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Ridiculous Chinese censorship used AI to change the gay couple in Together (2025) to a heterosexual couple
(hexbear.net)
Usually, they only censor the explicit content. But this is the first time that AI tools were used to directly alter the content of the original film.
By the way, the film has been withdrawn from a wide release in China after receiving too many complaints.
This is false. The film in question is a buyout/acquisition film, meaning that the importing distributor pays a lump sum for the licensing rights and the original producer does not participate in the revenue earning from Chinese cinematic release, so the purchaser of film rights has more liberty to alter the content.
The other type of film is called revenue-sharing film - and because the producers retain the film rights, this would require the Chinese censorship to list out their demands for the producers to remove specific parts of the film.
Ok but that's still a private company.
Depends on your perspective. All import films are exclusively distributed by China Film Group (中影) and Huaxia Film Distribution Co (华影). Both are SOEs (China Film is state-owned, Huaxia is state-owned joint-stock enterprise) but are fairly autonomous. This film, Together, was licensed by China Film Group.’
Again I encourage you to read the link above (with machine translation) to understand the topic in more detail because a lot of what you’re writing is misinformation.
I did. The link is just a bunch of quotes of random things Chinese people are saying on social media (with no actual links to where they said them so I can't source anything or even trust that they're real). What exactly are you suggesting I take from a bunch of random people online complaining that the change happened? Why does a bunch of random Chinese social media posts prove what I have said is misinformation?
What exactly have I even said that is misinformation anyway? You know SOEs act independently of the state, or at least you should.
Your info isn't even correct anyway so why are you accusing me of misinformation? You're claiming that this film was actually released in this state. It was not released. It was due to be released on the 19th of September and they cancelled it on the 18th of September before the national release.
This is version of the film has in actual fact not been released.
I don't know where the original article you're linking to is getting its information from. Either it's some private screening, a leak, or it's totally and completely bullshit. The quality of the evidence makes me suspicious, some weird low quality photograph of a screen, maybe a theatre, is being compared to the western version with a photograph of it on a literal CRT? Who the fuck is using a CRT to watch a 2025 movie? The more I look at it the more questions I have about it. The fact nobody is citing any real sources in absolutely anything is pissing me off.
I'm getting more and more suspicious about whether this is even real. China Digital Times is based in Berkeley, CA. Who owns this shit?
Edit: From the wiki for this site's owner:
EDITEDIT: AND IT'S BEEN FUNDED BY NED LMAOOOOOOOOO
MULTIEDIT: I'm satisfied that the ai edit is real now.
Again, it’s all over the social media, especially on xiaohongshu (social media platform) and zhihu (Chinese quora) that are extremely lib coded. They are the ones who care most about the LGBT stuff.
The page I posted is exactly catered for crowds like this. However, if you don’t like the source, feel free to take it from Sohu which posts articles from users. This is as mainstream as you can get.
Also, the film has been released in selected cinemas in 20 cities. This is how people have already watched it and reported on social media. No offense but you seriously are misrepresenting a lot of stuff here. As I said in the original post, it is being withdrawn from a wide release due to complaints.
This is a much better article. It at least satisfies the questions I had about whether it was real or not.
I do still think you are misattributing the blame for this to the government as opposed to a poor decision by whoever was in charge of the localisation for this, which would be whoever the team leader is of the team handling this at the import company.
This is starting to feel like wrecker shit. Is it just me?
I don't know about that. I like XHS in the news mega because they provide some useful negativity towards China on certain issues.
They clearly belong to one of the ideological groups that doesn't consider China to be marxist anymore. Ultra left or Trot or something. Not british Trot though because the trots here I know behind the scenes have all started to see China positively and as basically the only hope marxism has in the world. That leaves like, Ultra or Leftcom I don't know.
