China’s War on Female Delusion

CULTURE

An American Expat Describes the CCP’s Crackdown on Microdramas

By Nathan Baker · June 19, 2026 · 9 min read

China is cracking down on “microdramas” that depict the ultimate female fantasy: poor girls marrying rich CEOs. If you know anything about China’s censorship ecosystem, this doesn’t come as a surprise.

I had my own run-in with Chinese censors when I accidentally got chicks with big tits banned from car shows in Shanghai.

The Chinese government does not merely censor politics. It censors appetite. Sex, wealth, despair, femininity, masculinity, celebrity, fantasy, ambition, degeneracy, and the wrong kind of fun all pass through the same social harmony filter. The uncomfortable question is whether a society that censors degeneracy actually produces better behavior than one that turns every human weakness into a content vertical.

I built one of China’s first multi-channel networks in 2014 with Thoughtful Media Group. We grew channels on China’s YouTube-equivalent platforms. I eventually struck gold with a video called “The Beauties of ChinaJoy 2014” (CJ2014: 最性感的视频), which went viral on a video platform called Youku in July of that year.

ChinaJoy is the biggest gaming expo in China, notorious for scantily clad showgirls. The video was a musical compilation of all the booth babes, which I captured as b-roll for a separate comedy video we shot there (which performed nowhere near as well as the showgirl edit).

I was looking for ways to keep the momentum going, which brought me to a number of auto shows in Shanghai. I hit up China Auto Salon (CAS) in September 2014 and churned out more showgirl edits. That kept the buzz going. I went to the RA Shanghai International Automobile Customization and Modification Expo the next month, where the booth babes had even bigger tits.

But suddenly, a vibe shift.

In January 2015, reports emerged that Shanghai would ban sex models from upcoming auto shows. By April 2015, it was worldwide news. The male fantasy no longer had a place in the car-show scene. I realized I had myself played a part in this development.

Around the same time, China’s censors set out to suppress the male fantasy on TV. They removed the historical drama series, “The Empress of China,” from the air for squeezing too much cleavage out of Tang Dynasty costumes. Authorities required the entire series be re-edited for the sake of social harmony, resulting in a show composed entirely of close-up shots showing only the female character’s heads.

A decade later, China’s censors set their sights on dramatized hypergamy.

Now let me explain the concept of microdrama, known in Chinese as duanju (短剧). It’s like those AI Fruit Slop videos, but with real actors. The episodes usually run anywhere from under a minute to a few minutes. Engineered for vertical viewing, fast pacing, constant reversals, and cliffhangers that push you into the next episode. It’s the uncanny kind of scripted video you come across when swiping Reels or TikTok on the toilet. You end up feeling ashamed for watching all the way through just to see where it goes.

Marcus Lin (pseudonym), a media specialist in China, told me, “It’s super short content designed to keep people watching. Episodes always have some hook at the end. It’s a content model that’s already proven in China. It’s cheap to make, easy to test, and if something hits, it scales very fast. So people just keep producing more.”

Naturally, romance is a popular micro-drama category. And given female proclivities, rich love interests became a popular enough trope for the censors to take notice.

The CCP’s National Radio and Television Administration called on ​​creators to adhere to realism when producing short dramas that portray entrepreneurs, warning against producing sensational content that glorifies wealth, power, and elite lifestyles.

Current media guidelines warn against promoting “idealized narratives” that glamorize marrying into powerful or wealthy families, or narratives suggesting that a respectable or desirable man must be rich. Authorities see “unrealistic fantasies” as a danger to young women. The harmonious thing for women to do is focus on education or personal development, not focusing on their looks to bag a rich guy.

Lily Xu (pseudonym), a Chinese advertising executive, told me: “Microdramas have been trending since last year. The difference between TV dramas and microdramas is the story is usually far more dramatic, cheesy, and fast-paced. You don’t really need to use your brain to watch them, it’s pure escapist fantasy. I can’t really think of any negative aspects of them, maybe because the ones I watch are still a bit normal. But considering minors, it might cause damage since they could end up with messed-up values and warped ideas about love.”

Jackson Zhang (pseudonym), an old friend of mine who works in the media regulation apparatus, said, “Even though regulators have tried to restrict rich CEO micro-dramas, they’re still everywhere. There’s just too much of that content, and new ones come out so fast that it’s hard for regulators to keep up. The reason for these restrictions isn’t complicated. Chinese film and TV have always been pretty strict about not promoting materialism or money worship.”

