Vietnam East Sea

Beijing-Backed DreamWorks Film ‘Abominable’ Is Pulled by Vietnam Over Chinese Map Scene

The animated movie shows China’s disputed “nine-dash line” in the Vietnam East Sea, which includes territory claimed by Vietnam and other countries.

By Daniel Victor

A promotional poster for "Abominable" being taken down in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Monday.

HONG KONG — The news media in Vietnam reported on Monday that the authorities had pulled “Abominable,” a Beijing-backed DreamWorks animated film about a Chinese girl who befriends a yeti, from theaters over a scene that shows a map of China. 

The map includes China’s so-called nine-dash line, which dips far down into the Vietnam East Sea — an audacious and hotly disputed claim to territory that Vietnam and other countries say is theirs.
The image was enough to cause Vietnam’s largest theater chain to apologize for showing it, and for government officials to say they were reviewing the movie.
“Right now we are reinspecting the film,” said Tran Thanh Hiep, chairman of Vietnam’s national film evaluation council, according to Tuoi Tre, a state-run newspaper. 

“If there are any errors, I am ready to accept responsibility.”
The film was co-produced by DreamWorks Animation, which is owned by Comcast, and Pearl Studio, a Chinese production studio based in Shanghai.

Though the plot of “Abominable” has little to do with Chinese international relations, the appearance of the nine-dash line amounted to a political statement. 

The governments of Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei all claim territory inside the line, but China has aggressively defended what it considers its territory. 

China, which has made the claim since the 1940s, has in recent years built islands there, installing runways and other infrastructure on some of them, and it has used its military to patrol the waters.
The episode comes amid a broader discussion of China’s impact on the entertainment and sports industries, as international businesses ensure that they do not offend the Chinese government’s sensibilities. 

American greed

Hollywood studios have pre-emptively ensured that their scripts did not cross China’s censors, lest they lose access to a country where moviegoers spent an estimated $8.87 billion on movie tickets last year, according to box office analysts.
The costs of crossing China are clear. “South Park” was erased from China’s internet last week after it mocked Chinese censors and American businesses’ accommodation of them (one of its cartoon children remarked that “we live in a time when the only movies that us American kids go see are the ones that are approved by China”).
The N.B.A. scrambled to control damage last week after Daryl Morey, an executive for the Houston Rockets, posted on Twitter in support of the protesters in Hong Kong. 

The league was forced to balance its professed belief in free speech with an angry Chinese fan base; the fallout continued on Monday when LeBron James, its leading superstar, called Mr. Morey “misinformed” on the subject.
While covering the China-N.B.A. affair, ESPN was criticized last week after including the nine-dash line in an on-screen graphic.