"This is equivalent to the box office income of last year's blockbuster King Kong in two weeks," said Weng, adding, "Chinese audiences have undergone a transformation from watching 007 movies on video cassette, to compact disks, and now to the cinema, and the market performance is just as we expected."

Following the success of Casino Royale, a second movie about the British Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6)-Stormbreaker-will hit Chinese cinema screens on April 13. The X-rated movie, which contains graphic violence and covers the sensitive topic of terrorism, again passed through China's censors unscathed. Actually out of 20 imported movies in China last year, 14 made it past the censor without any cuts.

The cutter

On March 15, after a screening of Babel, The Beijing News surveyed members of the cinema audience on the issue of trimming foreign movies to make them more fitting for Chinese cinemas. The Babel shown in China is three or four minutes shorter than the overseas version with several scenes cut.

Most of the people asked by The Beijing News said they did not mind watching the clipped version as it did not make much difference to the movie. Eighty percent said they thought making some cuts was reasonable given that China does not have a movie rating system to exclude younger people from seeing certain films.

"Babel won an Oscar for best music but the cuttings made the music a little rough and I feel something beautiful about the movie was ruined," said movie fan Tang Xianjing, whose complaint was shared by many other members of the cinema audience.

"We distributors don't have the right to trim imported movies as it touches the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR)," said Weng.

When China imports foreign movies, it follows certain steps. Overseas film companies recommend movies to the China Film Group Corp., which carries out the first round of censorship. Approved movies are passed on to the Film Bureau under the SARFT for further examination. A censor report is then sent to the producers so the film can be modified where necessary in order to be shown in China.

"The censors have to state clearly where a movie should be modified and why," said one film industry insider. No matter the foreign producers, or the Chinese distributors, or the censors, they will communicate with each other in a friendly manner in order to pass films for screening as soon as possible.

"It's an outdated view that the censors are at daggers drawn with distributors," said Zhang Miao from Columbia Pictures marketing department in China.

Movie Rating System

Chinese movie star Gong Li called for the creation of a movie rating system for China at the government's annual legislative meetings in March, and immediately gained widespread support from filmmakers.

As early as in 1989, the state administration in control of radio, film and television began to implement a rating system for some movies. However, the regulations were too general and failed to catch on.

According to Wu Zhi, a sociologist at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, the current censorship regulations are ambiguous and unspecific, "so that rated movies in foreign countries can be shown on screens to all viewers in China."