The move against micro-dramas followed an announcement by the Cyberspace Administration that Chinese celebrities could no longer "show off wealth" or "extravagant pleasure" on social media. Platforms like Douyin, the TikTok of China, have since cracked down on influencers who flaunt their luxurious lifestyles, blocking the accounts of numerous creators who had millions of followers.

While conspicuous consumption is something you see every day in China, the government wants to hide it from the media landscape in order to promote social harmony. That does not mean wealth displays are absent from real life. Chinese nightclubs often seem designed less for dancing than for fitting in as many bottle-service tables as possible. Prime city avenues are lined with European luxury brands. And for years, official government cars were almost synonymous with black Audis.

All media in China is subject to the social harmony filter. If you were to stream Fight Club (1999) on the popular Tencent video platform, you’d find the iconic ending replaced with a note that says, “the police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.”

And back to boobs, you’d find that Kate Winslet’s are missing from Titanic (1997).

Another danger to China’s social harmony is femboys. The rise of K-pop in the 2010s had a major impact on Chinese pop culture. China’s homegrown talent started to adopt the girly-boy aesthetics of the genre, leading the National Radio and Television Administration to establish “correct beauty standards.” These regulations took aim at effeminate men, “sissy idols” (niangpao), and “vulgar internet celebrities.”

Beyond lewd and escapist content, China also regulates pessimism. In 2025, China’s internet regulators launched a campaign that targeted the “lying flat” movement, which began trending in 2020. It began with a viral social media post that rejected the rat race and high-pressure societal expectations, championing the pursuit of a simple life devoid of ambition.

This movement came about as the sluggish Chinese economy of the early 2020s clashed with 996 work culture, which pushes for 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week working hours. As Chinese youth started to see the economic opportunities of “The Chinese Dream” evaporate, hardcore work culture stopped making sense.

The regulatory campaign, still in place, targets content that “excessively self-deprecates or amplifies feelings of despair and negativity, prompting others to follow suit.” It also goes after those who take advantage of this movement to “sell anxiety” and “exploit concerns around employment, dating, and education to promote sales of classes or related products.”

Chinese censorship covers a lot of ground. It pushes fantasy, sexuality, and counterculture underground. It ensures “the good guys” win.

You’re never going to get a show like The Sopranos out of China with the CCP in charge. You will get Marvel-esque slop.

But you won’t get OnlyFans either. You won’t see the Chinese equivalent of that tedious Whatever podcast. There won’t be a Chinese Call Her Daddy. So the question is which do you prefer?

Censorship keeps China pure and wholesome to an extent. It prevents the mass whorification of women. Yet human nature and market forces will always ensure that whores exist. They have a very rich history of this, but the system has the decency to ensure that it stays under the surface.

Human nature will always guarantee a level of hypergamy in China. Authorities can censor rich CEO micro-dramas, but Chinese women are still going to fantasize about landing a rich guy who will make their dreams come true.

I’m not here to tell you that “China system good, America system bad.” I’m an American and I want to live like an American. What works for China is their business.

I couldn’t write this article for Chinese media. Regulators breathe down your neck about anything posted publicly, be it a social media post, an article, or an entertainment program.

What I will say is that we can learn from China. I think it’s good that there’s an alternative example to free speech. Iron can sharpen iron. Learning from China can help our country be a better version of itself without having to copy its system.

Mao Zedong had a theory about "continuous revolution.” For socialism to succeed, he thought that revolutionary struggle had to persist even after seizing power to prevent capitalist restoration. That all went away after he died. You might say the capitalists won, although you could argue that China is more of a fascist state than anything.

In America, by contrast, Mao’s continuous revolution persists. This culture war isn’t anywhere close to conclusion. And maybe that’s how it’s always been.

Maybe that’s the actual American experience: not the absence of censorship, but a permanent argument over who gets to do it.

China has the state. America has platforms, advertisers, activists, algorithms, HR departments, payment processors, shadowy cabals, and women sitting in their cars with selfie cameras and no self-awareness.

Both systems are trying, in their own way, to manage the same impossible thing: human appetite. China hides it under the table. America puts a ring light on it and sells monthly subscriptions.

But the appetite remains. The poor girl still wants the rich CEO. The guy at the auto show still looks at the booth babe before he looks at the car. The censor can stamp the permit, rewrite the ending, ban the femboy, and blur the cleavage, but the desire never disappears. But maybe a civilization is defined by the amount of ugliness it forces underground, and the amount it rewards with a sponsorship deal.