Greedy America: Hollywood Is Paying an ‘Abominable’ Price for China Access

A kid’s movie has turned into a geopolitical nightmare for DreamWorks.
BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN 

A scene from "Abominable" taken in a theater and shared by Vietnamese media. 

Hollywood’s China reckoning has come. 

But unlike the NBA’s recent China debacle, this time it’s not the United States but China’s nearest neighbors who’ve had enough.
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia have all expressed outrage at a map of China that flickers across the screen in a new film released in late September. 

The animated film, Abominable, is a joint production of DreamWorks and Pearl Studios, which is based in Shanghai. 

The map includes China’s infamous “nine-dash line”—the vague, ambiguously marked demarcation line for its territorial claim over most of the Vietnam East Sea.
The dispute points to a new problem for Hollywood as studios move closer to Beijing’s positions. Silence on China is nothing new—but positively pushing the Chinese government’s view of the world is.
Hollywood’s traditional self-censorship on China has market roots. 

China’s burgeoning market of movie-goers is expected to soon surpass the United States as the largest in the world. 

China’s censors have wielded this power adroitly, mandating that production companies abide by the party’s bottom lines in order to earn one of the 34 coveted spots allotted to foreign films for distribution in China each year. 

That has resulted in a deafening silence from Hollywood on the realities of Chinese Communist Party rule.
In the 1990s, several Hollywood films depicted oppression in Tibet, such as Seven Years in Tibet and Red Corner, and the Tibetan cause was popular among celebrities, most notably Richard Gere. 

But there hasn’t been a major film sympathetic towards Tibet since Disney’s 1997 film Kundun, for which Disney CEO Michael Eisner flew to Beijing to apologize to the Chinese leadership. 

Gere claims he has been frozen out of major films for his Tibet activism. 

The 2013 zombie movie World War Z altered the location of the origin of the zombie outbreak from China to North Korea. 

The 2016 film Doctor Strange changed the “Ancient One,” a Tibetan character in the original comic book series, to a white character played by Tilda Swinton. 

In the past decade, no major film has portrayed China as a military foe of the United States.
Omitting offending plot lines and characters was once enough to satisfy Chinese censors. 

But pressure has grown to include proactively positive depictions, particularly of Chinese science and military capabilities.
O. In the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction, the Chinese military swoops in to save the day. One film critic described Age of Extinction as “a very patriotic film. It’s just Chinese patriotism on the screen, not American.” 

The payoff was enormous; Age of Extinction became the highest-grossing film of all time in China, raking in more than $300 million. (It no longer holds that record.) 

China saved the day again in The Martian, the 2015 science fiction film starring Matt Damon. 

NASA launches a special rocket carrying food for an astronaut stranded alone on Mars, but it explodes and NASA is out of options—until China’s space agency jumps into the plot out of nowhere, announcing it also has a special rocket it is willing to lend the Americans. (In fairness, the subplot was present in the original novel, not just introduced by the studio.) 

The Martian brought in $95 million at the Chinese box office.
The growing phenomenon of U.S.-China joint movie productions has also resulted in a proliferation of mediocre films that cast China in a conspicuously positive light. 

The 2018 B-grade shark flick The Meg, co-starring Chinese actor Li Bingbing, was one such coproduction. 

It features an American billionaire who finances a futuristic ocean research station located, in a narrative non sequitur, off the coast of China, run by brilliant and heroic Chinese protagonists.
Abominable appears to be another. 

It features a young Chinese girl who discovers a yeti on her roof. 

She decides to help the yeti find his way back home to the snowy mountains in the west, and they set off on a trek across China. 

It has gotten middling reviews: One critic wrote that the film is “so distinctive pictorially, and so manifestly good-hearted, that it’s easy to forgive if not quite forget the ragged quality of its storyline.”
But the Chinese government’s heavy-handed film regulation department seems to have gone a bridge too far. 

One scene in the movie includes a map of China on the young female protagonist’s wall. 

Nine slim dashes trace a U-shape around the Vietnam East Sea, a resource-rich body of water with numerous land features also claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Brunei.
China is the only country that recognizes this fallacious map. 

The nine-dash line has no basis in international law, which does not recognize any country’s sovereignty over open waters. 

In 2016, an international tribunal in the Hague also rejected China’s assertions of sovereignty over the Vietnam East Sea. 

