Note: this podcast contains explicit content.
Episode Info
- Season6
- Episode2
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Erich Schwartzel
Erich Schwartzel has taken a deep dive into the growing links between Hollywood and China and how Beijing is weaponizing the arts to support its global strategic priorities.
Episode Summary
Hollywood used to rule. But now, American blockbusters often cannot break even without breaking into the Chinese box office. Not only that, sharp Chinese film executives who have studied decades of American success on the silver screen, are beating them at their own game. Erich Schwartzel has taken a deep dive on the growing links between Hollywood and China, the impact on freedom of expression, and how Beijing is weaponizing the arts to support its global strategic priorities.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Lockwood: You're listening to One Decision. It's award season. All over the media, you'll see plenty of stories of actors, agents, publicists, and producers battling it out for the big prize. But there's another battle going on in Hollywood that you might be less aware of, one where the top prize isn't a shiny gold trophy, but power and influence. Red Carpet, China, Hollywood, and the battle for global supremacy is a new book out by The Wall Street Journal reporter Eric Schwartzel. Examining the power struggle between the US and China playing out in the realm of the film industry, he explores how China wooed Hollywood, and in a tale as old as time, how the student has become master. How once America's biggest tool for advertising liberal values around the world is now beholden to an authoritarian state. Eric sat down with us to tell us what he found. So how did you come about in writing this book? I mean, was it a case of you coming across Chinese influences in cinema and repeated instances of the industry dealing with a difficult market, did that turn into something that you felt needed wider attention?
INTERVIEW
Schwartzel: It did. And it just sort of got bigger and bigger the more I learned about it. So what would happen was, you know, there was a period of time where there was a lot of Chinese financing in Hollywood. So this is when a lot of Chinese actors were being cast in movies. Chinese financiers were producing films, and the market was growing. The box office in China was growing. But it was sort of perceived in Hollywood as a financial story. And when I started to realize that it was also a political story because there were motivations in Beijing driving some of those investments, I started to realize that you could tell the story of China's rise in the movies, and that China was also viewing the movies as an element of that rise.
Lockwood: Right. I mean, it's something that I was totally sort of unaware of, how pervasive China's links are with Hollywood. It's funny because my partner is an actor, and he is like, oh yeah, I mean, you know, Chinese money funds a lot of films, and that's why you'll often see a storyline divert suddenly to Shanghai, or you'll see a lot more Chinese characters being cast in movies these days. And he just, you know, he thinks it's common knowledge, and someone like me who's not in the industry, I was quite surprised to learn at how long the links are, how sort of nebulous the links are if you're not paying a lot of attention, and so I find it absolutely fascinating. Tell me, how was it for you researching and writing this book? I mean, so much of what you explore in the relationship between the movie industry and Chinese politics is to do with censorship and the lack of freedom of expression. Did you find it difficult accessing Chinese voices and insiders to interview? And how has the Chinese government reacted to the publication of your book?
Schwartzel: Well, I have to say, I have not heard any sort of formal reaction from the government. But I think any narrative about the Chinese Communist Party's success in getting others to adhere to its worldview is something they probably like to see out there in the world. Now, in terms of reporting it, I would say there were certainly precautions that I would take when talking to folks. And what was fascinating was, it helped me realize that this is a rivalry. Some have already started to call it a cold war, where the front lines really are in business. It's not like I was talking to diplomats or people in government. I was talking to people in business, and nonetheless, they would take real precautions about talking to me. I open the book with the scene of a woman putting her phone in a mesh case that she could use to block signals in case anyone was listening to our conversation. And this was a conversation we were having in Los Angeles. This was not happening in Beijing. I will say one thing I did is, just before I went to the airport and then before I left China, each time, I would email my boyfriend all of my notes. And so he would receive this massive email attachment of, like, hundreds of thousands of words. And I would say, you don't need to do anything with this. Just hold on to it until I get back to the States.
Lockwood: Because you feared that your data would be wiped or your memory sticks would be taken off you?
Schwartzel: Right. Or if someone needed to look at my laptop or something like that, I wanted to make sure that it was all, like, in safekeeping somewhere.
