Mind the Gap | Does China’s buying spree of Hollywood studios project soft power? Not so easy
It’s easy to forget that China’s big problem in controlling films is that no one wants to watch such Chinese-themed films. With technology, the likes of Netflix and YouTube are content creators, not merely distributors
Controlling some medium or platform for communication is an important part of China’s soft power. Telling China’s story as a rising superpower to the world is a key part of its foreign policy.
But it is not as simple as owning a Hollywood studio. Rapidly shifting technology and tastes are reversing the roles of determining the content and message.
Joseph Goebbels, the reich minister of propaganda for Nazi Germany, once said that “future generations may conclude that the radio had as great an intellectual and spiritual impact on the masses as the printing press had before the beginning of the Reformation”.
He believed the Weimar Republic failed to understand the significance of the radio and was blind to the possibilities of this modern method of influencing the masses.
Today, it is not just the medium being the message, it is a conflation of technology that subjugates and bypasses an entire medium, like films, to allow many intended and unintended messages to either liberate or pervert a version of truth.
In light of this historical context and current dilemma, China’s foray into the Hollywood studio movie industry is strange for its overrated regard for the propaganda power of Chinese-themed films to attract or influence American audiences.