By Li Hsian Chi | 2025-10-21

Vietnamese viewers no longer can view the Chinese hit TV series "Love's Ambition" ("Hay De Toi Toa Sang" in Vietnamese).

In October, Hanoi abruptly pulled the show because of a festering geopolitical dispute with China.

A brief scene displayed a map with China's unilaterally drawn "nine-dash line" in the South China Sea, which Vietnam calls the East Sea.

Hanoi regards the line as a Chinese instrument to "unlawfully claim nearly all" of that sea, Vietnam News reported.

China considers more than 80% of the South China Sea its maritime territory, but a court at The Hague threw out that assertion in 2016.

The controversy escalated on October 2 after local viewers discovered the offending scene in episode 16. Vietnam's Department of Cinema, under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, swiftly ruled that the image violated Article 9 of the 2022 Cinema Law, which explicitly prohibits content infringing on national sovereignty.

The department ordered all streaming platforms to remove the entire series within one day.

Vietnam and China, Communist Party-ruled neighbors, are often described as "comrades and brothers." But beneath the rhetoric, the two countries remain deeply divided over the South China Sea.

Hanoi views the nine-dash line as a symbol of territorial infringement and maintains a strict zero-tolerance stance on the matter.

About 24% of global maritime trade passes through that sea annually.

Special task force and strict penalties

Following the incident, the ministry announced the creation of a special inspection task force to review all online film and TV content for content that might violate Vietnamese laws on sovereignty and national defense. Major streaming platforms including FPT Play, VieON, K+ and TV360 quickly removed the show from their libraries.

Vietnam temporarily suspended the online film distribution operations of Tencent and its Hong Kong subsidiary, demanding compliance with Vietnamese law.

For Vietnam, it was a matter of national sovereignty.

"The Department of Cinema will impose strict penalties in accordance with the law," Vietnam News quoted the department as saying.

A pattern of violations

Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations regard China's controversial nine-dash line as a provocation.

Now it has become a flashpoint in Chinese cultural exports.

According to Vietnamese media reports, this is far from the first case.

Hanoi previously banned three US films, "Uncharted," "Barbie" and the animated "Abominable," for displaying the same map.

In 2023, it investigated the K-pop concert organizer iMe Entertainment for using a map with the nine-dash line on its website.

iMe Entertainment later issued a public apology. Even Chinese bubble tea brand Chagee had to pay a fine in July after Vietnamese consumers discovered the nine-dash line on Chagee's mobile app in March.

Kicked off the airwaves for crossing the line

Vietnam's swift action underscores how geopolitics increasingly shapes the entertainment industry.

Chinese production companies face a dilemma: domestic law requires the use of "standard" Chinese maps, but those very maps are inflammatory in much of Southeast Asia.

By banning "Love's Ambition," Hanoi showed that it would not hesitate to move against the most popular TV shows.

Since its release on September 25, the drama has amassed 1.5 billion views across all platforms and a record daily market share of 41.7% in China.

Vietnamese viewers by and large supported the yanking of "Love's Ambition."

"If this program is gone, we'll watch another one. There is only one motherland," one Vietnamese posted online.