How did Hong Kong mobster movie Chasing the Dragon get past China’s censors? By bashing the British

By granting director Wong Jing a lucrative release during the National Day holidays, Chinese authorities have signalled that Hong Kong gangsters can be seen in a patriotic light – if their stories are set before the 1997 handover

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Bodies pile up in a gang fight set in a Hong Kong red-light district in Wong Jing’s Chasing the Dragon.

Published: 6:01pm, 29 Sep 2017Updated: 6:01pm, 29 Sep 2017

Mobsters, murder, mayhem – Chasing the Dragon is a misfit among the morally unambiguous home-grown blockbusters opening in Chinese cinemas tomorrow ahead of the National Day holidays.

Considering the uncontrolled violence and unpunished crimes Chasing the Dragon depicts, it’s surprising Hong Kong director Wong Jing’s film has received such approval in the face of an official clampdown on what may be screened ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th national congress next month.

Feng Xiaogang’s Youth (Fanghua), whose story spans the Cultural Revolution, the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war and the so-called Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983, was reportedly denied a release during the lucrative “golden week” holidays because it flirts with historical issues that could be considered controversial.

Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To Kei-fung’s widely acclaimed mob thrillers have never been released in China – apart from the 2005 film Election, which got a screening licence only after its distributors changed the ending so that the last ruffian standing is revealed to be an undercover cop.