Lockwood: That's so interesting. And it absolutely is a political story. And, you know, the fact that you felt compelled to take those kinds of measures when writing about art and film sort of underscores the reach of the Chinese state and policing how foreigners see it, is quite a thing to behold. But I want to go back to how you describe the evolution of Chinese cinema, which I thought was really, really interesting. I learned so much about that. Hollywood first started coming to China in the nineties, mostly to try and persuade Chinese officials to let Americans show their movies at Chinese cinemas for the domestic Chinese audience and to make money that way. And Chinese audiences are really quite desperate to see Western film and culture. And you have Hollywood legends and film stars that are vastly more familiar and known to the Chinese audience than their own domestic stars. And that's largely because back then, you were dealing with a country that's been mostly fed on what's called main melody films. Eric, please explain to our listeners what a Chinese main melody film is and what its purpose is.
Schwartzel: So a main melody film, otherwise sometimes known as propaganda film. And I say one thing that's very interesting, I think, is the word propaganda is not treated with the same kind of disdain or skepticism in China that it is in other countries in the world. So it's very common to talk to people in China and ask them what they thought of a movie and have them say, oh, I thought it was pretty good for a propaganda film. And so, a propaganda film or a main melody film are movies oftentimes made with indirect partnership with the state, often about the glories of China, the glories of the Chinese Communist Party, victories in history that China has overseen, celebrations of certain anniversaries. Basically, any movie with micro or macro narratives that signal the viability, the strength, and the permanence of the People's Republic of China. And I think there's a distinction here because I think oftentimes people will say, well, you know, Top Gun is something of a main melody movie for the US.
Lockwood: Right, I was gonna ask that. How come we don't tend to see, I mean, so many British movies venerating the Brits saving the day in World War Two, Top Gun, even like Captain America. Would you class these as sort of propaganda films, and why aren't they seen by us as our equivalent to sort of Chinese main melody propaganda films?
Schwartzel: It's a great question. I mean, I think all of those films you mentioned can be propagandistic. There's a matter of degree, though. And in China, a lot of these films are made essentially by the government. So whereas in the US and in the UK, I'm sure there might be involvement and there might be aid given to some films that, you know, the government likes to have its narrative out there. I think in China, it's much more coordinated. So it's not uncommon for, if it's the hundredth anniversary of the People's Republic or the People's Liberation Army, for the ministry of propaganda to go to the Chinese studios and say, all right, we need six movies about the anniversary this year. So I think, and obviously, then there's going to be a lot more coordination on the script, the final approval of what that movie is ultimately going to portray.
Lockwood: I mean, the difference essentially is free will. Right? I mean, you can have American writers and directors who choose to tell a story about an underdog US soldier in the army who gets given these extraordinary powers and telling a story that is infused with American patriotism because they want to. Whereas, Chinese studios are ordered to make up these storylines that are infused with Chinese propaganda. I mean, how does that go down with the domestic Chinese audience? Do you tend to see the huge figures that you get for some of the big Chinese blockbusters that you mentioned in the book? Or are they kind of sort of a cinematic gruel that the audience are spoon fed from time to time?
Schwartzel: It's becoming less and less the case. I think after the Cultural Revolution, you know, Mao Zedong instituted a system where all art had to serve the state. There's this detail that just completely blew my mind, which was that, even during the Cultural Revolution, if there were paintings that were vistas of fields or prairies in China, artists would go in and paint power lines onto the scene so that it became a scene of Mao's industrialist society. And it was a reflection of the productivity boom that they were seeing. They would go back and really alter any agrarian landscape that was portrayed. To a large degree, that expectation is still there in China, where art will reflect the state, it will reflect the state's values. There will be a direct mirroring. And for many years, through the nineties through the early two thousands, a lot of it was gruel, as you said. A lot of it was really, like, medicinal propaganda, very boring. And the only way a lot of these movies made any money at the box office was by having state run companies take their employees to go see them on the government's orders. And then something fascinating started to happen, which was as Chinese filmmakers grew more and more acquainted with Hollywood films, those main melody films started to be better produced. And they got much more sophisticated and you started to see propaganda blockbusters. And think about it more along the lines of like an American Sniper, something like that. Like a movie that's about a Chinese, the top grossing movie in the world this year is a Chinese film about Chinese victory in the Korean War. And last year's top grossing film was another Chinese film about a victory in the Korean War. These are propaganda films, but they also have built in appeal and sophistication that the more medicinal films of the nineties and early two thousands did not.
