China To Restrict US Film Releases (theguardian.com) 139
Hours after Donald Trump imposed record 125% tariffs on Chinese products entering the US, China has announced it will further curb the number of US films allowed to screen in the country. From a report: "The wrong action of the US government to abuse tariffs on China will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience's favourability towards American films," the China Film Administration said in a statement on Thursday. "We will follow the market rules, respect the audience's choice, and moderately reduce the number of American films imported."
The move mirrors the potential countermeasure suggested by two influential Chinese bloggers earlier in the week, warning that "China has plenty of tools for retaliation." Both Liu Hong, a senior editor at Xinhuanet, the website of the state-run Xinhua news agency, as well as Ren Yi, the grandson of former Guangdong party chief Ren Zhongyi, posted an identical proposal involving a heavy reduction on the import of US movies and further investigation of the intellectual property benefits of American companies operating in China. China is the world's second largest film market after the US.
The move mirrors the potential countermeasure suggested by two influential Chinese bloggers earlier in the week, warning that "China has plenty of tools for retaliation." Both Liu Hong, a senior editor at Xinhuanet, the website of the state-run Xinhua news agency, as well as Ren Yi, the grandson of former Guangdong party chief Ren Zhongyi, posted an identical proposal involving a heavy reduction on the import of US movies and further investigation of the intellectual property benefits of American companies operating in China. China is the world's second largest film market after the US.
American films? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who needs this dumb and tired crapfest, rehashed and remade a million times with less and less creativity?
Re:USA films...tired crapfest, rehashed (Score:5, Funny)
But now they have AI to make a whole new level of insipidness.
Re:USA films...tired crapfest, rehashed (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe US movie makers will quit catering to the whims of the CCP....and making changes ONLY to please them.
I mean, in the remake of Red Dawn, didn't they have to change the invading enemy from Chinese to something else?
Didn't they try to change some emblems on one of the jackets for Top Gun ....I don't remember the exact thing, but did read something about it....
Anyway...US film makers have been altering story lines so as NOT to insult the CCP and well, that sucks.
The NBA has owned to the CCP previously, etc......
This impedes on what the US and the rest of the world can express and produce in media.
Good riddance I say.
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Flying Tigers were Americans operating (mostly) in China against Japan. Someone was "offended" because the Flying Tigers either
A) they weren't pro-Communist.
B) that China needed help.
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I mean, in the remake of Red Dawn, didn't they have to change the invading enemy from Chinese to something else?
In the original Red Dawn, the invaders were the Soviets. So, no.
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Re:American films? (Score:5, Insightful)
Needs? No one. Wants on the other hand is a more interesting question given how much of Hollywood's mega companies depend on China to boost their global box-office intake.
It's easy to dismiss this, but this distribution channel directly contributes to American employment in the motion picture sector.
The employment doesn't matter (Score:1)
I don't think folks realize just how much Elon Musk has changed US politics. He has threatened to spend any amount of money necessary to remove Republican politicians from office using our primary election system and because a relatively small amount of money is spent on primary elections that threat is ex
Re:The employment doesn't matter (Score:5, Funny)
Well you got one thing right ... "I don't think" is absolutely dead on.
Well you know not everybody can be as big brained (Score:2)
Now whatever you do don't ask how or why he accomplished that. Just remember he did it while he was winning a golf tournament.
Also don't ask how or why or where he won a golf tournament.
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At the same time they also voted overwhelmingly for Voter ID laws.
So, not a total loss and not completely left wing it seems.
Thou shalt not speak ill (Score:2, Funny)
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given how much of Hollywood's mega companies depend on China to boost their global box-office intake.
It's changed in recent years: https://www.thewrap.com/china-... [thewrap.com]
Re: American films? (Score:3)
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The stock market has crashed since Trump started his war on DEI, ergo DEI must be highly profitable.
If you can't tell I'm being sarcastic.
If you look back say 10 or 15 years ago on Slashdot, you will find people complaining about how unoriginal and boring Hollywood movies are. Truth is, they have always been like that. It's not new and it's not DEI. Disney is a prime example. Can you name an original animated movie from that studio? They are all based on folk tales, books, or ideas people brought to them, a
Re:American films? (Score:5, Funny)
Hollywood getting screwed is a feature not a bug.
We’re reaping the benefits of tariffs already!
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Not sure why you want GDP to fall, though.
Because as soon as the word "Hollywood" was encountered, it triggered the psychological conditioning they've been receiving for years through their media of choice - that "Hollywood" is filled with woke communist blah blah blah, and it gives them the emotional reinforcement they want of political enemies getting punished; a.k.a. "owning the libs."
It's an entirely emotional reaction rather than a rational one. You're looking for rationality where it no longer exists due to constant exposure to propaganda.
