The EconomistAugust 29th 2020 Business 492 tent control; for instance, censors consid-
ered “BoJack Horseman”, a cartoon about
an alcoholic, anthropomorphic horse, an
example of “funeral culture”. “The Chinese
have no intention whatsoever of allowing
non-Chinese media brands to operate in
China,” sighs one person involved in that
unhappy experiment. One American pro-
ducer fears that China might target Holly-
wood in retaliation for President Donald
Trump’s swipes at Chinese companies like
Huawei, a telecoms giant, and TikTok, a hit
video app. Mr Trump’s campaign to force
TikTok’s sale to American investors led its
American boss, Kevin Mayer (himself a for-
mer Disney executive) to quit this week
after only three months in the job.
Good Will Hunting
For American critics the biggest concern is
over China’s attempts to bend Hollywood’s
stories to its will. Communist censors have
long harried film-makers, banning not just
the “three Ts” of Tiananmen, Tibet and Tai-
wan, but themes such as time-travel and
the supernatural; China blocked “Pirates of
the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”, object-
ing not to the piracy but to the ghosts. Films
that break these or other unwritten rules
may be banned, sent back for edits or, for
lesser offences, get a duff release date or
curtailed advertising budget, the size of
which is regulated in China. In an internal
email from 2014 disclosed by WikiLeaks, a
senior Sony executive wrote of “censorship
really hassling us” about a scene in “Robo-
Cop” where the cyborg hero’s human re-
mains are exposed. “Don’t think we can
make a stand on it either way, too much
money on the line,” he summed up.
Some censor-pleasing tweaks are harm-
less, like Paramount Pictures’ removal of
dirty laundry from a Shanghai skyline in
“Mission: Impossible III” (2006). Others
can be consequential. “Abominable” (2019),
an animated co-production by Dream-
Works and Pearl Studio about a lost yeti,
featured a map endorsing China’s bogus
claim to the South China Sea but no men-
tion of Tibet—never mind that the entire
film is about a journey to Mount Everest.
Then there are films that are not being
made. “Not many people are going to want
to go out and make any movies about the
Uighurs,” admits one former Hollywood
executive, referring to China’s persecuted
Muslim minority.
In July William Barr, America’s attor-
ney-general, accused Hollywood of hand-
ing China “a massive propaganda coup”,
citing Paramount’s decision to remove a
scene in “World War Z” in which characters
speculate that a deadly virus may have orig-
inated in China. Ted Cruz, a Republican
senator, has proposed that studios which
kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party
should be banned from filming with Amer-
ica’s armed forces. Stan Rosen, a China ex-pert at the University of Southern Califor-
nia, wonders if studio chiefs may soon be
called to give evidence before Congress.
Studio executives complain privately
that every industry dealing with China
faces ethical dilemmas, and that bashing
liberal Hollywood is just Republican elec-
tioneering. But criticisms are not limited to
conservative voices. Last month pen Amer-
ica, a free-speech organisation, concluded
in a report that “Hollywood’s decision-
makers are increasingly envisioning the
desires of the ccp [Chinese Communist
Party] censor when deciding what film pro-
jects to greenlight, what content these
films contain, who should work on the
films, and what messages the films should
implicitly or explicitly contain.”
China may be especially keen to shape
Hollywood’s storytelling because it strug-
gles to break through with its own narra-
tives beyond its borders. Since the early
2000s American studios have made more
money at the international box office than
at home. These days about two-thirds of
their ticket revenues come from abroad.
Chinese productions, by contrast, seldom
make much money outside China. “Wolf
Warrior 2” (2017), China’s highest-grossing
film, produced by cfgc and others, took
less than 2% of its $870m haul overseas.
(Its tagline—“Anyone who offends China,
no matter how remote, must be extermi-
nated”—will not have helped.)
Global audiences will not flock to Chi-
nese blockbusters soon. For one thing,
there may be fewer of them to see in the
coming years. Cecilia Yau of pwc, a consul-
tancy, expects investments in film-making
to decline as a result of covid-19. Chinese
films make 80-90% of their money at the
cinema, estimates Mr Lei of adb Entertain-
ment, so lower theatre attendance means
lower returns for investors. In America, by contrast, a film’s takings
at the theatre are usually eclipsed by what it
earns through television rights, merchan-
dising, video-game licensing and so on. It
therefore makes sense for American stu-
dios to produce films and send them
straight to streaming, as Disney is doing
with “Mulan” in many markets. Disney’s
films are in effect merely the intellectual-
property engine that drives a much larger
machine. Before social-distancing edicts
obliterated businesses that rely on crowds,
it made an annual operating profit of
$2.7bn directly from its films and another
$6.8bn from the parks, cruises and pro-
ducts that piggyback off them. These pro-
fits should return after the pandemic.
That ought to put American studios in a
better position than Chinese rivals to keep
telling stories in a world of declining cine-
ma attendance—a trend that long predates
covid-19. The average American visited the
cinema 3.5 times last year, down from five
times at the turn of the century. In China
ticket sales have begun to slow as more
people plump for local streaming services
such as iQiyi and Tencent Video.Project Power
What the shift to streaming means for
American soft power is less clear. One pos-
sible effect is that East and West will con-
sume less culture in common. At the cine-
ma audiences often soak up stories from all
over the world. As they turn to streaming
they could do the same; Netflix is replete
with local productions. But they more of-
ten consume content tailored to their
country—and in China, almost exclusively
so. The cultural and commercial tussle for
global imaginations goes on for now. But
one day it may see Americans and Chinese
mutually retreat to their own, national,
small screens instead. 7This isn’t the film you are looking for