Beijing has never clarified the line’s legal definition or even its precise location, likely because to do so would open its vague claims up to further legal challenge.
These issues will come into sharper focus as Beijing begins to demand positive submission, not just omission. 

China’s domestic film market has already shifted from censorship to forced inclusion of propaganda. 

Last year, as part of a sweeping reorganization that saw many Chinese Communist Party bureaus absorb the purview of government departments, the party’s propaganda office took over regulation of the film industry. 

The result has been even more heavy-handed censorship and more overtly patriotic content in films. Over the summer, six anticipated blockbusters were axed entirely, and China’s box office slumped.

Richard Gere is not in big movies anymore because China hates him

By Aine Ryan
Richard Gere hasn't made a big studio movie in nearly a decade, and China is to blame.
"There are definitely movies that I can't be in because the Chinese will say, 'Not with him,'" Richard told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese."
The Pretty Woman star's remarks follow the Wall Street Journal's declaration that "You Can’t Make Movies Without China," noting that the country's $6.6 billion box-office total last year came second only to the United States'.
China's disdain for Richard stems from the 67-year-old's political remarks at the 1993 Academy Awards.
While presenting an award for art direction, he went off-script to protest China's occupation of Tibet and its "horrendous, horrendous human rights situation."
Then, in 1997, Richard starred in the thriller Red Corner as an American businessman who falls foul of China's legal system when he is wrongfully accused of murder.
"Everyone was happy with the film," Richard said. 

"I get calls from the heads of the studio. Went on Oprah. Then, out of nowhere, I get calls saying, 'We don't want you doing press.' MGM wanted to make an overall deal with the Chinese. China told them, 'If you release this film, we're not buying it.' And so, they dumped it."
That year, he was given a lifelong ban from entering China and soon found the backlash creeping into every aspect of his career.
"There was something I was going to do with a Chinese director, and two weeks before we were going to shoot, he called saying, 'Sorry, I can't do it,'" the American Gigolo and Chicago star revealed. 

"We had a secret phone call on a protected line. If I had worked with this director, he, his family would never have been allowed to leave the country ever again, and he would never work."
In 2008, Richard called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. 

He also continues to support the cause through his two foundations, the International Campaign for Tibet and The Gere Foundation in New York.
The star – who is currently busy with two small budget feature films, Norman and The Dinner – has accepted his Hollywood fate.
"I'm not interested in playing the wizened Jedi in your tentpole," he said. 

"I was successful enough in the last three decades that I can afford to do these [smaller films] now."

Chinese activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng (L) stands alongside actor Richard Gere (R) after being presented Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize Jan 29, 2013.

Hundreds of Tibetans defy China, gather at birthplace of Buddhism in India

By Annie Gowen

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is assisted by his aides as he prepares to perform rituals during the inauguration of a Mongolian Buddhist temple in Bodh Gaya, India, Jan. 9, 2017. 

BODH GAYA, India — The young Tibetan monk was taking his elderly aunt and uncle on a trip of a lifetime — a tour of holy Buddhist sites in India and a chance to meet the Dalai Lama. 

But halfway through, word came from China: The family was to return right away.
Chinese police had descended on the monk’s home five times in December, fingerprinting his parents and forcing them to sign documents guaranteeing his return.
But the monk and his family were determined to see the Dalai Lama speak at Bodh Gaya, the Indian city that many consider the birthplace of Buddhism. 

So they defied Chinese authorities and continued their journey, risking imprisonment, harsh questioning or loss of identity cards when they return home.
“I’m very worried,” the monk said on a chilly evening, sitting in a tent not far from a teaching ground where thousands have gathered each day since Jan. 3 to pray, meditate and hear their religious leader. “If we are put in prison, they will interrogate us: ‘Why did you go to India?’ This can be very dangerous.”
Authorities from the Tibetan government in exile say the Chinese government barred an estimated 7,000 Tibetan pilgrims from attending this month’s 10-day gathering in India, an unprecedented move that further erodes the rights of 6 million people who live in the Tibetan region of China. 

It was also a fresh reminder that the Chinese are threatening to control the selection of the next Dalai Lama after the eventual demise of the renowned religious leader, who is now 81.