Re: American films? (Score:5, Insightful)
"far left"
You really are dumbasses. "Slightly left of center" doesn't do it for you, it doesn't sound insulting enough, so you call them "far left" despite it completely undermining the point you're making.
Yeah, I mean, at the Oscars they're always calling for the overthrow of capitalism, a for-each-unto-their-needs economy, and so on, right? (In reality, some call occasionally for saving the whales, others think Trump is a shit because, well, Trump is a shit. That's not as controversial as you pretend it is.)
"Far left". What an idiot.
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Even "slightly left of centre" is only true by US standards. From Europe, Hollywood looks very conservative. Marvel movies are a good example, standing for the status quo and only playing lip service to any kind of social justice. Look at Black Panther, the bad guy had a really good point but was portrayed as being in the wrong, and the supposed "good ending" is just some token outreach programmes, the absolute minimum they could have done.
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To be clear, he was talking about the Oscars, where occasionally an actress will stand up and promote some minor environmental cause, or an actor will stand up and say he doesn't agree with Trump.
So it's sort of left wing but in the most inoffensive doesn't-affect-anyone type way. Which is why I think the OP undermined his own claim by using the term "far left". If you think spaying and neutering your pets or disliking torture is "far left" then it's more a sign that the OP needs to re-examine every assumpt
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That sort of thing is common with the moderate right here.
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Even "slightly left of centre" is only true by US standards. From Europe, Hollywood looks very conservative.
US-left not being as left as European-left has to be the most repeated comment in all of slashdot history.
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That's not far left woke on stage from most of them?
No, WayDumberThanACumSock, that's not far left anything. They're not smashing the means of oppression, they're part of it.
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Thanks for being a literal example of what I was referring to. Propaganda-fueled emotional reaction achieved.
That'll show Orange Man! (Score:4, Funny)
My understanding is that most of Hollywood tends towards the Democratic Party. I can imagine the Orange One voicing his outrage over this, and raising the tariffs again.
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Ambassador Gib Melson will be disappointed.
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Why did the Republican crowd kill him in prison, then?
Re:That'll show Orange Man! (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe the next import restrictions will be soybeans, one of the top USA exports to China [usafacts.org], which will piss off Trump's rural voters.
Re:That'll show Orange Man! (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, they're already going to lose their farms on the existing tariff rates.
Nobody in China is going to want to buy soybeans that are twice as expensive as soybeans from literally anywhere else.
The leopards who eat faces are getting FAT on the supply of faces to eat.
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So we grow 80% of the worlds soybeans (give or take)? What happens when we stop selling them to China? Grow something else I guess? The same areas that grow soybeans are just fine for corn and other crops so to me this seems like the kind of thing that within a season or two means nothing to either side. American farmers can grow other crops. China can get soybeans from other places right?
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What happens when we stop selling them to China?
Same thing as the last time: Federal cash payouts to farmers.
Re:That'll show Orange Man! (Score:5, Informative)
No, the US soybean production in 2022 was 116 million tonnes. That's less than Brazil's 120 million tonnes. You aren't even the largest soybean grower in the world. That means that even if there were only two soybean growing countries, you would necessarily be growing less than 50% due to being in second place.
Not that simple - you need a market for whatever it is you switch to growing. You already subsidise corn to the point that you need to look for things to use it for, so any more corn is going to be a waste of time. With Trump waging a trade war on the rest of the world, it's going to be tough finding overseas markets for agricultural products.
China already started buying soybeans from other places after Trump tried to start a trade war last time he was in office. That's part of the reason Brazil overtook you in soybean production. The US government then had to bail out soybean farmers. I don't see it ending any better this time.
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So we grow 80% of the worlds soybeans (give or take)?
Can you clarify your data? According to Wikipedia citing the FAO, world's largest soybean producer was Brazil with 35% of world's production, with USA a close second at 33%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] In any case, fabricating a crash of world's basic food production is a really bad idea.
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Tarriffing a producer with 1/3rd market share is going to cause other producers to raise prices and book profits.
The US and China need to strike a deal. Trump's not all wrong - the US could not go the way it was going, keeping on increasing its credit limit. The precise correction the US needed is up for debate.
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28%
https://farmdocdaily.illinois.... [illinois.edu]
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Where will the market come from for the replacement crop for soybeans?
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My understanding is that most of Hollywood tends towards the Democratic Party.
Hollywood is a business that makes a lot more money when demographics are taken into consideration. Kids gravitate to toys that look like them, for example. I mean, it's escapist entertainment, right? That sort of business is fundamentally incompatible with efforts to pick on groups of people. Hollywood is less attracted to the Democrats and more repulsed by the Republicans.
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Actually... just this last Christmas I took my daughter to get a photo with Black Santa at her request. We had to get a reservation.
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There's a Little Mermaid lesson, too. So what?
