In line with Xi Jingping’s pursuit of ‘cultural confidence,’ the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has reclaimed its domestic film market by making hit propagandistic blockbusters that instil militarism into the Chinese population. Data from The Economist’s survey of Douban, a social network where users review films, show as much, tracing Chinese films’ share of total views increasing from 21% in 2010 to 55% in 2021, with domestic blockbusters accounting for 22% of total views in 2021, compared with 10% in 2010.
It is interesting to analyse these blockbusters, as they reflect the narrative of international relations that the CPP wants to present to the Chinese: that China is an underdog that will help its allies and not back down to foreign intimidation, despite the predation of the West. In the case of perhaps the first of this kind of blockbuster, Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) became the highest grossing film ever in China and presents an elite Chinese soldier saving an unidentified African country from Anglo mercenaries, touting the tagline: ‘Anyone who offends China, no matter how remote, must be exterminated.’ While the film thus seems to be trying to convey a benevolent vision of China as a liberator of Africa, where it is heavily invested through policies like the Belt and Road Initiative or the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation, Petrus Liu and Lisa Rofel’s analysis suggests that the Chinese in fact see themselves as ‘a new master race that has arrived to displace the whites as the new saviour’ of Africa, presenting a ‘fantasy…borrowed from the older era of European colonial history.’ The CCP is therefore not seeking to dismantle Western hegemony, but rather to take over the reins by fashioning itself as a superpower in the image of the West.
Beyond distorting present-day relations, the CCP also bends history to their will. The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021), which pushed Wolf Warrior 2 to second place as the highest grossing Chinese film to date, depicts the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army helping North Korean troops during the Korean War to push back American forces in a fictionalisation of the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir which has been widely criticised as inaccurate. The film overtly engages with state propaganda, as The Global Times, an official newspaper of the CCP, explained: ‘The national feeling displayed in the film echoes the rising public sentiment in safeguarding national interests in front of provocations, which has great implications for today’s China-U.S. competition.’ There is nothing novel in the content of this propaganda. The Battle at Lake Changjin falls in line with a long tradition of using the Korean War, known in China as ‘The War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea,’ as agitprop, with Xi Jingping, on the War’s 70th Anniversary, proclaiming that China will never shrink in the face of foreign aggression. But the format of the propaganda is certainly new; like an American blockbuster, The Battle at Lake Changjin had a massive budget of $200 million, making it the most expensive non-English-language film ever, and drew upon celebrity for popular success, casting Oscar-nominated pop idol Jackson Yee.
A more recent entry, Born to Fly (2023), further shows how these blockbusters are made in the image of Hollywood. The film follows the mission of Chinese Air Force pilots to engineer new jets that match the superior jets of foreign pilots who intrude on their airspace, ending in a dramatic dogfight where the Chinese outmanoeuvre their enemy to conclude, ‘Anyone who invades China’s airspace will be resolutely shut down.’ The story of pilots pushing their limits to pull off a Herculean task for their air force has obvious similarities with the Top Gun franchise. In Born To Fly, however, the intruders, although never explicitly identified, speak with American accents and thus represent the United States. So, when they declare, ‘We can come and go whenever we want,’ the film seemingly alludes to the United States’ ‘freedom of navigation’ operations in the South China Sea, where they insistently sail ships through waters that China claims as their sovereign territory. Though Born To Fly’s direct confrontation with America appears to be an escalation, such militaristic blockbusters have become so common that one reviewer judged it merely, ‘Another in China’s seemingly never-ending line of propagandistic, government-backed action films.’ And, indeed, there is seemingly an overarching narrative across the whole propagandistic genre: the inevitable rise of China, the underdog, despite the West’s best efforts to oppress it.
Some have argued that American blockbusters are just as propagandistic. As Scott Mendelson has claimed, The Battle at Lake Changjin is ‘arguably no more jingoistic’ than ‘Pearl Harbor or We Were Soldiers.’ Similarly, Phil Hoad has argued that ‘It’s not like Top Gun and the Rambo sequels weren’t also full of the same hot jingoism.’ But this sentiment ignores the fact that, because of CCP censorship, there will never be an equivalent cultural counterbalance to bellicose rhetoric in China in the vein of Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now.
Beijing’s censors, moreover, not only silence dissent within China; their power to select which American films make it to Chinese cinemas has also led to pre-emptive self-censorship amongst Hollywood producers becoming standard practice. Ever since Western films were first allowed into China in 1994, Hollywood has felt the effect of Beijing censorship, as the CCP banned both Sony and Disney products after they coincidentally both owned studios that released films about Tibet—Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun respectively—which depicted China’s invasion of the country in 1951. Since then, self-censorship has been standard practice in Hollywood, with the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an American government agency designed to brief Congress, describing in 2015 how, ‘with an eye toward distribution in China, American filmmakers increasingly edit films in anticipation of Chinese censors’ many potential sensitivities.
There has, however, recently been pushback against self-censorship within Hollywood, with some of the biggest films of the last couple years foregoing Chinese releases due to problems with CCP censorship. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) did not release in China because Sony/Marvel refused to indulge CCP censors’ request to edit out the Statue of Liberty, while Disney/Pixar refused to remove a same-sex kissing scene from Lightyear (2022), despite the CCP having always cracked down on depictions of homosexuality. Indeed, if bills like Mark Green’s SCREEN Act or Ted Cruz’s SCRIPT Act that propose to withdraw all government aid for productions that appease the CCP are passed in the US Congress, American filmmakers are likely to become to be even less inclined to self-censorship.
Though it might seem like a close competition between two superpowers for soft power, Chinese blockbusters do not yet challenge Hollywood internationally. All the way back in 2011, Steven Zeitchik and David Pierson wrote in The Los Angeles Times: ‘Instead of a global-cinema powerhouse, some worry China is at risk of turning into another Bollywood: healthy on its home continent but limp abroad,’ and that concern turned out to be well-placed. Even the Hollywood-sized hit, The Battle at Lake Changjin, only grossed in China, as others, particularly South Korea, were grossed out by the propaganda. Chris Berry, Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, was quoted in The Telegraph in 2021 as saying: ‘There is a lot of rhetoric about the desire to export, [but] these films are made for Chinese audiences inside the PRC.’ With mounting pressures domestically, a lot of thought goes into ensuring the right films for domestic audiences are produced, rather than considering global viewership. In that way, China has been able to reclaim its own audiences, but has not yet been able to produce a sequel to Hollywood. Only time will tell if they can break America’s hold on global hegemony through their own soft power, even if it is done one blockbuster at a time.