The Chinese Constitution endows every citizen with the freedom of speech, but as in any other country, this freedom comes with regulations and restrictions. In media, such regulations come from the State Administration of Radio, Films and Television (SARFT), the Ministry of Information Industry and sometimes the Ministry of Culture. The West often do not understand this structure of regulation, but instead suppose that there is no freedom in China. This fact is very often abused, as we can see many people create big publicity with their "banned" films in China, invariably "forgetting" to mention that the ban was simply a result of failure to go through resulting registrations.

In fact, with proper procedures the freedom of media in China is vast. It is perfectly possible, or even routine, for entirely western crew to shoot films and documentaries on Tiananmen Square (as shown in the right picture), while one certainly wouldn't expect a professional crew to begin shooting in Time Square in New York without any prior arrangements and not being stopped by the police.