I'm not about to say they're a wrecker wholly. Some of their contributions are good. They just don't really have the same views that the MLs here have. What bothers me is that I'm trying to get to the bottom of something earnestly and I get called "spreading misinformation" instead of help to find the truth of the matter. I am totally willing to call China-actual out on things China-actual deserves to be called out on, but I need to get to the root source of this matter to do that. My blame goes with who did it. At this point I'm not even 100% certain that this is real though, I need to get past that uncertainty first. Where is the version of this movie that this comes from? Where was it screened? To who? The national release for this movie was supposed to be the 19th Sept and it was cancelled on the 18th. So I need to know exactly where this was screened and who put out this information on it being different to the western version to satisfy my threshold for "ok this ai edit did actually happen and isn't just clever propaganda" before I move on to blame.
My suspicion at this point is that it is plausible for western propagandists to get wind of "this movie is being cancelled/delayed" and then to make up a bullshit scene with bullshit changes for propaganda, push it out into the internet, it gets republished by hundreds of media outlets that all take it as fact and then it's hard to find the truth of the matter. So I think we should verify that it's actually real and not just clever propaganda.
and 2. there should be an exact source for whoever told the internet that these changes were made and whoever made the photo.
Where did all this accusation come from? An ultra or a Trot would denounce Mao and Deng lol. I have been fully supportive of Mao and Deng’s reform. You have seen my comments over the years - how do I still get misunderstood by the people here?
Wait you're pro-Deng? I am very confused by you lol
I thought your position was basically: China is being too capitalist and neoliberal and too socially conservative. Big simplification, but that's how most everything you write comes off. The first always felt like a critique of Dengism, but maybe you support Deng, but just want to push the left shift in policy now despite appreciating his policies for their time? How do you reconcile these?
edited out a piece so I don't misinform
No, I have written many times that Deng’s reform was critical, especially the first 30 years. I take issue with the neoliberal turn after joining the WTO in 2001, and while the leadership has so far done a decent job of preventing a broader economic crisis, it is very obvious that we are already past the limits of Deng’s reform and there is an urgent need to transition away from the neoliberal policies that rely on an export-led growth model.
It is already evident that the slowing growth over the years, the end of the infrastructure investment-led era, the slump in domestic consumption and the difficulty in transitioning away from the export industries all point toward a need to move away from the neoliberal model. This tracks with the fact that neoliberalism is also reaching its terminal phase globally.
What I don’t understand is why do people cling on to Deng’s reform as though it can go on forever? If Mao’s planned economy only worked for 20 years, and a reform and opening up era had to follow, then the natural course when such a phase has reached its limit would be to transition into a new socialist-oriented phase.
A lot of this comes from poor understanding of Chinese history and how its economy actually works. I’m trying to educate people here but get accused of being an ultra and a Trot lol. An ultra would denounce Deng’s contributions completely, and Trots would hate both Mao and Deng. I don’t even think many here understand the differences between them.
Since when have I said that China exploits the Global South???
Also I never said China is too capitalist. In fact, I said that China is socialism with Chinese characteristics, and this form of market socialism relies on building socialism through neoliberal principles. Very important distinction here.
writes in notebook: "shipwreck hates Jiang Zemin and the Shanghai clique"
Don’t even get me started about how Shanghai single handedly sabotaged the entire national Zero Covid policy just less than three years ago lol. I am still seething.
The biggest achievement of the current premier, Li Qiang (famously the party secretary of the Shanghai branch), was giving Tesla huge incentives to build its factory in Shanghai. These people were so enamored with Elon Musk that they made Tesla the only foreign automaker company in China that does not have to partner up with a local company (not joking). And for this, he is being rewarded with a promotion to the premier position at the 20th CPC Congress (again not joking).
No, you misremembered. Shanghai wanted to go their own way, emulating Western countries with “targeted lockdown” strategy. It went out of control when Omicron hit. When the virus is all over the country, it was pretty much over. The government could no longer justify keep locking down the entire country at that point, and the Zero Covid strategy ended in January 2023 just before the Chinese New Year.
