Dharamshala, 22nd February: According to Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel, today’s Hollywood blockbusters are explicitly constructed to appeal to Chinese moviegoers — and pass muster with the Chinese government. He cites the following examples of product placement: Mark Wahlberg’s character in the 2014 film Transformers: Age of Extinction withdraws money from a China Construction Bank ATM while in Texas. A character buys Chinese protein powder at a Chicago convenience store in another scene from the same film.
Age of Extinction became the highest-grossing picture in China just ten days after its debut. Although the film has since been overshadowed at the box office by a slew of new blockbusters, Schwartzel believes its legacy lives on.
“You’ll start to see it everywhere,” adds Schwartzel, who has trained his eye to find “Chinese aspects” in films. “I go to the movies now and I can see the Chinese cell phone — even if it’s blurred in the frame.”
Schwartzel discusses China’s growing impact on Hollywood in his latest book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy. He claims that China has observed how Hollywood films have helped sell America to the rest of the world and that it now wants to do the same.
China is already a box office powerhouse: it will overtake North America as the world’s largest film market in 2020, according to Schwartzel, and movie studios are becoming increasingly reliant on Chinese moviegoers to break even.
However, before a film can be aired in China, it must first pass through censorship by the Chinese government. Schwartzel also points out that the Chinese government has been quick to punish studios that tackle issues that the Chinese government does not want the Chinese public to see or that it believes would harm China’s image.
“No studio in Hollywood today would touch a movie that concerns a storyline involving the Uyghurs or Xinjiang or issues involving Taiwanese independence or demonstrations in Hong Kong,” Schwartzel says. “Because of the economic muzzle that China has on the studios today, those things are just complete non-starters.”
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