Lockwood: That's interesting. Well, I wanna talk to you about the Wolf Warrior films, which you reference a lot in the book. The second installment of the series, it was a huge, huge success in China, and it featured this Chinese hero played by an actor called Wu Jing. He's essentially the soldier that saves the day. He's kind of China's response to Captain America. And the success of that movie was indicative of a change in Chinese cinema culture, which at that point had swallowed years of Western films where Americans were always the leading good guys, the heroes that saved the day. The audience had been sort of starved of seeing themselves reflected as the hero and as the lead. And so this film, a series where a single Chinese soldier saves the day, really captured the audience's heart, and it made a huge amount of money at the Chinese box office. Why did it take so long for them to come up with a film that ticked all the right boxes that the audience could respond to in a way that they did with this film?
Schwartzel: It's a great question. I think one reason is because China's filmmakers and its society at large was shut off from most of Western entertainment in the twentieth century. After Mao's revolution, any exposure to Western influence was essentially, I mean, it was like the dark side of the moon in that respect. And so it wasn't until the late seventies that filmmakers in China started to see the Hollywood films that had been so influential in the global culture. Then around 2011, 2012, there started to be something of a technology transfer between Hollywood and China. China was really commercializing its film industry in a very rapid way. And one of the ways it wanted to skip a few grades and catch up with the rest of the world was by hiring Hollywood talent to go over and teach them how to do it. In Wolf Warrior 2, which was the sequel that you referenced, there were a couple things happening there. One was that it had outside help. The directors of the Avengers films actually went and were producers on it, and they helped bring in a lot of their behind the scenes talent, like the stunt choreographers and so on. So there was a more sophisticated Chinese film here. Suddenly, moviegoers didn't have to go to American films to see the best of the best in terms of skill sets. And then I think the broader point that your question alluded to was there was quite a bit of historical kindling for this match, which was a sense in China that its moment in history had come. And the shunting that it had received on the world stage, frankly, since the Opium Wars. And I was just recently talking to someone who was just in China who said this is more potent than ever. That the sense in China that these decades and more than a century of playing second fiddle to larger superpowers, that that time is over and that there should be a moment for China to claim its moment in history. And so to see a Chinese hero, a Chinese soldier sweep the world and take on the bad guys and proudly declare himself to be Chinese, it was, like, such an example of the movie meeting the moment.
Lockwood: Right. There's this great paragraph in your book where you quote Xi Jinping saying that after more than one hundred and seventy years of struggle since the Opium War, the great renewal of the Chinese nation can finally glimpse a bright future. And you give this example of elementary school classrooms in China that displayed posters reading, which means never forget national humiliation. And that was, you say, a pervasive insecurity rooted in the opium wars, yet here was a Chinese hero proudly waving the country's flag. Is China still a country that is still reeling from the humiliation of the opium wars hundreds of years ago? Does that still really present itself in the country's present day psyche?
Schwartzel: I'm told. You know, I'm not Chinese, but I'm told that it is a narrative that has taken root, that a country that very casually references 5,000 years of history sees these more recent centuries as something of an anomaly. And a lot of the effort right now, I think, around the Belt and Road Initiative and its efforts to exert itself on the world stage is not just a reassertion of power, not necessarily an assertion of power. And so I think, in much the same way that, you know, countries often will find themselves grasping for former glory or compensating for recent losses, I think is very much the case. And I think it's something that Xi Jinping has been cultivating quite a bit as well in a lot of his public pronouncements and a lot of his telegraphing to the Chinese people. If the opium wars and the subsequent centuries gave Chinese people this sense that they should be ashamed of their heritage or ashamed of their nationality, that that time is over.
Lockwood: It's interesting that Chinese cinema has really sort of blossomed not that many years after the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and that came itself eight or nine years after China sort of entered the World Trade Organization. And so this sort of artistic blossoming of Chinese cinema culture growing into this huge, huge industry is part of Xi Jinping trying to, you know, open up his country and make it flourish. You had the premier Deng Xiaoping sort of opening China to the world market and beginning that kind of opening up of the Chinese economy, and you have Xi Jinping trying to capitalize on that. What do you think he is trying to do with the Chinese movie industry? Because you explore several things that the industry tries to do. It tries to reflect a kind of idealistic image of Chinese society that is moral, that is pure, that doesn't stray too much into themes of adultery or violence or whatever. And then you also have this goal where it tries to sort of reach out to other countries and tries to be an advert for Chinese culture to other countries who don't really know anything about China.
