If she were really in jail, why would they still broadcast Heaven's official blessing? It just started airing on the 30th Oct.
It's Asia. If someone were to break the law and even get jailed for 10 years, then they would boycott all her works. I googled and there is a huge thread on reddit about mxtx (although it's old, it just shows how old the rumors are).
And I believe that everything can be solved with money. All her works got a donghua and a manhua. I doubt they would detain a money tree. Just like Fan Bingbing who took a 2-year hiatus after her tax evasion scandal until things died down. She paid a huge fine (millions) and is back to TV shows since May.
take my comment with a grain of salt as I don't know much eiter
Now this is actually fascinating. (Also thanks for giving your take!).
The thing about MXTX's last work, Heaven Official's Blessing -- is that it's the only of her books that is not claimed to be banned in her province. The other two were, but this one was spared.
I haven't actually read this one yet (the length is just O_O) -- but correct me if I'm wrong: it does not contain explicit material unlike the other two? NU shows that
it's Shounen Ai while the
other two are
Yaoi, so I assume I'm correct.
Also, "cancelling" the author or her explicit books is one thing. While milking her creations for
profit is another. Like you said -- she is a money-tree, or at least her properties are. Which is partly the reason why the rumors are only that -- the rumors. She probably does have issues with the government but not to such a severe extent as actually being imprisoned (yet, at least).
So, with MXTX's works, what happens is probably this (?):
Her
books are blocked because they're 'dangerous for social norms of minors".
Any properties made
based on her books are fine because they transform the material so much it removes all the "dangerous social norms" from the original. And nobody minds them because they also happen to be major cash cows for the industry.
Untamed,
Scum Villain animation,
MDZS donghua, and
Heaven Official's (and a shitton of other products based on them
) are all officially bromance.
Not BL. More than that -- they are products very popular in the west specifically, so why not use it exactly for pandering to that audience? It's a brand product, a kind of a cultural export, and earns them a lot of money. The original (or what happens to it) does not matter at this point.
It reminds me a bit of the concept of Chinese celebrities signing contracts for "couple sugar" as a way to fame.
In short, some celebrities engage in promotional scripted activities that are essentially romantic performance of their real life interactions. In case the two celebrities are the same sex, it's queerbait for the audience. The M/M couple sugar is especially effective in the target demographic demands and brings a lot of money and attention to them. Thus, in Chinese entertainment industry:
Fetishizing gay people to get money/fame like in a zoo =
hell yeah!
Supporting or recognizing actual gay people or promoting their stories =
who? where? whut?
So I see no real contradiction between persecuting an author and milking the popular products founded on her IPs for monetary gain.
-----------------------------
Separately, coming from Russia (hello, art censorship history!), I can say that a lot of the stuff popular in the West
was popular in Soviets, too. But in an
adapted form that adhered to the censorship and social norms appreciated by the USSR government.
So while the actual western IPs were panned and called "bourgeois" and "decadent", their
adapted versions were very much admired. I see a sort of a similar treatment of BL novels in Chinese entertainment industry...
There are so many of new BL series being produced right now, but all of them under the label of "bromance". And some fans are actually scared because a few of them might be "straightened out" to get through the censorship at all.
