Elisabeth Braw directs the Modern Deterrence project at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.
LONDON — Earlier this month, in an interview about a new music video, performing a corona-age concert and sharing a flat with her sister, the Swedish pop star Zara Larsson told a TV show that she had ended her sponsorship deal with Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant.
“From a professional and also a personal perspective it was not the smartest deal I’ve done in my career,” Larsson said. “We know that the Chinese government is not a nice government. I don’t want to support what they do,” she added, referring to the Chinese government’s actions in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Uighurs.
“Not a nice government” — worse things have been said about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its re-education camps for Uighurs and imposition of a draconian national security law in Hong Kong. Chinese officials and their helpers responded swiftly: Larsson’s songs are no longer available on Apple in China, the world’s largest consumer market.
Larsson, a pop star since the age of 10, had clearly not thought of herself as a geopolitical actor until she came under massive criticism in Sweden over the deal with Huawei. Even so, she dared to sever her ties with the company, and told Swedish television she was trying to donate her sponsorship money to an organization helping Uighur refugees in Turkey.
Only the rarest celebrities care enough to stick to their views.
Unfortunately, though, the singer — known for hits like “Love Me Land” — and her courageous stand are the exception, not the rule, in the entertainment industry.
Last October, Daryl Morey, the general manager of NBA team the Houston Rockets, tweeted an image that said “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong,” whereupon the Chinese Basketball Federation swiftly ended its cooperation with the Rockets.
Chinese pressure continued until the NBA issued an apology for Morey’s “inappropriate comments,” while Morey deleted his tweet and also tweeted an apology. Similar punishment has been metered out to Brad Pitt, whose role in the 1997 movie “Seven Years in Tibet” resulted in a ban on him entering the country. Martin Scorsese, too, was banned from China after making a movie, “Kundun,” about Tibet.
Like Morey, Pitt and Scorsese got the message and they have subsequently kept any negative thoughts about China to themselves. Disney CEO Michael Eisner, meanwhile, apologized to China’s Prime Minister Zhu Rongji for the Disney-made “Kundun,” saying that “the bad news is that the film was made; the good news is that nobody watched it … In the future we should prevent this sort of thing, which insults our friends, from happening.”
Only the rarest celebrities care enough to stick to their views. Richard Gere’s punishment for supporting Tibet is a ban on entering China — and rejection by Chinese censors for roles in Hollywood productions, as he told a British newspaper three years ago.
For anyone who suspects Gere is just a bit paranoid or missing his “Pretty Woman” days, I invite you to consult a chilling report by PEN America released earlier this month. The report, “Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing,” painstakingly documents the largely invisible ways in which Beijing influences U.S.-made entertainment.
The Chinese market generated $2.6 billion in revenues for Hollywood last year. It’s expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest cinema market this year.
In order not to lose access to this market, U.S. studios have been “changing the content of films intended for international — including American — audiences; engaging in self-censorship; agree[ing] to provide a censored version of a movie for screening in China; and in some instances directly inviting Chinese government censors onto their film sets to advise them on how to avoid tripping the censors’ wires,” PEN America reports.
Chinese censors don’t have to be heavy-handed in their dealings with Hollywood. Because the government decides which movies get access to the Chinese market under the country’s quota system, it’s in foreign studios’ interest to improve their chances of getting one of the slots.
That reality has created something even worse than a culture of censorship in the entertainment industry: a culture of self-censorship.
Take the 2013 horror movie “World War Z”. As the Australian journalist Peter Hatcher has noted, in the film, the zombies simply appear. But in the novel on which the movie is based, by the American actor and writer Max Brooks, they’re the result of a Chinese virus.
In the novel upon which the film “World War Z” is based, zombies are the result of a Chinese virus | Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures International
Anticipating Chinese censorship, studio executives prohibited any references of the kind. The PEN America report provides similar examples, including Tom Cruise’s Japanese and Taiwanese flag badges in “Top Gun.” In the movie’s new sequel, those flags are gone.
A specter is truly haunting the West: the specter of Chinese influence. It’s haunting precisely because it can’t be seen. But we can see its consequences: basketballers who dare not utter a word about China, the home of some 500 million basketball fans; moviemakers who dare not make movies about Tibet or any other subjects involving Chinese unpleasantries but do make movies pleasing to China; pop artists who keep performing in China and stay schtum about “re-education camps” or jailed Hong Kong democracy supporters.
Sure, athletes and entertainers have no obligation to speak out about Beijing’s ill-doings (though they happily comment on assorted other matters). But sports and entertainment are the new frontline of geopolitical competition. If Hollywood doesn’t even dare to address China’s occupation of Tibet, not to mention Uighurs, Hong Kong or Huawei, it means many people won’t think about it.
China’s hidden influence-peddling in our pop culture thrives because it’s invisible. So, it’s important that we point it out when it can be spotted.
A mass increase in downloads of Zara Larsson’s songs would send a clear message to Beijing from educated consumers around the world.
And let’s support the artists and athletes who take a stand despite knowing that there will be consequences. Sure, making up for a lost market of 1.4 billion people is a tricky task for the rest of us, but we can start by sending a signal.
A mass increase in downloads of Zara Larsson’s songs would send a clear message to Beijing from educated consumers around the world. And next time a studio dares to release a movie without self-censoring in order to please Beijing, let’s make sure to watch it whether or not it’s any good.
So, let’s stand up for Larsson. Classical music fan though I am, I will now buy “Love Me Land.”