Schwartzel: Yeah, you just totally hit on the core tension here, which is China's desire and need to commercialize itself and continue its rapid economic growth without letting that political power and influence crumble. Let's address this in two buckets. I'll say first, within China, I'd say from 2008 to 2016 or so, there was just this rapid focus on the economic side, and China's box office started growing. And also, I think it's important to remember that so much of China's economy, for better and largely for worse more recently, is predicated on real estate. And so when we talk about the box office, we're not just talking about ticket sales. We're talking about movie theaters that anchor malls, that anchor shopping plazas.
Lockwood: The bricks and mortar.
Schwartzel: Exactly. Exactly. These anchor tenants that these developers have, there's been, I mean, hundreds of millions of Chinese people moving from rural communities to the city. And a lot of times, these theaters are one component of what's making that economically possible. So there was quite a bit of focus on that. Then when we started to see Xi Jinping consolidate power, around the same time that he declared himself president for life, and started really taking a more aggressive stance on any dissident opinion, certainly any critical reporting, kicked out a lot of US reporters, that is when the entertainment industry that had, as you said, become more and more of an arm of the state was really brought underfoot. And now there's an expectation that the government expects its entertainers to do their bidding. I will say one thing that just hit me over and over again was just how little faith the Chinese authorities often have in viewers. Really just very little confidence that any exposure to the wrong idea will not lead to some kind of anarchy or any outsider's perspective on China won't be completely molded or shaped by one story or one frame that makes China look anything but perfect.
Lockwood: I mean, you give some, like, pretty nuts examples of how sensitive the censors are. There were a couple of examples you give. There was, I think it was in Men in Black, where these agents use this little flashing device that wipes the memory of any human that comes across an alien. And that's removed from the Chinese version of the film because of the idea that wiping past history was considered dangerous. And then you have this other ludicrous example in the Mission Impossible film that's set in China. And there were these shots that showed lines of dried clothes, dried washing, drying in the sun, which was considered unacceptable because it made the city, Shanghai or Beijing or wherever it is set, made the city look dirty and unkempt. And so those were also removed from the film. Why are the censors so paranoid, and why do they have such a low threshold?
Schwartzel: Well, I think on one hand, you've got corners of the communist party who fear any fissure, that any film that gives an idea, whether it's about mind control as Men in Black does, or even just the breakdown of the family unit, narratives of adultery, that those fissures can form and become larger cracks that end up challenging your rule. And, you know, this is a country, what are we now, thirty two, thirty three years out of the uprising in Tiananmen Square. I don't think it's overstating things to say that those kinds of events are in mind when the censors are watching these films. I mean, imagine a Chinese censor watching V for Vendetta or something and worrying about the ideas that that might plant in certain Chinese moviegoers' minds. Now the issue with the laundry, though, is interesting because that is more of an external concern, I think. Very early on, Chinese authorities realized that the American movie and its global dominance gave them an opportunity to turn it into something of a commercial for China. And these movies that are seen around the world, anytime they portray China, portray it in a certain way. And it becomes this kind of advertisement of China that is only a perfect place. I mean, if you only knew of China through the American blockbuster, you would think it is a place of absolute pristine mega cities where the police and the government are in charge. Everybody's happy. No one is ever the villain. No one ever has an ulterior motive. And so I think that is also more about the image that it wants to project through the American film. And then internally in China, there are very real concerns about any film, TV show, music culture that could sort of give root to any kind of uprising or challenge to the state.
Lockwood: You used Richard Gere as an example of an actor who has been blacklisted because of his activism in China. He spent years sort of criticizing the regime and supporting Tibet, and you describe how he's basically been made to be radioactive. And now he doesn't really work with any studios or any companies that have any kind of business dealings in China because he's now considered too toxic. I mean, what are your sort of personal feelings about that? And on that, I wanted to widen it out a little because you mentioned the issue of the NBA, the activists on China. And actually, we interviewed Enes Freedom a few weeks ago, and he talked about how difficult it is to get other people to speak out in support of China, how the NBA is basically beholden. The NBA and Nike are beholden to China. Is China gonna be this sort of no go zone for anyone talking about human rights? You know, like Apple being extremely careful and Disney being extremely careful in how they deal with China as a hot button topic. And do you think we're going to see more cases like Peng Shuai where people are gonna say, actually, do you know what? We need to speak out about the Chinese government because they do do things that are unacceptable, and we can't just basically swallow our principles in exchange for money?
