English: Hollywood Producer Discusses China’s Movie Industry Influence

Fenton: They have amazing influence over Hollywood. There are a couple of versions of it. One is a premeditated version of what is censored even before it was written or scripted, which is this idea with any sort of sensitive topics, whether it has to do with Taiwan, or Hong Kong or Tibet … things that have something do with human rights issues, whatever it is. Those are essentially taboo in Hollywood.

Even if a particular movie or TV series isn’t expected to be monetized in China. Maybe they go and say: “The budget for this film doesn’t need the China market to create revenues for it. We are going to work on it, be free with the content and make it for America and other democratic countries.” Well in that case, China does find out about those movies and knows about them, even if that particular film does not get into China, China will penalize the studio or filmmakers involved with that particular movie, so that they can’t get other movies in.

It’s not just the Hollywood issue, it’s not just the tech issue, it’s not just the basketball or the sports issue, or various other industries. … It’s all across the board. To get products and services into that market, there are certain rules you have to play in order to get past the CCP, so they allow you access to the consumers. But those processes, those regulations, those things that we need to live by to do it have gotten worse and worse and more amplified over time. And the encroachment on what’s true to Americans has got to the point where we either need to stop it now and fight back, or we are just going to lose because it’s going to the point of no return.