China shelves film about great naval epic of the conquest of Taiwan

On July 25, a fleet of 50 warships was supposed to sail onto movie screens across China bound for Taiwan. But it did not. The Battle of Penghu (The Belief, in its international title), a historical blockbuster billed to become the patriotic summer hit, vanished from theater listings.

Although major ticketing platforms still list it in limbo under the label “coming soon,” neither the film’s producers nor regulatory bodies have offered an explanation for the postponement or announced a new release date. According to the National Film Administration’s database, the project received permission to be filmed in 2021, but there is no exhibition license, which is required for theatrical release.

That it has not received that approval is striking because the film had the backing of the Chinese political and propaganda apparatus from the start; after all, it was conceived to fit into the People’s Republic’s narrative about Taiwan, the democratically governed island Beijing considers an inalienable part of China, despite never having exercised effective authority over it. The nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek retreated there in 1949 after losing the civil war to the forces led by Mao Zedong.

Directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Soi Cheang and made with a budget of 500 million yuan (around $70 million), the film revisits the naval campaign that in 1683 gave the Qing, the last imperial dynasty of China, control over Taiwan. Emperor Kangxi ordered Admiral Shi Lang to attack Penghu, an archipelago between the Chinese coast and Taiwan’s main island. That victory hastened the surrender of the Zheng, who remained loyal to the overthrown Ming dynasty, and allowed the Qing empire to incorporate Taiwan into its domains.

The synopsis approved by the Chinese film regulator presents that campaign as an operation to prevent “the brazen attempt at independence” by the Zheng, the same language Beijing now uses to refer to the Taiwanese government and its president, Lai Ching‑te, whom it describes as “a danger” because of his “separatist” tendencies.

Among the film’s co‑producers is the Fujian Communist Party Propaganda Department, the province opposite Taiwan’s coast. In the trailer, the emperor orders Shi Lang to “advance on Penghu, take Taiwan and restore the empire’s integrity.” After a sequence of combat scenes, the trailer ends with eight large characters that read: “The unification of Taiwan is unstoppable.”

Several official outlets had promoted the film as an epic about China’s inexorable unity. State broadcaster CCTV released the first teaser on October 25, 2025, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the so‑called “recovery of Taiwan” after the Japanese colonial period.

“The film carries enormous political weight and is entirely oriented toward unification,” says Fan Shih‑ping, a professor of East Asian studies at the National Taiwan Normal University. The scholar nonetheless points to one factor that may have made Chinese censors change their minds at the last minute: although Shi Lang conquered territory controlled by the Qing’s adversaries, portraying that offensive as a historical model could reinforce abroad the perception that a hypothetical Chinese operation against Taiwan would also constitute an invasion.

The feature was due to reach cinemas amid rising tensions in the waters of the Taiwan Strait. China has stepped up diplomatic and military pressure since Lai, of the Democratic Progressive Party and seen as China‑skeptic, took office in 2024: it refuses to maintain contact with his administration (and has sought closer ties with the opposition), regularly sends military aircraft and ships near the island and has held multiple rounds of drills rehearsing a blockade of Taiwanese territory, including strikes on ports and strategic infrastructure. This summer, the Chinese Coast Guard added another pressure element by carrying out an operation off Taiwan’s coast it described as a law‑enforcement patrol.

Historian Wang Fei‑hsien of Indiana University tells Nikkei Asia that Chinese regulators may fear the film could create “unnecessary diplomatic frictions” or “misinterpretations.” China says it supports a “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, though it does not rule out the use of force to achieve what it calls “a historic mission.”

To this delicate context was added an unexpected reaction the trailer provoked among some nationalist groups on social media. Its most radical actors (a minority, but very active online) argue that the Qing, of Manchu origin, were foreign conquerors who ended the last Han‑ethnicity dynasty, the Ming. The Han now make up slightly more than 90% of China’s population.

From that standpoint, the Zheng government was not a separatist force but the last bastion of Ming legitimacy. Thus, Shi Lang was not a hero of national unity but a traitor who served the Manchu invaders. The film’s actors’ accounts filled with reproaches and some users called for a boycott of the feature.

The controversy gave more visibility to the so‑called 1644 Vision, an interpretation circulating in certain internet spaces (and amplified by short videos) that takes the year the Ming dynasty fell as its starting point. Its supporters do not see the episode as a succession of dynasties but as the conquest of Han civilization by a foreign power, blaming Manchu rule for China’s weakness before the West and the humiliations of the 19th century.

The debate strikes a particularly sensitive nerve for the Chinese Communist Party. The People’s Republic defines itself as a unified nation made up of 56 ethnic groups and presents its history as an unbroken trajectory built by all of them.

That continuity also underpins its territorial narrative. It was under Qing rule that the empire integrated the southern Mongol principalities that became the administrative antecedent of today’s Inner Mongolia; it conquered and permanently incorporated much of what is now Xinjiang and established a political and military presence in Tibet, although the extent of its authority there varied over time and remains contested. Presenting the Manchu as foreign invaders would therefore open a crack in the narrative Beijing uses to justify its sovereignty over certain border regions.

The debate has not gone unnoticed by authorities. At the end of 2025, a platform linked to the National Commission on Ethnic Affairs framed Emperor Kangxi’s Penghu campaign as “inevitable” after attempts to achieve a “peaceful unification” failed. The Zhejiang Propaganda Department also rebutted the 1644 Vision in a piece later reproduced by CCTV, warning against exclusionary Han ethnocentrism, rejecting the idea that Manchu conquest interrupted Chinese civilization and defending the Qing’s contribution to the country’s territorial formation. An article in the China Journal of Social Sciences, which quoted scholars from the country’s Academy of Social Sciences, additionally warned that that interpretation threatened ethnic cohesion and national identity, supplied arguments to separatist movements, and could affect territorial integrity.

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