A worker removes promotional posters for an NBA game in China after Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted his support for Hong Kong protestors (google images).

FABRIZIO GOWDY | DECEMBER 18, 2020 | OPINIONS

The rise of China will have little impact on most Americans’ daily lives. The United States will remain a very wealthy, relatively powerful country, and Chinese tanks will not be rolling down American streets. But if there is one aspect of life that will change, it is in the sphere of culture and entertainment where we are already seeing the effects of China’s rise.

Iconic American institutions have already begun to cater to the growing Chinese market. For evidence, look no further than the National Basketball Association (NBA). In 2019, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong protesting growing Chinese intervention. Morey’s tweet angered the autocratic Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the Chinese Basketball Association and Chinese broadcasting and streaming services quickly severed ties with the Rockets.

Rather than stand for American principles of free speech and democratic values, the NBA instead raced to do damage control and preserve their Chinese business dealings. Star Rockets guard James Harden was quick to distance himself from Morey’s comment.

“We apologize. You know, we love China. We love playing there. They show us the most important love.” Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta also criticized Morey and said the Rockets were, “not a political organization,” and Morey himself was forced to apologize.

Fertitta’s claim that NBA franchises are “not a political organization” is undercut by the fact that the NBA did not hesitate to print the words “Black Lives Matter,” on every court and create specialized jerseys with social justice slogans. Police brutality is undoubtedly real, and should not be downplayed, but pales in comparison to China’s detention of a million Uyghur Muslims in modern-day concentration camps. The NBA had no trouble protesting its own country’s practices, which is not a bad thing, but it refuses to criticize China, a chronic human rights abuser.

NBA players, coaches, and owners are reluctant to criticize the CCP because China is an enormous and lucrative market. According to The Atlantic, the NBA does an estimated four billion dollars of business in China annually. When forced to choose between principles and profits, the NBA unsurprisingly chooses profits.

Professional basketball is not the only American institution that has bowed to China’s immense market power. In October 2020, Business Insider reported that the Chinese box office had surpassed the American box office in size; this trend will only accelerate as the U.S. box office continues to reel from the pandemic. As a result, Hollywood increasingly needs China more than China needs Hollywood.

A recent report from Pen America, a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression, details the effect of this shift in market power. Filmmakers in Hollywood have already begun self-censoring their movies to appease Chinese censors, who filter out any thematic material contradicting CCP narratives before films can be shown before Chinese audiences.

Take for example 20th Century Fox’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a biopic about Freddie Mercury, gay icon, AIDS victim, and lead singer of Queen. The Chinese release of the film cut all references to Mercury’s homosexuality; these edits were made because of a 2016 decision by Chinese censors to prohibit the portrayal of “abnormal sexual behavior” in movies and TV shows. Ironically, Hollywood filmmakers, some of America’s staunchest and most vocal LGBT rights supporters, willingly complied to gain access to the Chinese market, throwing their principles out the window in exchange for Chinese cash.

In Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” screenwriters excluded a Tibetan character from the film adaptation. Tibet is an autonomous Chinese province, but has a distinct culture. Screenwriter C. Robert Cargill has openly acknowledged the decision was made to satisfy China.

“If you acknowledge Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk the Chinese government going, ‘Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political,’” said Cargill in an April 2016 podcast interview.

The 1986 film (left) includes the patches, while the new film (right) does not (google images).

More recently, in the new “Top Gun: Maverick” movie trailer, Paramount Pictures removed Japanese and Taiwanese flag patches from Tom Cruise’s flight jacket. China has an adversarial relationship with both nations, and there is little doubt the move was made to appease China. The original “Top Gun” movie, which included the patches, was released in 1986, before Hollywood had to worry about securing the blessing of foreign censors.

These might seem like small and inconsequential edits, but the principle they represent is more important than any specific changes to any individual movie. This cowardly behavior is a far cry from the late nineties, when Hollywood made movies like “Red Corner,” and “Seven Years in Tibet,” which were highly critical of China. American filmmakers still use their works to criticize American leaders, as evidenced by movies like “Vice,” released in 2018. But Hollywood has little desire to criticize China or its Communist Party, which is guilty of a slew of human rights abuses.

China’s own citizens are subject to a mass surveillance state that monitors their every move and gives them a social credit score that restricts their ability to travel and find employment. The CCP is actively suppressing religion by disrupting religious services, throwing religious leaders in prison, and physically demolishing houses of worship. It is currently perpetrating a cultural genocide in Xinjiang, province, home to 11 million Uyghur Muslims. Over a million Uyghurs are detained in work camps, where Communist Party officials torture and brainwash them in an effort to secularize the “superstitious” Uyghur people. In a move reminiscent of Tiananmen Square, the CCP has used its new “Anti-Terrorism Law” to stifle the Hong Kong democracy protests Daryl Morey tried to support. China has destroyed the independent island’s autonomy in a clear violation of the 1987 change of power agreement it signed.

America is the anchor of the free and democratic West. Our robust first amendment ensures that we are a bastion of free expression. Americans’ willingness to criticize and satirize political leaders and question cultural norms is one of our defining national qualities. In the wake of the World War II, as a newly minted superpower, the U.S. spread its culture of free expression to other countries.

Now, as the CCP gains more economic and political power, it becomes more and more able to export its values of authoritarian communism to the rest of the world. We cannot let freedom of expression take a backseat to China’s economic clout. Our culture of free speech and free expression is jeopardized by China’s rise.

The Cultural Threat