Reminder than Shenzhen has more or less the same population and density as Shanghai, and was hit by Omicron at around the same time, and succeeded with a full lockdown mode. So the argument that Shanghai couldn’t have done it better is pure bullshit.
You are correct but misunderstood my point. I remember clearly that Shenzhen and Shanghai went into lockdown around April 2022 at almost the same time, with quite a staggering outcome.
The March-April 2022 wave showed how costly it would be to get the pandemic under control again if “accidentally” allowed to be spread again. This is the lever the Shanghai libs have over the central government. When Li Qiang (who was criticized for his handling of Covid) was made Premier in October that year during the 20th CPC Congress, it was clear that the libs have regained control. By December as a new wave appeared, the Zero Covid policy would be abandoned.
No problem. I still get emotional about it lol. Maybe I am being a bit unfair against the Shanghai people haha.
Maybe you haven't said that about the Global South, I'll delete it because I have no specific evidence, just thought I'd read you previously skeptical of some BRI stuff for not benefitting the receiving country. But I'm not gonna go searching your history to try to prove it because I believe you
But for the rest, ok, I will read your stuff in this light from now on!
I do think we disagree though about how long Deng's reforms are useful to keep up. To me it seems pretty clear that, as long as Chinese growth (not just money, but skills and equipment etc) is accelerating relative to the US, they're useful. I see yet no indication that this isn't true, and will only begin to be skeptical once it's clear that the benefits are no longer causing a rapid catch-up and passing of US hegemonic power.
The BRI was an initiative that gained traction after Obama ended quantitative easing in late 2013. In other words, as China’s twin surpluses ended, China had to stop accumulating dollar reserves so they had to find a way to lend out those money elsewhere.
The problem with BRI and the Asian Development Bank is the fact that when you try to lend out investment money, but has not built a domestic market that can accommodate for the production, then obviously the BRI countries will still have to sell to the countries that are willing to run the deficit to import from them.
By the way, I have also made clear that these are not my ideas. Much of my understanding of economics and framework of analysis are strongly influenced by Prof. Jia Genliang of the People’s University, whose combination of Marx, MMT and List have proven very valuable for me to understand how global capitalism work, especially in relation to China.
The problem is the growth has not translated into wage growth for the working people. Unemployment is actually quite high (especially youth unemployment) for a country that is growing at 5% GDP. So where did all the growth come from? If it’s more investment in housing, then that increase in the GDP growth isn’t going to benefit the people.
Growth doesn't always translate like that to wage growth, and in fact would not if the surplus value was being used to further accelerate more growth. investment in further infrastructure, reasearch, etc, controlled by the CPC directly or through incentive structures over a private market, would not at all translate to raised wages but would raise the possible wages for all in the long term if successful.
I see the position that Chinese wages are too low to be one of priority, not of an ideological mistake. Because extreme poverty is low and 'political capital' (popularity) is comfortably high internally, it's a completely valid strategy to now translate growth to direct benefits but instead to strategic positioning for the future of the political economy, including the possibility of war with the US.
While i have your attention on the matter, something I've tried to ask before but still just do not feel I have gotten a good enough response to: why is the switch from an export economy to an internal market considered such a hurdle or barrier?
I think that this hurdle that you often bring up is expressly set at a very low priority by Chinese officials because it will be so easy to overcome relative to the much bigger ones (like US hegemony, global cooperation, resource management). Even within the framework of MMT (of which I am unconvinced except as a method of accounting with little strategic difference), this switch to an internal market can just be flipped pretty damn easily. So why should they put energy into the topic now as opposed to once the current strategy of investment in the future is going so well? What are the problems you forsee?
Read my entire explanation here.
Why do you think wage growth is not important? Why do you think China is having a serious consumption and deflation problem…. if it has nothing to do with wage growth? People are not consuming because of the economic downturn and uncertainty. Income does not justify the spending.