Re: That'll show Orange Man! (Score:2)
I'm holding out for the Tron lesson, because it'll be the coolest.
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Actually, Trump was asked about this today and made a comment about the Hollywood movie restrictions:
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/... [x.com]
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I was thinking the same thing. All the people who spent last eight years screaming about how orange man is worse than Hitler at their posh parties now have to beg teetotaller Don to please think of their drug supplies?
Being a fly on the wall for those meetings would be better than any Hollywood movie.
If it's good for the goose... (Score:5, Funny)
If protectionism is good for America, it's good for China.
Glad that Trump is trying to Make China Great Again.
No!! Not the heckin Marvel capeslop! (Score:5, Funny)
How will China ever recover?
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Good News? (Score:4, Insightful)
Taken to its logical conclusion, maybe Hollywood can stop cowtowing to the commies with plots and incidents that "offend" those folks, but tend to please patriotic Americans. So maybe it will not be an issue whether there's an American flag on the sleeve of on an American movie featuring American astronauts.
Re:Good News? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taken to its logical conclusion, maybe Hollywood can stop cowtowing to the commies with plots and incidents that "offend" those folks, but tend to please patriotic Americans. So maybe it will not be an issue whether there's an American flag on the sleeve of on an American movie featuring American astronauts.
China is probably doing this precisely because Hollywood desperately craves that Chinese money. And there's enough big money names in Hollywood to actually register as a blip on Donald's egodar and maybe, just maybe, make a dent in his pathetic penis size contest with Xi. Neither one of them is coming off looking good from this little back and forth tantrum thing, and appealing to the Hollywood machine probably seems like a good way to at least throw a temporary wrench into Trump's plans.
Granted, China may have miscalculated on this one. Trump is not a fan of the Hollywood machine. Though he is a fan of the money it generates. Guess we'll see which way this one swings once it plays out.
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I think the point is to cause as much pain in as many places as possible. If Hollywood won't make Trump jump, then a whole lot of Republican-voting soy bean farmers will certainly make noises that Congressional Republicans can hear.
And that's before we even talk about China's power to severely fuck over US bond markets. As we've already seen, the one thing that does appear to make this Administration recoil is fuckery in bond markets.
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China can do what ever they want, since they're entirely self sufficient aren't dependent on imports or exports for survival.
One example is they completely fucked the rare earth mining industry in Australia a while back by buying up their resources to build the industry up, then flood the international market to undercut them, collapsing all the over-sized businesses running the mines.
They didn't need to buy the minerals in the first place. They did it just to fuck up the Aussies and send a message to the r
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> Granted, China may have miscalculated on this one. Trump is not a fan of the Hollywood machine. Though he is a fan of the money it generates. Guess we'll see which way this one swings once it plays out.
Probably worth noting that despite all their insults spat at "Woke Hollywood", the upper echelons of the Republican establishment are more than happy to be a part of it. The last Trump administration's Treasury Secretary was Steven Mnuchin for example, who co-owns a major Hollywood production company (he
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> Granted, China may have miscalculated on this one. Trump is not a fan of the Hollywood machine. Though he is a fan of the money it generates. Guess we'll see which way this one swings once it plays out.
Probably worth noting that despite all their insults spat at "Woke Hollywood", the upper echelons of the Republican establishment are more than happy to be a part of it. The last Trump administration's Treasury Secretary was Steven Mnuchin for example, who co-owns a major Hollywood production company (he's listed as an Executive Producer on Wonder Woman, for example, and quite a few other movies you've probably heard of [imdb.com].) Trump himself used to, before he became radioactive, like mixing with the group.
No idea what the current bunch are doing, but it'd surprise me if the party of Reagan has changed that much.
They still like the money, but they can't publicly allow themselves to praise anything Hollywood because "woke" and "gay agenda" and I'm sure there's a host of other bigotry that they use to justify hating Hollywood.
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Oh I don't doubt that, but there's a difference between being critical in public (which they were even as their Treasury Secretary was executive producing "woke" Wonder Woman and Fury Road movies) and getting mad about their movies being banned in China because they were one of the groups making bank on them.
In fact, I suspect if you add up all the income that eventually makes its way into Republican pockets rather than Democratic pockets, the former almost certainly is much, much, higher than the former. A
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> Neither one of them is coming off looking good from this little back and forth tantrum thing
I wouldn't say "looking good" exactly, because he's got a long way to go before I'd consider him good, by Xi has shown quite some careful thought and restraint in his responses. Trump looks like a kid who's just thumping the desk harder and harder. Xi looks like he's actually playing chess here.
I agree that neither is "doing good", but if I were Xi, I'd likely be doing the same. To just suck up tariffs that no o
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Jesus Christ. When are you living, 1960? Commies? What fucking Commies? You'll never see a more hypercapitalist place than Hollywood.
