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Are Filmmakers Finally Standing Up to Chinese Censorship?
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Are Filmmakers Finally Standing Up to Chinese Censorship?
It is unprecedented. Major film studios have never been shy about pandering to the Chinese market.”1 Film critic Ho Siu Bun was referring to Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and the fact that the studio decided not to fold under pressure from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In the trailer, a patch with Japanese and Taiwanese flags worn by the protagonist in the first Top Gun (1986) was substituted for a vague blue and red pattern.2 The Chinese government does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country and often suppresses mentions of it. Following outrage from Western audiences, the original patch was restored for the film’s release, causing a Chinese investor to drop out; the film was not released in China.To get more news about chinese movies 2023, you can visit shine news official website.
Freedom of speech is a critically important right, which many Westerners greatly value. They properly regard censorship as a violation of that right and as the hallmark of an authoritarian regime. The CCP perpetrates some of the worst censorship in the modern world. It forces filmmakers in China (and those who wish to distribute their films there) to follow the government’s demands about what they can include in their films, and it forces Chinese people to make, sell, and watch only films approved by the government or face jail time.4
Yet, until recently, most major filmmakers in Hollywood have done little to resist CCP censorship. That censorship not only prohibits criticism of the communist regime and depictions of Chinese people as criminals or villains, but it even forbids depictions of time travel, ghosts, magic, dissident newspapers, reimagined history, and same-sex or incestuous relationships.5 Chinese censors rarely give reasons for their decisions.6 But studios often shape their films with the CCP in mind, and some are, as the free speech organization PEN America put it, “directly inviting Chinese government censors onto their film sets to advise them on how to avoid tripping the censors’ wires.”7 In other words, they’ll do almost anything to appease the censors and get into theaters in the world’s most populous country.
This, of course, affects the content and quality of movies available worldwide. For example, Apple TV instructed its producers not to portray China in a negative light, and Paramount Pictures altered World War Z to avoid suggesting that the zombie virus it depicts could have originated in China.8 Many studios have been, as the Harvard International Review put it, “keeping out references to Taiwan, backing Chinese claims to the South China Sea, and excluding mentions of minorities.”9
The CCP allows only thirty-four foreign films to be released there each year (increased from twenty in 2012 due to international pressure).10 Further, it insists that the stories show state actors as competent and successful. Among other examples, the Chinese cut of Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) had an extra minute of footage tacked onto the end to show police capturing and imprisoning the criminal and the protagonist giving up a life of crime to be an adoptive parent.11
The CCP scrutinizes not only films but filmmakers. For instance, the regime discovered that Chinese-born director Chloe Zhao, who won an Oscar for Best Director for the film Nomadland (2020), had criticized China in an interview eight years prior, calling it a place “where there are lies everywhere.”12 In response, the CCP canceled the film’s Chinese release days before it was due to debut in theaters. Her next movie, Eternals, was prohibited in China as well.13 And despite the popularity of many Korean TV shows and pop music, the CCP implemented a ban on Korean entertainment in 2016 in retaliation for the South Korean government working with the United States to build a missile shield system.14
Chinese censorship affects the availability of movies worldwide, as shown in the case of Kundun (1997), a film that portrayed the CCP’s oppression in Tibet—which included torture, censorship, and restriction of religion—through the eyes of the exiled Dalai Lama.15 The CCP was furious and demanded that Disney not distribute the film anywhere, threatening to ban all Disney movies in China if they did. Initially Disney refused, saying it would honor the arrangements already in place for global releases and promotions.16 But then-CEO Michael Eisner backpedaled: Though the movie was released, he promised not to promote the film in North America, saying that it would “die a quiet death” (it is not available today on Disney+).17 As he put it, “other than journalists, very few people in the world ever saw it.” The regime nonetheless barred the film’s director, Martin Scorsese, and several crew members from entering the country.18 Eisner publicly apologized to the CCP, saying that making the film was “a stupid mistake” and that “in the future we should prevent this sort of thing, which insults our friends, from happening.