For too long, America’s film industry has complied with the Chinese government’s censorship demands. Now is the time to fight back.
For too long, America’s film industry has complied with the Chinese government’s censorship demands. Now is the time to fight back.
H ollywood has a China problem. If we didn’t know that already, it’s been made starker by the silence of America’s entertainment capital on the latest wave of protests in China.
Last weekend, thousands of Chinese took to the streets — from Ürümqi to Hong Kong to Shanghai to Beijing — demanding freedom and human rights. The catalyst for the latest demonstrations was a devastating fire on November 24 in an apartment building in Ürümqi; at least ten residents, all Uyghurs, were trapped inside and died. Xi Jinping’s draconian zero-Covid lockdowns, which contributed to these deaths, have prompted righteous fury.
Out of that fury, a simple plea has also emerged: “I want to go see a movie.” That might sound trivial to anyone living in a free country, but for those living under a dictatorial regime whose ongoing sinister policies squelch citizens’ already-meager civil liberties, it’s massive.
What’s more benign than sitting in a dark theater, watching play-acting and eating popcorn? For an oppressive regime hell-bent on controlling its citizenry and preventing its population from thinking for themselves, it’s extremely dangerous. Movies inspire peoples’ imaginations to run free, and dictatorships can’t stomach that.
You’d think Hollywood and its A-list actors would be clamoring to defend China’s protesters, not just because human rights should matter to everyone everywhere, but because when Chinese say “I want to go see a movie,” they’re talking about the movies made by Hollywood elites — albeit, ones that have already been censored by the Chinese government in order to be shown in the first place.
For decades, Hollywood has all-too-eagerly capitulated to the Chinese Communist Party’s demands. After all, China is financing some of the world’s biggest-budget films and snapping up theater chains.
As a result, Hollywood bigwigs have deliberately chosen to self-censor to kowtow to Beijing’s political agendas. China bans the actor Richard Gere, known for his outspoken support of Tibet, from entering the country, and to this day none of his films are shown there. Paramount Pictures edited World War Z to cut out a scene implying a zombie outbreak had originated in China.
Hollywood filmmakers and celebrities have diligently advanced the CCP’s narratives, or even directly consulted with Chinese officials during the filmmaking process, to secure access to China’s market. With the world’s largest population, China has offered Hollywood — as a global business, first and foremost — an alluring promise of limitless growth and opportunity.
China’s influence in Hollywood is inextricably intertwined with the CCP’s human-rights abuses and suppression of civil liberties. The CCP is a genocidal regime that continuously resorts to intimidation, violence, and other tactics of repression to silence criticism and dissent, while using deception to sway global public opinion in its favor. What Hollywood doesn’t yet seem to realize is that, the more it gives in to Beijing’s demands, the more the film industry erodes its own freedom of expression.
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Does Hollywood not understand its role in relation to the Chinese protesters’ plight? If it doesn’t take a stand against the tyranny of the CCP now, it will send a strong message of its ongoing willingness to turn a blind eye to oppression — all for fancy mansions and big paychecks at the whim of the Chinese government. As the oppression in China continues, and, perhaps more practically, as fewer American movies get Chinese releases anyway, now is the time for Hollywood to stop self-censoring at the CCP’s behest in hopes of profiting in the Chinese movie market.
It’s not inconceivable for Hollywood to actively support and amplify calls for freedom. Kim Kardashian spoke up in solidarity with the brave Iranian women protesting the Islamic Republic, taking to Instagram to support their “basic rights,” such as “to sing in their country, to ask for a divorce, to have custody over their children, and to choose how they dress.” Actors Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Ashton Kutcher, and Mila Kunis have used their platforms to take a stand against Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine.
And recently, we’ve begun to see more American studios and filmmakers, such as Judd Apatow and Quentin Tarantino, resist Beijing. In the latest Spider-Man film, Sony Pictures refused Beijing’s request to remove scenes of the Statue of Liberty, while in Top Gun: Maverick, released by Paramount, the patches on the bomber jacket of Tom Cruise’s character include Taiwan’s flag. As a result, neither film was released in China.
The protests in China today have been described as the largest since the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. Make no mistake: These remarkable acts of defiance are a marker of the people’s fervent desire for human rights and freedom. It’s time for Hollywood to wake up and stand with the people struggling under CCP oppression. As an industry, Hollywood should be on the front lines of the fight for freedom of expression.
Jenny Wang is a senior strategy and research associate at the Human Rights Foundation, where she oversees the organization’s Asia-related programs. Elisha Maldonado is HRF’s director of communications.