Schwartzel: I mean, it's a great question. Cynically, I think the difference with Peng Shuai was that there was just a lot less money behind that case. There was not a case of a massive entity like the NBA having invested billions of dollars and years of work in the market. Apple and Disney, obviously both in similar positions. Both not only having to keep an eye on a massive consumer base, but also a massive supply chain that could be completely disrupted by any action that the government takes against them. I do think that it seems like American tolerance for these kinds of concessions is falling, and it's becoming more and more, in the States at least, of a bipartisan concern and something that Democrats and Republicans both get quite upset about. I think the major issue is that you're right. For every Richard Gere, for every NBA situation, it's still the case, though, that the economics for these companies and these entities besics the politics. And I think it's going to be, I still don't see a world, pending some absolute drastic change, where any of these companies or executives choose to take a stance like that.
Lockwood: I mean, what do you think is gonna happen as a result of that? Because you have, like, the Biden administration working on trade agreements and building alliances around the world that will counter China and counter its growing influence. And then you have Hollywood, which is so preoccupied with contorting itself on not alienating its most important foreign market, China. And there's this great line in your book where you say Hollywood, once America's most persuasive evangelist, remains beholden to another country.
Schwartzel: It's interesting. You know, when I was reporting the book, if I would talk to studio executives who were in the job, they would often describe it as a market reality that they had to consider. In colder terms, they might even say they had a fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximize profits. And that would mean, you know, working with China and working in China. Then if I would talk to those same executives after they had left their jobs, oftentimes there would be a sense of, wow, we really got played here. We've really put ourselves in something of a bind. And I don't know what kind of economic decoupling there is that's even possible for Hollywood at this point because the Chinese box office is still too big to ignore.
Lockwood: Because essentially, the difference is that China has such a huge population that no matter how many tickets you sell in the US, you cannot make a comparable amount of money unless you open in China where you have, what is it, 1,500,000,000 people in China. And if even a small amount of them go to the cinema to see your film, you make an absolute killing. And that's just a demographic reality. That means that so many of these blockbusters that cost a fortune to make, they cannot make those films unless they open in China.
Schwartzel: Well, yeah. You're right. It's operating on a scale that is just not seen anywhere else in the world. And these movies have gotten so expensive to make. And I'm talking specifically about the Marvel films, like the Fast and Furious films. These movies are so expensive to make that you're right. Sometimes playing in China can mean the difference between profit and loss. And it's so big and the grosses are potentially so significant that no one would ever do anything to risk them. Right? So you might set up a business model where you don't necessarily need China to turn a profit, but you're certainly not going to do anything to jeopardize the chance to make even more money in China. And the other thing that's happened is there's been a real corporatization of Hollywood over the last couple of decades. So now a lot of these studios are operating as part of these larger corporate entities. And so even if a studio wanted to say, you know, we're turning our back on China, let's go make that movie about Tiananmen Square, the larger corporate parents would have to squash it because their businesses could be threatened by anything that one of their subsidiaries does.
Lockwood: There's one question that I wanted to ask, which you touched on just a little bit in your book, but I found it absolutely fascinating. And that is this kind of social credit system that the Chinese government have and this kind of gamification of devotion to the party through this online social credit system that rewards or docks points to an individual based on pro China behavior. And you say, you know, points go up for activities that speak to China's storied history such as calligraphy lessons or using your living room to host a communist party sing along. Driving through red lights or not cleaning up after your dog costs you points. And so does hanging around neighbors known to have spoken out against the government. Is Black Mirror available in China?
