New Law Restricts U.S. Cooperation On Projects Modified To Appease Beijing

EXCLUSIVE: The furor over a Chinese spy balloon that flew over U.S. airspace has further chilled D.C.-Beijing tensions, but the entertainment industry already has been swept up in the heightened atmosphere of American hawkishness.To get more news about chinese movie, you can visit shine news official website.

Hollywood studios and producers are poised to get a new level of scrutiny over their dealings with China — reflecting a bipartisan hardline toward Beijing and escalating concerns over its influence.

A little publicized provision of a recently passed defense bill restricts the U.S. government from spending funds on movies that, to gain entry into the Chinese marketplace, are altered in the face of Chinese government dictates.The provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, approved in a bipartisan vote of Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in December, is the latest example of an increased focus on China’s role, not just in the entertainment industry but also in sports and social media.

While Republicans have led attacks on Hollywood, particularly over changes to made to major blockbusters, more recently Democrats have joined in, as the House of Representatives’ establishment of a new China select committee garnered bipartisan backing.

The NDAA provision prohibits the U.S. government from spending defense funds to cooperate with projects that seek “pre-approval of the content” of a project from the Chinese government, or “modifies or deletes in any way the content of the project as a result of any direction from any entity of China’s government or its Communist party.”

The Motion Picture Association is watching as the Department of Defense creates actual policy guidelines for military cooperation. There is a long tradition of U.S. government assistance on film and TV projects, including the most recent Top Gun: Maverick, typically in the form of military equipment and technical advisement.While the number of U.S. releases in China has been falling in recent years, and the actual number of movies that seek Department of Defense cooperation is small, there are studio concerns that the provision will only lead to a further reduction of exports. And some in the industry see the provision as symbolic, another way to target left-leaning Hollywood in the culture wars.

It’s a very silly political statement that has no real-world application,” said Schuyler Moore, corporate and entertainment finance attorney at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles.

It’s long been common practice for studios and producers to make edits to projects to conform to cultural sensitivities in different marketplaces — not just in China but also other countries. U.S. lawmakers, particularly on the right, seized on examples of changes to movies or examples of self-censorship as a way of appeasing Beijing government censors.

In 2019, the trailer for Top Gun: Maverick showed Tom Cruise’s character wearing a bomber jacket with two of the flag patches, for Taiwan and Japan, replaced with other symbols. The flags were restored when the film was finally released last year, albeit not in China.

The incident was cited by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as he introduced legislation in 2020 to condition the U.S. government from providing technical or other types of support on projects that agree not to alter content “in response to” or “in anticipation of” a request by the Chinese government or Communist party.

The spotlight on the issue of Hollywood altering its movies for China became a talking point, with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-Attorney General William Barr blasting Hollywood’s China practices in speeches during the summer of 2020. As the country was reeling from the impact of Covid, Barr cited reports that World War Z, released in 2013, as having removed references to a virus originating in China “in the hope of landing a Chinese distribution deal.” That deal never materialized. He also cited Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange, in which he claimed that filmmakers changed the nationality of a major character from a Tibetan monk to Celtic.