I think this is where a lot of people would disagree. Once companies give in to demands of censorship or anything that goes against our Western values, you're basically letting China know that they can get away with it. And to me, that's directly enabling their behaviour.
On the other side, if you don't give in to their demands, you're essentially missing out on a huge market, so most companies pick money over morals.
There's a difference between changing products to be popular in China, and censoring words to be allowed to operate in China. Sadly for a lot of companies, one cannot go without the other.
Look at what happened to the NBA, they didn't give in to China's demands, and just like that, they're out. The same goes for any company that's not willing to give up it's morals and values.
That's not competition, that's just extortion.
It's intpolicydigest. What did you expect? What you don't know what intpolicydigest is? Yeah me either.
But the article is just the rehash of the same propaganda you see all over social media and "news" sites like foxnews, breitbart, etc.
That china has some pull in media due to its potential lucrative market isn't news. But the idea that they have enablers is laughable. If they had enablers, we wouldn't have had nonstop propaganda about ughyurs, organs, coronavirus, etc for months on end. Israel, Saudi Arabia and britain have enablers in our media. China is on the outside looking in. But I have a sneaking suspicions intpolicydigest isn't going to run hitpieces on israel or saudi arabia.
Speaking of enablers, I would love to see who the enablers of "intpolicydigest" are.
I, personally, have a problem with this.
It's part of the reason why Hollywood movies have devolved into such pablum--you can't risk pissing of China now that 1/2 of your income is due to the Chinese release.
I no longer consider doing business with China to be "neutral". China doesn't regard it this way either--China is more than happy to throw it's weight around against American businesses--see Blizzard.
So we should treat them reciprocally. It's time to disconnect from China.
I remember doing a face-palm when I watched "Gravity." The whole conflict centers around a cascade of space-junk caused by Russia shooting it's own spy satellite. In the movie, the Chinese space station saves the day. In reality, China actually shot down it's own satellite, rendering it's orbit and adjacent orbits unusable for the foreseeable future. [3]
I'm all for international cooperation, but we have to engage with reality.
[1] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/its-time-to-break-up-disn...
[2] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-bill-clinton-and-amer...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
You also could never afford to piss America off, which is why every other protagonist in hollywood movies is some Tom Cruise lookalike who combats people who speak English in a broken Russian accent.
Just seems normal to me, the only difference is that the other 95% of the world population now have enough cash to vote with their wallets and American companies learn what it's like to operate in a world where different cultures have different values.
Sure you can disconnect from everyone, but that doesn't sound wise long term, in particular not for Hollywood.
This is different tho. You can produce a movie that pisses off people, and still have it play in theatres.
If you make a movie that pisses of the Chinese government, not necessarily the people, then that movie won't even be shown in China.
This is not Chinese citizens "voting with their wallets", it's the Chinese dictatorship dictating what is allowed to be shown in the country. One unilateral vote.
The equivalent is the US government outright censoring and banning movies. It's hard to even imagine how such a thing would play out because it is so far fetched, yet we (well, at least you) accept it from China. Why?
because it's not my job to tell China how to run their country. This is mostly a distinction without a difference anyway because the Chinese would obviously not enjoy watching a lot of movies in which they're the bad guy and Captain America saves the day.
It's like if you make a movie that insults the Prophet Muhammad a lot of Muslims won't like it, and neither will a bunch of autocratic governments, but it doesn't really make much difference in practice. If one of said countries was on their way to become the world's largest economy that'd probably be reflected in film production over time.
The real issue here is that global consumption now more closely reflects the actual demographics of the globalised economy, which means if producers want to serve all those markets they'll have to be more sensitive to different audiences or regulations.
It's like French radio stations demanding that a quarter of all lyrics be in French. If that was a 20 trillion dollar economy you bet a lot of musicians would make more French songs
Are you sure they wouldn't enjoy it? You think people like living under oppressive regimes?
And speaking of not telling people how to run their countries; morality is relative? Imprisoning political enemies and subjugation of their families is ok?
Michael Moore's documentaries get shown in theatres as do others.
Such movies about Chinese bad actors wouldn't get even a single showing in China. And would probably get the director placed in jail.
You can slag on America for lots of things. This isn't one of them.
And, by the way, one of James Bond's enemies was effectively Rupert Murdoch (Tomorrow Never Dies). So, even English enemies appear in Hollywood films.
Anyway, I think many countries would want to do the same as China but they just don't have the leverage to do so.
But that's the point. It's the reason Saudi Arabia doesn't count. It only matters if they're doing it and are a large enough market to affect the international market. Nobody's changing their movies to capture the 0.4% of the world population that lives in Saudi Arabia.
The one thing from the article I'd agree with is bad is Bloomberg interferring with the journalists reporting at his own company. There should be a strict line between Bloombergs other business interests and the editorial at the newspaper.
Otherwise I think there's a lot of confusion in the article between the conflation of the private market changing products to be popular in China, which is fine and simply reflects their status as a consumer, and actual propaganda efforts.