Schwartzel: No. And it won't be anytime soon. Yeah. No. Talk about hitting a little too close to home. I mean, just hearing you read that back to me, I was struck by just how absolutely intense it is. You can imagine just what that means. Just think about how you would police and monitor your own behavior in that kind of system. I think, actually, to your point too, talk about a successful export, there's a reason Black Mirror has proven as resonant as it has. I think it's in part because it speaks to some of the fears that people living outside of these authoritarian regimes have. Because we hear stories like this that remind you that it's closer to reality than you might first perceive.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Lockwood: The world of the arts and mass media has always been an important battleground for hearts and minds, nowhere more so than states run by communist regimes. My cohost, Sir Richard Dearlove, spent years living in one such country during his tenure at British Intelligence. I asked him what he made of the central themes of China's surveillance, censorship, and control in Eric Schwartzel's book.
Dearlove: Yeah. I mean, I think one's gotta take a step back. The step back I would take is to say you really have to understand the nature of Communist Party rule. And I'm amongst that elite few, you know, who'd lived behind the Iron Curtain in communist Czechoslovakia, and I have studied for long periods of my career communist parties, both in Eastern Europe within the Soviet empire as it was then, to an extent in China, but also the communist parties in Western Europe, what we used to refer to as Euro communism. And I'm struck by the extent to which people recently seem to have forgotten the lengths that the Communist Party goes to, to as it were exercise control in crucial areas. And of course the cultural area is probably for them either the most dangerous or the most powerful in terms of the influence, both internally in terms of controlling their own population, but externally in terms of projecting an image which people, you know, will find interesting and acceptable. And of course reading this book, I mean I'm really really struck by the way it sort of takes me back from what was a large element in my professional life at an earlier stage in my career. It's a fantastically good example of the subtlety and the sophistication of the way that, you know, the CCP, Chinese Communist Party, has as it were extended its tentacles into areas where we haven't really been alert. The communists are fantastically good organizers and fantastically good at controlling those aspects of life which they think are crucial to their hold on power and crucial to their exercise of influence. I mean it is a sort of almost, it's an ideological quasi religious approach to indoctrination of your population to make sure that, you know, their behaviors accord to a standard. I mean I think one has to recognize the achievements of China and the fact that they have lifted more of any country's population out of poverty than any other country in history. So you know it would be wrong to have a totally negative and destructive view of this, rather the reverse in some respects. But there is a huge cost, a huge cost to the individual, and a huge cost to the fact that so many aspects of life are going to be controlled and directed by a standard or a concept which is set centrally by the party, and that will reflect itself in all sorts of areas. I mean in China I think it's quite difficult probably to define this because there are areas where, you know, there's apparent degrees of liberty and freedom. I mean let's just take Chinese artists, you know, a lot of Chinese artists are allowed quite a lot of breadth if they don't challenge the authority of the state and the party, and you know there's an indulgence and a willingness to allow these people to continue, you know, their creative work. But if they challenge the authority of the party, or they challenge the authority of the state, or they challenge, as it were, the moral code that the party is trying to set, then, you know, they're going to be shut down. They're not going to be allowed the freedoms that we all take for granted.
Lockwood: I really want to ask you about Chinese stars getting on the wrong side of the CCP, but just before I do, I just really wanna get your thoughts on this idea of this moral purity that the CCP are almost trying to sort of brainwash their population into. I mean, what is that about and where does it come from? We know by studying Xi Jinping's background that he's someone who feels very strongly about certain principles like this, the strong family and the family unit. And that's partly because of his own childhood, the fact that he was separated from his father, when he went through the whole going back into the countryside and being punished for being one of the elite back in the sixties or seventies. And so he has himself experienced a family whose nucleus was disrupted in a way, and he feels very strongly that the family is one of the most important building blocks of the Chinese state. So does all of this sort of morality drive that dictates so much of what the censors allow to be shown in China in terms of their TV shows and their films and everything, does it come from Xi Jinping? Does it come from some kind of party ideology?
