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.

The NBA has far too much company in bowing to the moral monsters of Beijing

New York Post

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver

If a single General Manager voicing support for Hong Kong protesters is really a “third-rail issue” for Beijing, as Nets owner Joe Tsai insists, then the National Basketball Association had better prepare to lose its lucrative China business soon enough. 

Eventually, the tyrannical regime will demand too much.
The NBA would be better off imitating “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. 

Beijing literally purged the show from China’s internet after a single episode that satirized the way Chinese censorship now rules Hollywood.
Their response: “Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts. We too love money more than freedom and democracy.”
To be fair, the NBA stands to lose a lot of dough by crossing China’s rulers. 

But keeping that cash apparently requires every player, coach and official to stay silent not just on Hong Kong, but also Tibet, the million Muslims in “re-education” camps, organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, the oppression of Christian churches and countless other abuses.
It’s impossible to keep these moral monsters happy in the long run. 

But the NBA is trying. 

In this, it’s following Hollywood — which has actually allowed the Communist Chinese to alter films like “Top Gun 2” and the “Red Dawn” remake.
We’ve always believed that open societies are inherently stronger than tyrannical ones. 

But for that to hold, freedom has to matter more than greed.

‘South Park’ creators issue mock apology to China after being censored

• The episode, called “Band in China,” pokes fun at China’s strict censorship laws and ridicules Hollywood for shaping its entertainment to please the Chinese government.
• On Monday, Beijing responded by deleting all clips, episodes and online discussions of the long-running comedy program.
• Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park,” issued an “official apology to China” via Twitter.

By Sam Meredith

Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick attend The Paley Center for Media presents special retrospective event honoring 20 seasons of ‘South Park’ at The Paley Center for Media on September 1, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California.

The creators of “South Park” have jokingly apologized to China after an episode of the U.S. TV comedy cartoon was made largely unavailable in the country.
The episode, called “Band in China,” pokes fun at China’s strict censorship laws and ridicules Hollywood for shaping its entertainment to please the Chinese government.
On Monday, Beijing responded by deleting all clips, episodes and online discussions of the long-running comedy program.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park,” issued an “official apology to China” via Twitter.


South Park
✔@SouthPark
Watch the full episode - https://cart.mn/sp-2302 @THR article - https://cart.mn/china


59.2K
8:22 PM - Oct 7, 2019

“Like the NBA (National Basketball Association), we welcome the Chinese sensors into our homes and our hearts,” the statement said, referring to an escalating dispute between the NBA and Chinese TV.
“We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look like Winnie the Pooh at all.”
The statement continued: “Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful! We good now China?”

What happens in the episode?
Aired last week in the U.S., “Band in China” includes a plotline in which the character Randy Marsh is caught selling drugs in China. 

As punishment, he is subjected to forced labor and Communist Party re-education.
This appears to be a direct reference to the mass internment camps in East Turkestan — home to China’s Uighur minority.
The territory has made headlines for its detention and “re-education” camps that hold an estimated 1.5 million Muslims, many of them for violating what Amnesty International describes as a “highly restrictive and discriminatory” law that China says is designed to combat extremism.
In one scene, a prison guard is seen giving Marsh an electric shock.
“I am a proud member of the Communist Party,” Marsh then says, reading aloud from a card handed to him by the same guard. 

“The party is more important than the individual.”
Marsh is also depicted in an overcrowded prison cell, before engaging in conversation with Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

(L-R) Trey Parker and Matt Stone attend The Paley Center for Media presents special retrospective event honoring 20 seasons of ‘South Park’ at The Paley Center for Media on September 1, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California.

In 2017, AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh character was scrubbed from Chinese social media because people compared him to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
“Some people said Pooh looked like the Chinese president, so we’re illegal in China now,” Piglet says in the episode.
“What kind of madhouse is this?” Marsh replies.

How has China responded?
China’s government has sought to wipe almost every episode of the show and clamped down on any mention of “South Park” online, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Search results of “South Park” have been taken down on Chinese search engine, Baidu, with a video trailer from 2017 now the most recent video available.
China’s internet, sometimes referred to as the Great Firewall, heavily restricts news and information. Google, as well as social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, are blocked online in the world’s second-largest economy.
A statement from the Wikimedia foundation in mid-May said the online encyclopedia site Wikipedia had been blocked in mainland China since April this year.
Chinese newspapers and TV are under Communist Party control, with keywords and phrases censored on social media.