The Patriot Post® · Good News: China and Hollywood Are on the Rocks

Hollywood and China have been entangled since the 1993 film “The Fugitive.” The U.S. movie industry got a whiff of the Chinese market and became hooked on the money to be made there.

Yet it was a mismatch from the start, bolstered by greed and pushed along by politicians. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter started the ball rolling by opening up relations with China. This became expedited under President Bill Clinton’s China Policy, which sought to integrate China into the international community. But it was Joe Biden, during his tenure as vice president, who specifically impacted the movie industry by pushing to further open the doors between Hollywood and China. Why? To help his friend, former Senator Chris Dodd, who at the time was chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America.

With the lure of Chinese money, Hollywood has progressively compromised, kowtowed, and even exclusively produced movies for the Chinese market.

What does this mean? Well, it means that Hollywood has allowed its movies to be censored to appease a communist government’s disdain for Western values. It also means that great movies were remade to appease the Chinese people (see “Red Dawn”).

Even so, up until 2020, U.S. box office hits would be counted in China’s top 10 grossing films each year. Then the pandemic hit. A pandemic that originated because of a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

As National Review’s Jack Butler explains: “Some of the biggest U.S. movies of the past few months have barely made a dent in China. … Something is going on. And it’s not just this year. Last year, not a single American film made the top ten in China’s box office.”

The New York Times interviewed several Chinese nationals in Beijing to garner their opinion as to why Hollywood films aren’t doing well in China. They claim two things: First, Hollywood isn’t marketing correctly to Chinese audiences by using China’s version of TikTok, Douyin. Second, Hollywood novelty isn’t enough to draw Chinese audiences who hunger for values closer to their own, such as collectivism.

There is probably a grain of truth to that, but the deeper issues at play are more than mere bad marketing or cultural catering.

What really has happened is a combination of China’s modus operandi when it comes to successful industries — invite them in, steal all the intellectual property it can, then dump them out, ultimately worsening U.S.-China relations — and Hollywood’s tendency in recent years to take cinematic shortcuts (example: CGI replacing good storytelling).

This breakup between our film industry and China — more specifically, China’s money — needed to happen years ago. China has been increasingly able to control and manipulate our film content, promoting woke values and cultural degeneracy. Hollywood isn’t producing meaningful, truthful, or beautiful content anymore — and yet has the audacity to yell at American audiences for having better taste. Having China’s money divested from the market will give more power back to American audiences and to the filmmakers themselves. It’s an opportunity to reclaim the American art form and perhaps regulate the culture back to a more sane place.