I think it can be said to be less important given the much larger contradictions facing China. Not that wages are just unimportant in themselves.
I agree that the problem of wage growth and an non-export economy are intermingled, of course. I just think that this is a pretty easily solvable problem and CPC under Xi Jinping is aware of that. But raising wages is in contradiction right now to competing with the US on a global stage (because, instead of increasing wages which will be used for consumer goods, extra surplus is put back into larger infrastructure and future-oriented technology and weapons). Being an export economy is still the correct strategic choice until China is no longer massively out-accelerating the US on the global stage.
Does prof Jia Genliang or other profs of similar vein have reading material?
Yes, 《国内大循环：经济发展新战略与正则选择》(The Great Internal Circulation: New Strategies and Policy Choice for Economic Development) (2020) and 《现代货币理论在中国》(Modern Monetary Theory in China) (2023) are the two major works in recent years on how trade policies and the monetary system actually work in China.
They go against the standard neoclassical thinking (need to balance the budget etc.) and focus on using political economy (what Marxian economics is called in China), MMT and List’s theories on international trade as a framework and really helped me understand a lot of the intricacies of the Chinese economic model.
In Chinese only though. I did try to translate some a while ago but I don’t have as much time to do them these days (I don’t use machine translation because they make a lot of mistakes or use weird phrases).
Thanks comrade. And funny enough I can kinda read Chinese. Somewhat. I'll give them a look with time.
Welcome. Feel free to let me know if you have questions.
XHS thinks Deng did mostly the right desicions, they just think the modern chinese goverment is doing nothing when they could be fighting the US hegemony more via things like replacing the US dollar and other policies, and this cowardness is going to kick them in the ass in the future
To be more precise, we have about 26 years of planned economy under Mao (although the last few years were just turmoil from the Cultural Revolution), which led to the reform and opening up era that can be characterized by the first 20 years of Deng’s reform. The limits of the reform model was first tested in the 1995-96 economic crisis, caused by the mass privatization wave following the landmark 1994 Tax Sharing Reform.
Then we have the Transition Period from 1998-2001, when Zhu Rongji decided to unleash the property market to save the economy and ended the welfare housing program (everyone has to purchase their own houses now), and when the decision to join the WTO was being made.
Then we have the WTO/neoliberal double-digit growth “world factory” era from 2001-2009, and after the GFC moved into the infrastructure investment-led era from 2009 to 2020, during which the over-investment and land speculation by local governments created a huge property and debt bubble.
Then Covid hit… and everything went to shit really. The post-Covid growth that was promised simply never arrived, especially with the property bubble bursting. What we are seeing now, with all these amazing development in China, is really the long shadow from the early years of the infrastructure phase. The peak was about 10 years ago in the 2010s, and it should have been curbed long before it got out of control.
So the first 30 years of Deng’s reform and opening up was obviously critical, but just like you jump from the planned economy to a liberalized reform economy, clearly that phase will end some day (in fact, I believe we are already at least 10 years late) and the jump into a new (socialist) phase becomes the next step in the progress.
I'm defending you. Mostly. I like your shit in the news mega and wouldn't want you gone. I just also kinda view you through the lens of not being pro-china. I couldn't point to a specific thing that caused that though, my memory is dogshit.
I already said many times before, I am one of the few people here who actually say that China has the size of an economy and military that can directly challenge the global hegemon. It can stop a genocide if it truly wants to. If that is not pro-China, I don’t know what is. I even provided explanations why China has to behave the way it does (clinging on to neoclassical economics). I have written dozens of times what China can actually do to fight Western imperialism.
What I’m seeing more often here are people (who usually don’t understand the country) making various excuses for China because either China is too weak to do anything globally (yet somehow already surpassed the US empire), or it is actually very wise to play the long game that justifies millions of people being genocided. If this is a pro-China stance, then it’s a laughable one.
They’re not a wrecker, they’re just actually familiar with China and its flaws.