CHINA SAYS RATINGS SYSTEMS DON’T WORK

China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has effectively ended any further discussion of adopting a film ratings system for the country. That would leave the regulator in place as the country’s chief censor, determining which movies can be appropriately viewed by China’s entire population, from children to adults. Daily Variety today (Tuesday) quoted Zhao Shi, SARFT’s chief administrator, as saying, “China is developing its own way to maintain the management of the movie market in a legal, scientific and effective way, and this ‘own way’ would be more suitable for China’s domestic conditions and the reform of China’s movie business.” People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, also quoted Zhao as saying that film classification systems are rarely effective. And the newspaper itself observed, “In fact, there has been little success in using this practice – even in some developed countries. They also have many difficulties in preventing youth from watching inappropriate films in cinema or on the Internet.”