An Indian fan takes a “selfie” photograph with actor Richard Gere in Bodh Gaya on Jan. 12, 2017. 

“It’s tragic,” said Lobsang Sangay, the head of Tibet’s government in exile in India. 

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip for Tibetans, like Muslims going to Mecca. It’s a sad commentary on the Chinese claim to have religious freedom — or any kind of freedom in Tibet.”
The Dalai Lama told reporters that the move was “unfortunate.”
China has denied that threatening pilgrims or blocking their departures, but local authorities in Tibet declared this ritual gathering, called the Kalachakra, illegal in 2012, the last time it was held in Bodh Gaya. 

Most of the 7,000 had already traveled legally to India and were forced to return early. 

Only 300 remain.
Since unrest broke out across the Tibetan plateau in 2008, the Chinese government has enacted sweeping measures that have curtailed freedom of expression, notably by prioritizing Chinese over the Tibetan language in schools, posting police in monasteries and increasing surveillance.
China’s Communist Party seeks to break the connection between Tibetans and their revered leader to ensure compliance with ambitious party objectives in Tibet, a region rich in mineral and water resources.
“What we’re seeing is new,” said Kate Saunders, of the International Campaign for Tibet. 

“It’s a systematic attempt to prevent Tibetans from having any access at all to the Dalai Lama.”

Buddhist monks participate in a special religious teaching prayer attended by the Dalai Lama during the Kalachakra event at Bodh Gaya on Jan. 6, 2017. 

An estimated 10,000 Tibetans attended the last such gathering in Bodh Gaya in 2012, but many were jailed or detained for “reeducation” in military camps when they returned, Saunders said.
Around 200,000 maroon- and saffron-robed monks and nuns and Buddhist devotees from around the world — including American actor Richard Gere — converged on the town in eastern India for days of chanting and lessons on Buddhist thought. 

As darkness descended, many of them performed prostrations and encircled the ancient stupa next to the tree — a descendant of the original — where the Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment.
Since the Dalai Lama escaped over the mountains from Tibet to India in 1959, Indian governments have treated him as an honored guest in Dharamsala, a hill town in northern India, but they long kept him at arm’s length to avoid offending the Chinese. 

Now, that may be changing.
The Dalai Lama appeared prominently at an event with India’s president in Delhi last month. 

And Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made preserving India’s ancient heritage a priority, becoming the first prime minister in decades to visit Bodh Gaya.
“I don’t believe it’s a fundamental shift of position, but certainly what you’re seeing is trending towards perhaps a less self-conscious expression of our sentiments and our support for the Tibetan cultural identity and the high standing the Dalai Lama enjoys here in India,” said Nirupama Menon Rao, a former foreign secretary and ambassador to China.
The support is key, as the Tibetan exile community faces uncertain times. 

The Dalai Lama has said that when he dies, he may choose not to be reincarnated, as Buddhist belief holds, or that he could come back as a woman. 

But China has signaled it will control the search for the next Dalai Lama by anointing its own Panchen Lama, another important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism.
Some of the attendees said they are worried it will be the last such ceremony the Dalai Lama will perform. 

The octogenarian moves and speaks more slowly now, and he had to be helped to the elaborate throne on the dais by two monks.
“He can’t go into top gear anymore,” said Gaden Tashi, a Tibetan from Kathmandu. 

“But he keeps saying he’s happy and healthy.”
One young Tibetan-language tutor who made the risky journey from China recalled that when he first unrolled his prayer mat at Bodh Gaya and got his first glimpse of the Dalai Lama, “I couldn’t control myself; I thought it was a dream.”
The tutor, 29, arrived Jan. 3, weeks after his trip began in a small village in the Tibetan area of Amdo. He paid a guide to take him to Kathmandu, where he then received legal papers from the Indian Embassy to make the pilgrimage.
Almost immediately, he said, frightening messages began appearing on his WeChat, China’s popular social media platform. 

He said police sent a warning through his parents that he should return by Jan. 3, the day the Kalachakra would begin. 

His mother cried and begged him to come home soon. 

Others sent photos of pilgrims who were met at the airport only to have their passports sliced into pieces by police.
He now feels he cannot return to China, but he believes his sacrifice has been worth it.
“Every Tibetan has a dream — to meet the Dalai Lama,” he said. 

“I told my parents I have no regret, even if I die.”