China Case Study

 

Censorship of Hollywood Blockbuster Films Intensifies in China 

China is stepping up censorship of U.S. films as producers make movies with an eye toward pleasing Beijing yet without isolating the global audience, industry insiders say.

The roughly 25-year-old practice of cutting scenes that don't conform to Communist Party ideals from Hollywood movies has expanded." Now it's kind of escalated in the sense that they're much more direct in banning films outright rather than just tampering or asking for scenes to be removed". Industry observers say censors are also asking that versions of movies for audiences outside China follow Beijing's script.

"As a country under the rule of law, China regulates the film industry in accordance with the Film Administration regulations." The 2021 superhero film "Spider-Man: No Way Home" missed Chinese approval because authorities wanted Sony Pictures to remove images of the Statue of Liberty from the film. 

Film studios have been operating under the pressure of satisfying censors in China — a massive market in normal times. Hollywood companies are pre-censoring films to avoid losing access to China's lucrative box office market. Some studios even worry that China will punish them for leaving objectionable scenes in film versions for audiences outside China.

"To me, the bigger issue is when China tells us we can't have stuff in movies for other markets". "That's where we're suddenly allowing them to spread their narrative rather than the narrative of the filmmakers or the studio or of Hollywood — or the U.S. or the Western side of things. Who gives them that right to tell us we can't have that in a movie that someone in Argentina sees?" 

The Philippines pushed back against studios' attempt to woo China in the case of the 2022 American action movie "Uncharted."

How Sony Pictures Defied Chinese Censors, Providing A Model For Hollywood

Sony sacrificed what would probably have been hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for what seem to be the most admirable of reasons: It stood up to Chinese censorship.

What caught the censors’ attention in the most recent Spider-Man installment was the film’s climactic scene set atop the Statute of Liberty. According to recent news reports, Chinese censors demanded that Sony remove all scenes showing one of the most familiar symbols of American liberty. When the company refused, the censors proposed reducing the number of shots showing the statue and obscuring its features in any remaining scenes. When Sony rejected this alternative, the government declared that the film could not be shown in China.

The episode illustrates how aggressive Chinese bullying of the U.S. movie industry has become. The government in Beijing is no longer just policing what it sees as negative characterizations of Chinese officials and politics. It is also trying to erase images of symbols of freedom in the United States.

The rise of homegrown Chinese competition has put greater pressure on Hollywood to comply with Chinese restrictions or preempt them by anticipating what might offend Beijing. U.S.-based production companies now routinely decline even to consider making films that come near the line of what Chinese censors are likely to reject. This means that Chinese censors are effectively dictating not only limits on what Chinese audiences are allowed to see, but indirectly curtailing the artistic freedom of filmmakers producing movies for audiences in the U.S. and other parts of the world.