Chinese War Epic 'The Battle of Penghu' Reportedly Shelved as 'Anti-Qing' Sentiment Stirs Controversy
A patriotic war epic about the Qing conquest of Ming loyalist forces near Taiwan has reportedly been pulled from release, tripping over a resurgent strain of Chinese popular history that romanticizes the Ming dynasty.
Photo: Yahoo News Taiwan
A propaganda-style film that set out to cash in on "patriotism" at the box office has instead unexpectedly touched a deeply buried nerve in Chinese popular history: the sentiment of "restoring the Ming and expelling the Qing."
According to numerous media reports, "The Battle of Penghu," a historical war epic originally slated to hit Chinese theaters during the summer season on July 25, was once again rumored to have been pulled just six days before its scheduled release.
The film's official Weibo account stopped updating in mid-June and has yet to open presales. The production company would only respond on Weibo that it had "not received any notice of withdrawal."
Billed as a "key national film," the picture has drawn public attention and become the latest case study in political and cultural observation.
The film is directed by Hong Kong director Soi Cheang, and stars Chinese star Wang Xueqi as Shi Lang and Jackson Yee (Yi Yangqianxi) as the Kangxi Emperor. It draws on the historical record of 1683, when Qing official Shi Lang led the Fujian navy to defeat the Ming loyalist Zheng regime, paving the way for Taiwan's incorporation into the Qing empire.
Why has such a "politically correct" historical drama run into trouble getting released in China?
Some analysts point out that although the film raises the banner of "the isolated must return, the divided must be reunited" and "the reunification of Taiwan is unstoppable," in practice it has repeatedly been hemmed in by China's internal public opinion and ideological red lines.
Some experts believe this is not merely a scheduling adjustment, but a covert tug-of-war between the official "grand unification" narrative and popular "Ming-mourning" sentiment. The authorities also do not currently want any film to further inflame the narrative of "reunifying Taiwan by force."
Taiwan's state-run Radio Taiwan International cited Chinese current-affairs commentator Lu Qing, who observed that "The Battle of Penghu" may have stirred controversy because it alludes too heavily to the recent East Asian political situation, such as the unrest in the Taiwan Strait and military exercises in the South China Sea.
"In ordinary times, the metaphors and allusions offered by this kind of propaganda film would not necessarily rise to the level of a political signal, but at this moment, some metaphors and allusions come under stricter political censorship, because the film's political charge has risen," he said.
The Sensitive Nerve of 'Restoring the Ming'
But more commentators point out that the main reason the film may have stepped on a landmine comes from a strain of popular history that has flourished in China in recent years — the "Ming-mourning trend."
The so-called "Ming-mourning trend" refers to the mood on the Chinese internet of sympathizing with the Ming dynasty and criticizing the Manchu Qing. According to earlier reporting by BBC Chinese, it originally stemmed from a video by a Chinese blogger last year claiming that the classic Chinese novel "Dream of the Red Chamber" was in fact an "anti-Qing, restore-the-Ming" work.
The claim unexpectedly triggered a wave of imitators, with many posts, amateur historians and online influencers beginning to blame China's modern backwardness and the foreign humiliations it suffered entirely on the Manchu Qing.
Some remarks even claimed that the "Manchu-Han Imperial Feast" was about Manchus eating Han Chinese, leading to online mobbing of Manchu celebrities such as Wu Jing and Guan Xiaotong.
As a result, amid this trend, the sentiment of viewing the Qing general Shi Lang as a "Han traitor" and a "turncoat official" is fairly widespread. Behind the Ming-mourning trend also lies the research and debate among Chinese historians over the "1644 view of history."
In fact, according to an earlier analysis by BBC Chinese, this emerging "1644 view of history" can be traced back to the Republican era, when some intellectuals sought the causes of China's backwardness in Ming and Qing history and ultimately located the roots of its humiliation in 1644, when Qing troops entered the pass — treating it as the watershed at which China began to fall behind.
This "Ming-mourning trend" has also crossed the Taiwan Strait. Well-known Taiwanese author Wu Dan-ru, who is pursuing a doctorate in history in China, launched the podcast "May This Heart Be Like Wang Yangming," defending the demoted Ming-dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming.