Dearlove: Well, within any Communist Party there, you know, there's a department which deals with ideology. I mean obviously within the Chinese Communist Party, because of its autocratic nature, you know the thoughts of Xi Jinping, we now know that the stuff that he's written is prescribed as essential reading within the educational system, and that's as it were the way that the state chooses to protect a set of values. I mean I think it's quite an interesting phenomenon to see that Xi Jinping has, as it were, purloined the concept of the family. I mean in every political movement which is non democratic, I would say, you know, the family has been an important element. Either its destruction or the attempt to, as it were, eulogize and make the role of the family central to an ideology. Clearly in Chinese culture the family unit is incredibly important, and that was under attack and under dissolution during the Cultural Revolution when so many families were broken up and you know people were sent off to the countryside for re education. We know all about that now historically, but I mean Xi Jinping has cleverly purloined the strengths of China's culture, the strengths of China's history, and you know tried to possess them in a way that Mao, in a way he was more a dissolutionist, and was you know trying to reset Chinese history. I mean I think there was a clear element of him co-opting China's glorious past and some of its traditional ideology and possessing them, but possessing them in a context whereby they're controlled by these very powerful departments. I mean I think what's extraordinary in Xi Jinping's China, one's seen this return of these really rigid party pyramids where the influence of the party is projected down through party structures in every key aspect of life. And you know, the major crime in China, I mean, you mentioned in the interview this issue of individuals being scored in their personal files for their behaviors, but you know, the worst crime really is to challenge the primacy and wisdom of the party in setting these issues.
Lockwood: But I mean, the sensitivity of this mission to instill a moral code among the Chinese citizens is so powerful and so powerfully felt by these film officials and these censors that it overrides anything in the name of art and culture. And there were a couple of films that Eric Schwartzel mentioned in his book called Farewell My Concubine and Ju Dou. And both of these films have been hailed as total cinematic classics and they're both banned in China for various reasons. Farewell My Concubine featured a gay couple at the heart of the story, that has been banned in China. And then, Ju Dou was the first Chinese film to be nominated for an Oscar and it has been banned in China. And the problem with Ju Dou reportedly was because it had strong sexual themes and it celebrated a young star crossed pair of lovers and it elicited anger at the old man that came between the two of them and the tale was kind of viewed as a metaphor for China itself controlled by a clique of old men. And that film came out a year after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the massacre. And amazingly enough, when I was reading Eric's book, I looked up both of these films, thinking that maybe I could watch them on Apple TV or Netflix or whatever, and you won't be surprised to hear that they are still impossible to find, nowhere is streaming them. I had to instead do something I haven't done in years, which is buy actual DVDs off Amazon. But, you know, it's so strong, this sort of moral drive that the Chinese will not accept these two incredible films that were two of the first films to be internationally recognized back in the nineties.
Dearlove: Yeah, well I've seen Farewell My Concubine. It is a brilliant film, it's absolutely wonderful. But I mean I think the mindset is, look, the communist leadership of China nearly lost it during Tiananmen. I mean they came so close to, as it were, China disintegrating, so their whole sort of rebuild project since the communist takeover was under threat. And I think that Tiananmen caused a fundamental rethink, and that rethink goes down through all sorts of levels, whether it's aspects of defense and security, cultural issues in particular, and as it were the moral fabric of China. And the Communist Party see themselves as guardians of that. And I mean if you've seen Farewell My Concubine, I haven't seen the other film, I think you can understand why such a powerful visual message is sort of unacceptable in contemporary China. I don't find that particularly surprising. I mean it's a world that not many people have experienced, and I think the sophistication of their ability to control the outlets that influence the population comes very, very high in. And of course all countries practice this to an extent in times of crisis. And you know, for example, you may not remember this, but there used to be, well, it probably still exists, but if it does it's not very important, there was something in the UK during the Cold War called the COI. Do you know what the COI was? The Central Office of Information.
Lockwood: That sounds very Orwellian, I have to say.
Dearlove: Yeah, well I mean, you know, and it was a big government organization, and it was our attempt to respond to communist propaganda during the Cold War and to put up stuff about the UK, you know, which showed the benefits of living in a free country and so on and so forth. And quite a lot of films, if you look from that period, will say, you know, in the credits somewhere, thanks for the assistance of the COI. And I mean, one of the classic examples of this, have you ever seen the original film of Henry V with Laurence Olivier?
Lockwood: I have, but I saw it at school when I was doing my GCSE, so I can barely recall it.
Dearlove: I mean that was made during World War II as a propaganda movie. And it's a brilliant film with music by William Walton and, you know, with Laurence Olivier as Henry V and Agincourt and all of that, and it's superb. But it was, as it were, it was a morale raising propaganda film.