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F'n commies in China. And yeah, I'm 77, so have lived in 1960's, and communists and communism will always be dirty words. Killed 100 million of their own people in last century. Ultimate evil, every bit as bad as Nazis, worse actually.
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They usually do a different edit for China, and some other parts of the world. Another example is Japan, where rules on showing drug use sometimes require a bit of editing.
I seem to recall many years ago that one of the Star Wars prequels was edited for the UK to remove a head-butt, which for some reason the BBFC took issue with in a PG movie (but not the lightsabres hacking off limbs).
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one of the Star Wars prequels was edited for the UK to remove a head-butt
Down with this sort of thing!
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That would be an ecumenical matter.
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I seem to recall many years ago that one of the Star Wars prequels was edited for the UK to remove a head-butt, which for some reason the BBFC took issue with in a PG movie (but not the lightsabres hacking off limbs).
It does make a little bit of sense. Idiot kids can reproduce head butting, but they can't reproduce cutting off limbs with light sabres.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Now maybe Hollywood won't feel compelled to put North Koreans in their films about Chinese invaders.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
Summary already out of date: 145% not 125% (Score:3)
The shitshow continues...
Craptacular (Score:2)
I think the world would be better off if we don't allow the formulated crap that's being released by "Hollywood." In this case, I agree with China.
good now no more bowing to china with edits! TOP G (Score:3)
good now no more bowing to china with edits! TOP GUN 3 with Taiwan
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Have you ever considered how much california imports from other US states?
Go ahead cripple the california economy, you're just cutting off your nose to spite your face. If Calfornia's economy is battered, it will be importing less from Idaho and Kentucky.
There is a reason everyone except Trump knows that there are no winners in a trade war.
Integer overflow (Score:5, Funny)
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The way the Trump Administration works, all the calculations are being done on an Altair 8800 with 4k of RAM.
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All we know for sure is that they're not writing anything in COBOL
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Sincerely good news (Score:2)
Hollywood will save a lot of money... (Score:1)
On the plus side, Hollywood won't have to edit their posters to reduce the size of the only black man in the film to make sure Chinese people don't see it! That'll save some money for them!
Obligatory (Score:2)
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Except the $1.5B value of Chinese box office revenue for Hollywood.
more of the same. (Score:2)
As SILLY as most American "films" (Score:2, Insightful)
China should be tougher. Can't they just seize companies with almost no due process like Trump is working towards? It'll be like pointing out President Tiny's ..."small hands." Furthermore, they can just take away Tesla's factories... or would that cause the real President to start a war?
They can go more targeted. Why not use TicToc to spew propaganda? I bet the bottom 30% would believe anything was said to them.
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The very instant TikTok becomes a propaganda tool against Trump, is the instant he revokes his suspension of the TikTok ban. And all his followers will lap up the instant about face gaslighting to justify the clearly corrupt behavior.
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China already put CCP members on the board of all large companies in China.
Good (Score:3)
Maybe Hollywood will stop inserting CCP propaganda like that heard toward the end of the movie Game Night. As a former Marine that really pissed me off.
cultural effects? (Score:2)
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Right. Like the proposition that admitting China to the WTO would cause them to democratize and dump the commies after they became prosperous. How’s that working out?
Winning (Score:3)
So, Hollywood et. al no longer has any reason to continue worrying about the CCP and its preferred narratives. Great.
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Chinese audiences also dislike black actors in films.
So, I'd say this is a plus for black actors.
Love the double-speak (Score:2)
They said they are restricting the number of films that will be allowed into the country because the Chinese people will be angry and wont want to watch them. So this is really just listening to the market! Uh huh
Sounds good to me. (Score:2)
Chinese will still watch American films (Score:2)
Who will watch Snow White now? (Score:2)
Who will watch Snow White now?
This trade war is a "pass the popcorn" moment.... (Score:2)
I find the current drama more entertaining than most of what Hollywood has produced in recent years.
FWIW? China really boosted itself into relevancy in the 21st. century by building its manufacturing capabilities up and thereby utilizing its huge population. America, in hindsight, was arrogant and foolish to believe we were "too good" to reduce ourselves to factory work producing goods -- so we handed much of it over to China (and to other interested nations) to do it for us.
The ironic thing is, it was larg
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It's the new program, replacing extreme manufacturing and scrum manufacturing by a long way. I don't know what any of this means!
Wait until china takes out the gloves... (Score:2)
And publicly declare they will stop buying Treasury Bonds...
Then watch the world burn.
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GOOD! (Score:2)
Removal of the Taiwanese flag from "Maverik's" jacket for the Top Gun sequel anyone?
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Hollywood is 100% democrat.
99.5% [businessinsider.com]
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Or they'll do more, to entice China to let them back in.