who infiltrates the police, was remade in Hollywood as "The Departed,” which won four Oscars, including one for best adapted screenplay. In the original,the gangster antihero ultimately avoids being exposed by killing someone in his own gang. Is he still faking it, or has he become the top cop he was pretending to be? In the version of the film that was reshot in China, the ending is a clunker:Confronted by police officers who accuse him of being a mole, he turns in his badge without a word.That crime story I co-wrote with theChinese director had to be rejiggered multiple times. It eventually resulted inan implausible tale about an Italian businessman who flies into Beijing, stealsa huge cache of art treasures, and flies out while pursued by noble detectives of Chinese origin. It was never filmed, to my relief.The problem is not about to go away.According to Xinhua, the state-run news agency, China's uncompromising president, Xi Jinping, told a forum of writers in October, "The arts must serve the people and serve socialism." Anthony Lee, a Hong Kong Polytechnic University lecturer on entertainment, said, "The buzz in theindustry is that the toughness of China's new leader is making things harder,not easier."

Screenwriters may find some hope in thefact that in the long run the Chinese public, and investors, will demand global standards of story writing. On a domestic airline in China recently, I notedthat a movie showing a lone Chinese hero defeating a Japanese horde was playingon drop-down screens. Not one passenger seemed to be watching it. Instead many were watching Hollywood films on portable devices.