Lockwood: Well, it's funny because that's what Eric opens the book with, you know, saying all these Chinese film officials say to him, well, you know, Captain America is just American propaganda. Top Gun was American propaganda for the military. I wanna ask you, sort of related to all of this is, Xi's anti corruption drive. And we didn't have time to get into this with Eric, but he did write about it in his book, the curious case of Fan Bingbing, who is a huge Chinese movie star. She's in the Marvel films, she's been in a whole bunch of western movies. And she was disappeared by the Chinese government for several months a few years ago on the grounds of tax evasion. What is all that about?
Dearlove: Yeah, but I think if you become too prominent as an individual within an autocratic state, you're courting some sort of, well, intervention, some sort of initiative to cut you down to size. I mean for example the one I know a bit more about is Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.
Lockwood: Yes, I met Jack Ma.
Dearlove: I met Jack Ma at a couple of conferences in Switzerland actually, and he's a fascinating, interesting character. But you know, Jack Ma became so big, so successful that, you know, when they were going to float, what was it, the bank that he, the Chinese locked down on him and withdrew the flotation, and he disappeared for a period of time and made no public appearances. He was a guy who had a massive following. So I think anybody who gets to a stage where they have a huge popular following, and they may not be behaving quite in accordance with the party and the party's rulings, risks being, well, risks having some really severe restrictions put on them by the party.
Lockwood: Right, but why? I mean is it that no one knows, no figure in China can be bigger than Xi, or is it because he sees corruption as a threat to his position?
Dearlove: Well I think it's both of those. I mean corruption was a massive problem in China and probably still is amongst this tiny group who don't come within the scope of Xi's, as it were, anti corruption campaign. I mean I think Xi Jinping had a big problem when he came in, which to an extent, you know, he dealt with selectively, and it's also of course a way of rubbing out opponents.
Lockwood: Well I was wondering if it was a front, if it was a way for him to purge his rivals.
Dearlove: I mean it's not both, it's a genuine cleanup, but it's also an opportunity to purge rivals and to make yourself absolutely dominant figure so that people do not dare to cross you or question you, and I think that's what's happened with Xi Jinping. And there's no question that the Chinese state, if it disapproves of you as an individual, will regard what you're doing as illegal, whether it's illegal or not. I mean the rule of law in our understanding doesn't exist. It's a sort of fiction, you know, to legitimize party control of every aspect of life. And you know the majority of Chinese just want to get on with their lives, make money, look after their families, and not get into trouble.
Lockwood: So then my next question to you would be, can you mould an entire nation of 1,400,000,000 people in your image? I mean how long is this going to work for Xi? You know, is this...
Dearlove: It'll end in tears for sure, but it may take an awfully long time. Well it'll end in tears somewhere along the line. I mean, you know, the whole question of succession gets very difficult when you get to the point where Xi dies or becomes incompetent. And I think the problem with what the Chinese are creating, or, no, that's unfair, what the Communist Party have created in China is it's very structured but it's extremely brutal.
Lockwood: Which is probably why they are so afraid of...
Dearlove: And what a story. You can know that the Chinese leadership in the morning in China sit down, they're not talking about Ukraine. Well they are to an extent, but what I'm saying is that their preoccupation after Tiananmen Square each day of each week is to what extent are we in control of this massive country. And that is reviewed on a continuous almost daily basis, and there's all sorts of things in China going on that we never ever hear about. You know, strikes in factories, breakdown of local party structures. I mean you know China is not a bed of roses, it's a bed of problems. And then the CCP, Chinese Communist Party, have put in place a structure which monitors and registers this, and after Tiananmen they're terrified of it falling apart. You know, why did they clamp down so hard on Hong Kong? Because they worried, and I think with good reason, that the youth of Hong Kong who they thought would embrace communist China were embracing a different ideology, and the enthusiasm with which it was embraced suggested that this could be injected backwards like a coronavirus, if you want, into China, and that its effect on Chinese society could be corrosive. I mean it's entirely understandable to see why the Chinese have reacted in the way that they did to Hong Kong and breached the joint declaration and all these other agreements that we had with them. And I mean frankly I'm not the slightest bit surprised. They were terrified by what was happening in China because, you know, Chinese youth are not meant to be like that.
Lockwood: That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. From me and the team, thanks for tuning in, and see you next week.
