China’s Powerful Marketplace Is Encouraging Studios to Succumb to Censorship ⇥ axios.com

Alex Kantrowitz and John Paczkowski, Buzzfeed News:

In early 2018 as development on Apple’s slate of exclusive Apple TV+ programming was underway, the company’s leadership gave guidance to the creators of some of those shows to avoid portraying China in a poor light, BuzzFeed News has learned. Sources in position to know said the instruction was communicated by Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services, and Morgan Wandell, its head of international content development. It was part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to remain in China’s good graces after a 2016 incident in which Beijing shut down Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies six months after they debuted in the country.

I think it’s important to be highly critical of efforts to succumb to the demands of an authoritarian state. But this is not a story about Apple’s practices, as the eighth paragraph of this article points out:

Apple’s tip toeing around the Chinese government isn’t unusual in Hollywood. It’s an accepted practice. “They all do it,” one showrunner who was not affiliated with Apple told BuzzFeed News. “They have to if they want to play in that market. And they all want to play in that market. Who wouldn’t?”

The bigger story here can be found in an article yesterday from Shane Savitsky in Axios:

While the U.S. reckons with the fact that China’s market power can stymie free speech after the NBA’s firestorm, Hollywood — America’s premier cultural exporter — has long willingly bent to Chinese censorship to rake in profits.

China is set to become the world’s biggest movie market in 2020, and with its 1.4 billion citizens, it won’t relinquish that title anytime soon. That means it’s key for Hollywood studios to do all they can to ensure that their tentpoles can pass the standards of the country’s strict censors.

This is a far greater cultural question to contend with. Films have been compromised for decades to meet specific MPAA ratings in the United States, but Chinese censors are even more unwelcoming:

Perhaps the most extreme example was the 2018 decision to not allow Disney’s “Christopher Robin” to be released, purportedly because Chinese President Xi Jinping’s resemblance to Winnie the Pooh had become a joke among activists who resisted the country’s Communist regime.

Ludicrous.