China’s ‘soft power’ stumbles at the movies

BEIJING (AFP) ― Everybody knows the Oscars. From Beijing to Paris and New York to Sao Paolo, the golden statuette honoring the best movies in the world is a symbol of the “soft power” prowess of the United States.

China’s Golden Rooster awards, however, come and go without much mention ― a potent reminder of the film industry’s difficulty in competing with Hollywood despite a push to gain more influence on the global cultural stage.

The Communist Party has called on the culture industry ― including movie makers ― to raise its game and promote the Asian nation abroad as Beijing continues its “soft power” drive.

But Beijing’s desire to guide the arts at home has filmmakers and experts unhappy as they say censorship and propaganda are hampering the movie sector’s ability to compete with Hollywood blockbusters.

“You can’t straightjacket artists and have them compete like athletes. Culture is not monolithic. It should be diverse,” cultural commentator Zhou Liming told AFP.

“Authorities are focused on broadcasting culture overseas in competition with the imported culture flooding China, but that’s wrong,” he said.

“Lots of Chinese cultural products aren’t representative of the China presented by the government.”

Mainstream Chinese films all need government approval for release, and there is a marked absence of movies that tell revealing, gritty tales set in the present day.

Chen Daming, director of a recent Chinese remake of the Hollywood romantic comedy “What Women Want,” says censorship makes it hard for filmmakers to make a wide array of contemporary movies.

“Filmmaking is all about genres and having a strong antagonist. Without the bad guy, the good guy has nothing to do, but it’s hard to make contemporary movies because films about crime today won’t pass censorship,” he told AFP.

Even those films that get a great reception in China ― which took in a record domestic box office of $1.5 billion last year ― have difficulties in cracking the bigger U.S. market.

They face the subtitles hurdle, but often falter before that, failing to get a simple first exposure.

Director Jiang Wen’s popular 1920s gangster film “Let the Bullets Fly,” for instance, landed a small U.S. distributor this spring but the film has yet to be released in the United States.

Chinese-language films haven’t scored a hit in the United States since director Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2001.

In 2003, director Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” ― mainland China’s most successful film export ever ― was nominated in the same category but failed to win.