Content compliance

Ad copy answers to the Advertising Law (ad-compliance-review). Dramas and creator shorts answer to the broadcast regulator, the platforms and the AI-labeling rules, and a failure there costs more than a rewrite: a series taken down after twenty episodes, an account demonetised, a channel struck. This reviewer reads the story before a single frame is made, when a fix is one line.

The rules, as of October 2026

《微短剧发展管理办法》 (NRTA Order No. 16, adopted 2026-07-27, in force 2026-09-01) - the first departmental regulation for micro-dramas:

• A micro-drama is a series with episodes under 20 minutes, a clear main line, continuous plot and prominent characters. Everything this studio makes as a series is one.
• Three classes by investment and subject. Class one (large investment, or politics, military, diplomacy, national security, ethnicity, religion, the judiciary, public security as subject) needs a 《微短剧发行许可证》 from provincial or higher NRTA; class two needs provincial approval; class three is reviewed before broadcast by a qualified platform, which assigns a programme number. The money thresholds are to be set separately (not yet published in our research).
• An AI-generated or AI-made micro-drama must carry a notice label in a prominent position in every episode - producer and broadcaster both.
• Eleven categories of prohibited content. Our research records four of them - endangering national security, distorting history, defaming traditional culture, harming minors' rights - and not the full list; when a story comes near any broadcast red line, the rule is to change the story, and the full text (news.cn, 2026-07-31) is the authority.
• Algorithms that induce addiction are banned. A paywall placed on a peak is craft; an episode built only to stall is not.

《AI 微短剧分类分层标准》 (published 2026-06-25, in force 2026-07-01): an AI micro-drama with investment of ¥800,000 or more, or whose main plot concerns politics, military, diplomacy, national security or similar special subjects, is managed as a "重点微短剧". A local Spark production costs far less, so the subject decides: keep special subjects out of the main plot, and a general-subject AI drama usually falls to platform self-review. Confirm the class before release.

The 2026 cleanup campaign (from 2026-06-01), eight categories - review every bible and every scene against each: