Hacker News Reader

It's not so much fear of cultural imports as it is about political influence from a foreign government. The article makes a good point about how "Seven Years in Tibet" came out before Chinese money started flowing into Hollywood, and how perhaps that movie might not be so easily made these days.

There's something you didn't mention when you talked about how "USA wants to spread its values too." American companies that invest in Hollywood and sites like Reddit generally aren't partially owned by the government, and certainly aren't subject to as much government control.

"Seven Years in Tibet" was made without Chinese money, so why couldn't the same movie be made today without Chinese money? It's harder because everyone else is taking Chinese money? I don't buy it.

Censorship by omission is a tricky thing to quantify. If a Studio gets, lets say, $5b a year from their Chinese investments, do you think they'd make a Seven Years style movie (even without the Chinese money directly funding it)?

To personalize it, I had plenty of conversations with Chinese VCs back when I was raising for my VR company. I was incredibly aware of the meta implications of this article while writing it. Had I received Chinese investment, I'm not sure I would have written it at all.

"Make this movie, and you won't get any more investments from us. We've said the same to your distributor and producer. And we'll make sure every corporate board we have influence over will shun you."

And then the next producer will make it, enjoy the financial super hit and get super rich by doing it. That's how markets work, supposedly. If one company doesn't want to do something that is in demand, others will.

Interestingly, the movie was produced by Peter Guber's Mandalay Entertainment. In 2017, China’s Puji Capital invested in Guber’s Mandalay Endurance Media Ventures.

> “We are at an interesting inflection with China’s film industry – we have China becoming the most important market globally coupled with an increasingly more sophisticated Chinese audience who strive for compelling stories and movies that captivate the heart and mind,” said Puji Film director Lily Zhao. https://deadline.com/2017/08/china-puji-capital-invests-in-p...

So yeah, I think that it's very possible that Guber might have more reason not to make "Seven Years in Tibet" nowadays compared to in 1997.

I imagine that any studio that wants to continue doing business in China would have second thoughts about also producing a film like that.

This is just conjecture. I don't know to what extent (if any) that such a chilling effect has on a studio's domestic releases.

> So by liberal democracies own standards

Given how easily wars on foreign soil are sold to the American public, you should be well aware that the US does not meet those standards. Few countries do.

> So by liberal democracies own standards, I find myself puzzled by the flat-out fear of foreign cultural imports.

The fear isn't so much about "cultural imports," but foreign control of cultural institutions. That control can be used to export different kinds of government censorship and other illiberal practices.

The United States has done this for decades. Why do you think China blocks Google, Facebook, et al? The exact same reason. The difference is the US is substantially richer and more powerful than China is.

I think as Westerners we are used to being dominant. I am German (now in US) and I wouldn't think twice if I heard that a German company bought a company in China but a chinese company buying a German company gives me slight discomfort. I guess I just have to get used to it. The world power balance has changed.

> So if these Chinese cultural exports are just propaganda and all around awful, surely Americans will figure it out.

Hah! Yeah, no. I’m not falling for that one again.

People will happily run themselves off a cliff if someone appeals to them enough, and damn logic.

It’s a contest, is that really a surprise? The hypocrisy is just the marketing spin on the contest for people who can’t accept that it is a competiton. If the honest question isn’t about right and wrong, but about winners and losers, the hypocrisy disappears.

I don't think "Americans will figure out that something is propaganda" is a reasonable position to take. After all Russian propaganda via the internet was very effective, look at the 2016 election, and native American military propaganda is hugely effective.

> After all Russian propaganda via the internet was very effective

That's a narrative, not a conclusion. It certainly wasn't effective in painting Putin as anything than the brutal dictator he is. I think you mean anti-Hillary propaganda, which there is evidence of...although it was so incidental (in spend and trend) that I'm not sure how this is still a news item. I guess it's just a red-scare-orangeman-bad proxy fight. Russia is not a friend of the US, but Putin and Trump are co-narcissists, dancing around each other.

Still, Americans are vulnerable to propaganda just like all populations are. And pretending that people can't be affected by propaganda because they'll think their way out of it is a dumb position to take.

> pretending that people can't be affected by propaganda because they'll think their way out of it is a dumb position to take

Who is that addressed to? Who would pretend? Just the phrasing of that statement seems strange. It implies an understanding that propaganda serves a function. It always has, that's why the term exists. I didn't imply or assert that a population would "think its way out of it".