CHINESE cinema-goers are used to the government’s tight grip on the film industry. In deference to the Communist Party’s qualms, filmmakers eschew happy endings for teenage lovers or homosexuals, let alone anything critical of the party itself. To boost audiences for home-grown productions, the authorities have recently tried a new form of control: clamping down on unflattering reviews. Long-suffering film fans see this as a step too far.

Their anger erupted in December after the release of “The Great Wall”, a Chinese-made fantasy starring an American actor, Matt Damon (pictured, trying to save China from an alien invasion). Xinhua, an official news agency, praised the film as “innovative” and accused its many online detractors in China of “giving it a hard time just for the sake of it” (critics had panned the film for being heavy on special effects and light on plot). The bad reviews, it said, would make it harder for Chinese films to go global. A few days later People’s Daily, the party’s main mouthpiece, weighed in. It said low ratings on Chinese websites for “The Great Wall” (which opens in America on February 17th), and for two other Chinese films, had been the result of “malicious” reviews and the manipulation of data. One of the websites it named, Maoyan, promptly removed its Rotten Tomatoes-style display of critics’ aggregated scores, citing the need for an “upgrade”.

Netizens were incensed. They rushed to another chastised website, Douban, to give the three films in question the lowest rating. One online comment that got 24,000 “likes” read: “That’s right! We don’t have bad films in China, just bad audiences!” Surprisingly, both Xinhua and People’s Daily appeared to back down. They published commentaries saying that unflattering reviews were not enough to ruin good films and that criticism should be tolerated. The Xinhua article that had caused the furore was deleted from their websites.

Many filmgoers suspect the two organisations had been miffed by the poor performance of Chinese films relative to foreign ones. To the official media, it had seemed easier to shoot the messenger than examine why state-supervised studios are churning out so many films that audiences do not want to see.