"Battle of Penghu" (澎湖海戰), a major Chinese historical war epic timed to Beijing's pro-unification messaging, has reportedly been denied an official release permit days before its scheduled July 25 premiere — a development analysts say reveals the limits of using nationalist cinema to shape cross-strait public opinion.
Reports emerged this week that China's National Film Administration withheld the official screening authorization colloquially known as the "Dragon Seal," effectively halting theatrical distribution. Yet on July 20, theater accounts across the mainland began circulating WeChat promotions still advertising the July 25 date, leaving the film's fate in genuine confusion.
The film draws on the 1683 naval campaign in which Qing dynasty Admiral Shi Lang, dispatched by the Kangxi Emperor, defeated the Ming loyalist Kingdom of Tungning and brought Taiwan under imperial rule. Its promotional materials made no effort to keep the historical parallel subtle. Trailers featured slogans such as "Unifying Taiwan — Unstoppable," and the filmmakers explicitly framed Shi Lang's 17th-century campaign as an ancient precedent for today's cross-strait relationship. The cast was announced on Oct. 25 — Taiwan's Retrocession Day — a choice of timing that drew immediate attention.
A 17th-Century Sea Battle Repurposed for Modern Propaganda
Liu Xingren, an associate professor at Chinese Culture University's Department of National Development and Mainland China Studies, told Storm Media that the film likely crossed at least three distinct political red lines. The controversies, he said, center on the film's "excessive glorification of Shi Lang and its depiction of Manchu Qing forces attacking a Han Chinese regime that upheld Ming legitimacy." Both issues generated intense controversy across the mainland, in Taiwan, and in Hong Kong, Liu argued, and carried the additional risk of being misread internationally as a signal that China was preparing to go to war.
"If the film is ultimately pulled by authorities," Liu said, "it will be because politics walked ahead of art and history."
The deeper problem, Liu explained, is that the production attempted to compress complicated historical events into a ready-made modern political frame — and in doing so produced an outcome that undermines the very message it was intended to deliver. Rather than rallying audiences around a unified cross-strait narrative, the film generated contradictions it could not resolve.
Shi Lang's Legacy Divides Mainland Audiences Along Ethnic Lines
Among those contradictions is the figure of Shi Lang himself. In traditional Chinese historiography, Shi Lang occupies deeply uncomfortable moral territory: a Ming dynasty general who defected to the Manchu Qing conquerors, he would commonly be categorized as a "turncoat minister" — someone Chinese cultural tradition holds should not be celebrated. Casting him as the hero of a patriotic epic sits uneasily with those instincts.
The ethnic dimensions compound the discomfort. The historical battle the film glorifies was a Manchu-led conquest of a government that saw itself as the legitimate continuation of Han Chinese civilization. Liu pointed out that in the current mainland climate — defined in part by the mainstream revival of Han-style clothing and a surge of interest in Han ethnic identity — asking audiences to root emotionally for the Qing army as it destroys descendants of Ming resistance creates something closer to provocation than patriotism.
The film's marketing, Liu argued, pushes the cross-strait relationship toward a zero-sum, existential-battle framing. That framing actively disrupts Beijing's carefully calibrated dual-track approach: maintaining a public commitment to peaceful reunification while using lower-level military pressure to manage the pace of negotiations. A movie stoking "kill or be killed" atmospherics, Liu said, pulls in exactly the wrong direction.
Xi's Peaceful Unification Strategy Cannot Afford Nationalist Overreach
Liu's broader reading of the episode is grounded in his analysis of Xi Jinping's approach to Taiwan. In a string of recent statements — from the 20th National Party Congress report to his 2026 New Year address — Xi has consistently reaffirmed that Beijing will pursue reunification "with maximum sincerity and effort" through peaceful means.
"Xi's core strategic position is that reunification is non-negotiable," Liu said, "but whether it is achieved peacefully or by force is a choice of method, not a change of goal." The calculus strongly favors the non-military path: launching a military campaign against Taiwan would mean absorbing enormous military risk, sweeping international sanctions, economic contraction, and serious domestic political instability. By contrast, achieving genuine integration through economic and social convergence — winning without fighting — represents the lowest-cost, highest-benefit outcome for Beijing.
For those reasons, Liu said, Beijing has every incentive to be wary of a film that inflates pro-military-unification sentiment beyond what the government can control. If the film's shelving is confirmed, it would demonstrate Beijing's determination to prevent the Taiwan issue from being hijacked by populist pressure. "If online militarism grows aggressive enough to start pressuring the authorities into premature commitments, or to disrupt Beijing's strategic timetable," Liu said, "China's internet regulators and censorship apparatus will move quickly to lower the temperature. Popular opinion will never be allowed to drive real cross-strait decision-making."
The episode, in Liu's view, illustrates a fundamental tension in Chinese state propaganda: films like *Battle of Penghu* attempt to exploit historical narrative to serve a political moment, but when they override the complexity of the past and the emotional reality of their domestic audiences, they generate problems the government must then manage — rather than messages it can project. （Related： Why 'Pursuit of Jade' Is Crushing the Competition: The 2026 C-Drama Streaming Landscape ｜ Latest ）
