BEIJING — The announcement Friday of new 125% Chinese tariffs against the U.S. in response to Donald Trump singling out Beijing does not come in a vacuum.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has singled out a few more inventive and targeted “categories” in the rising trade war with Washington. And it starts with culture.
“If films and TV series keep telling stories from a Western-centered perspective, our audiences will not fail to notice.” That’s how Chinese state media put it last year when Netflix released The Three-Body Problem, a hugely successful series based on the novel by Liu Cixin, a master of Chinese science fiction.
On Thursday, at the peak of the latest trade war escalation with the U.S. of Donald Trump, the China Film Administration announced it would scale back the number of American films allowed into the country, hitting the revenues of Hollywood’s biggest studios.
The move had been hinted at the day before by some Chinese bloggers with insider knowledge of Communist Party decision-making.
Enormous growth
It’s one of China’s most “creative” retaliatory measures against White House tariffs, a strike at a major U.S. industry that costs Beijing next to nothing. All it takes is cutting the quota of American films screened in Chinese theaters each year and replacing them with domestic productions.
Chinese censors first began allowing Hollywood movies back in 1994, during a period of rapid economic growth and warming ties with the West. They started by approving just 10 American films a year, giving priority to major blockbusters.
China’s film market has grown enormously
In the years since, China’s film market has grown enormously, becoming a key source of revenue. Superhero movies have done particularly well, along with action thrillers.
It’s no surprise that a number of studios have started reworking scripts or casting from scratch to appeal to Chinese audiences. Marvel, for instance, changed the backstory of certain characters to avoid ruffling feathers in Beijing. Another example is the Ancient One in Doctor Strange, who in the film no longer has the Tibetan origin featured in the original comics.
China is now the world’s second-largest film market and even briefly overtook the United States during the pandemic. But in recent years, as China’s homegrown entertainment industry has thrived, as enthusiasm for Hollywood has faded. Since 2020, local films have made up around 80% of annual box office sales, up from 60%.
File photo of Trump and Xi meeting in Osaka in 2019. Photo: Bernd Von Jutrczenka/DPA via ZUMA
Korea War and Superheroes
That shift is largely thanks to heavy investment in domestic cinema — often with a nationalist bent. In 2021, to mark the Communist Party’s centenary, every movie theater in the country was ordered to schedule at least two “patriotic” films a week. One of them was The Battle at Lake Changjin, directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, and Dante Lam. It was the most expensive Chinese film ever made, with a $200 million budget, and went on to gross nearly $1 billion, second only to Spider-Man.
The film’s titular battle took place during the Korean War, where Mao Zedong’s forces dealt a defeat to the U.S. military. The same conflict is the focus of Sharpshooter, which tells the story of Zhang Dagong, a Chinese soldier who killed or wounded a record 214 American troops over the course of 32 days.
China’s domestic film industry casts Beijing as the moral compass of history
When the film premiered, producer Tan Fei said pointedly: “With historical facts, this movie will once again remind viewers that while the United States may be powerful, it is not invincible.”
From the sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth to the recent animated hit Ne Zha 2, which shattered box office records with a story celebrating traditional Chinese values, China’s domestic film industry is hard at work crafting a grand narrative that casts Beijing as the moral compass of history — chipping away at the American dream and offering up a Chinese version in its place.
Xi Jinping’s Southeast-Asia Tour
Meanwhile, China has also announced that Xi Jinping is heading off on a tour of Southeast Asia. Next week’s trip includes stops in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia, three strategically important countries. Vietnam has long been the top destination for rerouting Chinese goods before they are sold in the U.S. It’s how Chinese exporters have been sidestepping Trump’s tariffs, which has actually led to an increase in Beijing’s trade surplus despite the duties imposed in recent years.
In Cambodia, just days ago, China inaugurated a major new naval base that grants it access to the contested South China Sea.
Malaysia, meanwhile, is playing an increasingly central role in semiconductor supply chains. The timing of the trip is no accident.
In the run-up to the tour, Xi chaired a rare conference on regional neighbors. There was plenty of lofty talk about a shared future and a renewed push for “Asian values” — a phrase China is using to position itself as a champion of free trade and a stabilizing force in a region rattled by Trump’s policies.
Beijing says it is ready to scrap all tariffs on neighboring countries and ramp up talks on new free trade agreements.
