In part three, I now turn to how China is making the purveyors of American soft power into its eager and willing host organisms to expand China's safe space beyond its own borders.
While we can expect this type of direct pressure to increase as China gains increasing global influence, China will never be able to directly control discourse externally as effectively as it does internally.
The party-state's Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television has told Hollywood to edit and delete scenes in blockbusters, including Mission: Impossible III , to portray China more favorably, and Hollywood has eagerly complied.
Where are the recent mainstream movies critical of China's human-rights abuses? China is holding large numbers of Muslim minorities in concentration camps in Xinjiang right now, right now, but you will never see a Hollywood blockbuster referencing it.
Not long ago, China's major entertainment group Wanda which has extensive ties to the Party purchased the major American movie theater chain AMC. A prescient Politico article asked, "Would a war movie called South China Sea ever play in one of Wanda's theaters?" I would answer, "Probably not, but the more disquieting problem is that Hollywood would not dare make such a movie to begin with."
Apple, the progeny of the best traditions of California free expression culture, recently complied with the party-state's request to remove VPNs from the Chinese app store that were allowing Chinese subjects a window through the Great Firewall of China.
Colluding with a Communist Party to weaken the norms of free expression has to cross a line somewhere, even for a corporation that has already set the bar so low by outsourcing to factories in China with horrendous labor practices and relentlessly calculating how to avoid paying taxes to the community that made it rich.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-china-controls-its-citizens-29467
While we can expect this type of direct pressure to increase as China gains increasing global influence, China will never be able to directly control discourse externally as effectively as it does internally.
The party-state's Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television has told Hollywood to edit and delete scenes in blockbusters, including Mission: Impossible III , to portray China more favorably, and Hollywood has eagerly complied.
Where are the recent mainstream movies critical of China's human-rights abuses? China is holding large numbers of Muslim minorities in concentration camps in Xinjiang right now, right now, but you will never see a Hollywood blockbuster referencing it.
Not long ago, China's major entertainment group Wanda which has extensive ties to the Party purchased the major American movie theater chain AMC. A prescient Politico article asked, "Would a war movie called South China Sea ever play in one of Wanda's theaters?" I would answer, "Probably not, but the more disquieting problem is that Hollywood would not dare make such a movie to begin with."
Apple, the progeny of the best traditions of California free expression culture, recently complied with the party-state's request to remove VPNs from the Chinese app store that were allowing Chinese subjects a window through the Great Firewall of China.
Colluding with a Communist Party to weaken the norms of free expression has to cross a line somewhere, even for a corporation that has already set the bar so low by outsourcing to factories in China with horrendous labor practices and relentlessly calculating how to avoid paying taxes to the community that made it rich.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-china-controls-its-citizens-29467
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