Taiwanese scholar Wang Fei-hsien, an associate professor in the departments of history and East Asian studies at Indiana University in the United States, previously told BBC Chinese that behind the resurgence of this "anti-Qing, restore-the-Ming" topic lies intense popular anxiety and unease.
Wang explained that China's recent hardline stance toward Japan and its sparring with the United States in the tariff war both clash with the vision of a great power that Beijing had previously promoted — the public has come to realize that China, as the winning global competitor of a "unified realm," has not received the respect it feels it deserves from the outside world.
Professor Wang said that against this backdrop, the "1644 view of history" has entered the public's field of vision, blaming the setbacks or challenges China faces today on the Manchu Qing, even though the circumstances are almost entirely different.
This trend, however, has drawn the wariness of the Chinese authorities.
The Chinese Communist Party's propaganda apparatus issued a warning that historical narratives excluding the Manchu people from China originate from the "sinister purposes" of external forces, because such "anti-Qing" sentiment stands in clear tension with the official narratives of the "Chinese national community" and a "unified multiethnic state."
Yet these officially discouraged "anti-Qing, restore-the-Ming" narratives have unexpectedly reappeared in "The Battle of Penghu," which trumpets the "reunification of Taiwan."
Some Chinese netizens have asked: if you're going to glorify the Qing army's attack on Taiwan, why not make "Wu Sangui Leads the Qing Army Through the Pass"? They regard the Ming loyalist Zheng regime as the last bastion of the Han "Chinese orthodox lineage," interpreting the Qing army's attack on Taiwan as "barbarians destroying the final fortress of Han civilization."
Taken together, the closure of the comments section on Douban and the mass blocking of negative remarks on social platforms can be seen as manifestations of this internal tension.
Historian Xu Quan, commenting on Radio Taiwan International's news site, noted that the 2001 Chinese television drama "Kangxi Dynasty" had actually already portrayed Shi Lang in a positive light — but at that time the "Ming-mourning trend" had not yet emerged, and audiences still found such "learning from the past" period dramas fresh.
Times have changed, and people's mindset is now different, he said.
Xu further argued that in mainland China, many people believe Shi Lang attacked the "Southern Ming" and the "Ming loyalist Zheng regime" — the last surviving line of the Ming dynasty and the "true orthodoxy of China" — which is why many netizens are averse to the film's narrative. The public feels that to glorify this film today is tantamount to regarding the Ming traitor Wu Sangui as a positive historical figure, or even Qin Hui, who framed Yue Fei, as a positive historical figure — something the people cannot accept.
The Entanglement of Film and History
In recent years, the theme of "promoting reunification" has never been absent from Chinese film and television. From TV dramas to films, the authorities have continued to reinforce the message that "Taiwan will inevitably return" through historical narratives, and entertainers from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have at times played along, reposting or amplifying messages about China's reunification of Taiwan or military drills.
But with this blockbuster, current signs suggest that China's calculation to control internal risk has, for now, outweighed its need to send a signal abroad.
Therefore, whether the film ultimately gets a low-key release, undergoes major revisions, or is shelved indefinitely, this episode has already proven one thing — history is never just history, but a battlefield of contemporary politics.
The nerve of "restoring the Ming and expelling the Qing" has here been struck once again.
Director Soi Cheang, who long worked in China before returning to Hong Kong to direct the smash hit "Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In" two years ago — making him a favorite in both the mainland and Hong Kong — emphasized when the film wrapped last year that the crew had recreated 50 ancient warships and endured hardships such as extreme heat and typhoons. "We could summon wind and rain at will," he said, stressing the enormous effort put into recreating the authenticity of the naval battle.
Yet from the high-profile trailer release in October 2025, to its withdrawal from the Lunar New Year slot in February 2026, to its rescheduling for the summer season in May, and now the renewed rumors of withdrawal in July, this flagship-scale blockbuster is now, much like the Taiwan Strait that Shi Lang faced when he attacked Penghu, full of raging waves and stormy seas.