Steven Spielberg and the Beijing Olympics of Doom
PJM Guangzhou: If Steven Spielberg had hoped his decision to withdraw as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics over Darfur would resonate with the Chinese people as a brave moral stand -- he was utterly wrong, writes GZ Expat.
Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers
As the temperatures begin to climb and the fireworks ringing in the New Year quiet down, noise was made this week when Steven Spielberg announced his decision to split with the Beijing Olympics as an artistic director, due to his concern over China’s role with the government of Sudan and its handling of the situation in Darfur. While in the west many news agencies were reporting the news as a moral stand against tyranny, here in China it was barely reported at all. Herein lies the problem for Mr. Spielberg and the cause of those pushing the Darfur situation upon the Chinese government.
The government has a firm grip on old media — movies, television, newspapers, radio. Recent reporting on most Chinese news websites has focused on who is going to the Olympics and the preparations to make it successful — not who isn’t going and why. Spielberg made an attempt to make a statement by his refusal to work with the organizers of the Olympics, and perhaps make a statement to the people of China too. Well, he only made a statement to the western media outlets. In China, nobody cares.
When working with the Chinese, it is important to work from a position of strength, but also a position of friendship and trust. The entire culture is run through this principle — friendship, relationships, what can you do for me — guanxi. Mr. Spielberg, by announcing through the media his intentions of withdrawing because of political convictions, broke that trust and those that he worked with will do whatever it takes to shut him out of China in the future.
In the late 90s Taiwan pop star A-Mei was blazing a trail through China with ground-breaking concerts, packing stadiums with tens of thousands of screaming fans. Her face was everywhere in Guangzhou and other cities in China — street signs, television ads, bus ads, you name it. A-Mei was to the Chinese in the late 90s what Michael Jackson was to America in the mid 80s. Young, cute, and energetic, she was a symbol of the times for the youth. And then, in 2000 she sang the Taiwan national anthem at the inauguration of President Chen Shui-Bien. Overnight, the ads were gone, her face was gone, and her voice was not to be heard on the radio, wiped clean by the state censors. News of her action spread and by the time she reemerged in China for concerts, her star had faded. The regular folk in China viewed her as a “traitor” to the one-China vision. While she resumed to play to big crowds a year or so later, her popularity among ordinary people and her market appeal disappeared.
On any given day, walking through the city of Guangzhou, or any southern Chinese city for that matter, you run across folk from all walks of life. The Chinese economic boom has enriched (literally) the lives of many in this region and there are many that are trying their best to enrich their lives too. Usually at every subway station entrance or near major shopping districts in the city, you will find countless street vendors selling the latest Hollywood-released movies and television series on DVD for RMB10 to RMB20 each (USD1.50-3.00). Mr. Spielberg and others in Hollywood have been working very hard with the government to put an end to this blatant piracy of intellectual property rights, with limited success. While the government has a firm grip on the media, they do have a hard time putting down some of these types of activities, because the local relationships between officials and those making money off these counterfeits are often times inseparable. Some of the agreements have been the gradual acceptance of more and more Hollywood movies into theaters and other agreements which actually endorse the early DVD release of movies (earlier than in the USA) with Chinese language subtitles and voice-overs. With Mr. Spielberg’s recent “embarrassment” to the government, look for the government to begin “banning” his movies and turning a blind eye to the counterfeits (of his movies particularly) as well.
Western governments and societies were all founded on the same Christian principles and their laws are built on those same principles of morality and fair play; modern day China was not. China was founded on the atheist principles of communism and has morphed into what it is today: business and making money. There is little regard for “moral” issues when it comes to the competition over business interests.
Mr. Spielberg, who made a stand he felt was morally superior to those he was working with, will find it quite frustrating in the future to make any sort of inroads into the growing consumer market that is China, just as A-Mei before him.
GZ Expat is an American living and working in Guangzhou for 9 years in manufacturing and development of consumer products for export around the world.
| Comment |  Digg This |
 del.icio.us |
 |
 |
 PJM Home |
12 Comments
OmegaPaladin:So China gets what China wants. Anyone who dares cross the political establishment is smeared among the populace. Spielberg IS morally superior to the repressive Chinese government, and to someone as craven as the author - who really would work with anyone for a buck.
The Chinese government is everything the anti-American left accuse the USA of being.
Feb 17, 2008 - 2:16 am nobody:You westerners always say that Chinese government don’t respect the human right based on what you think and hear.But i’ll say that is ridiculous.The situation you talk about is what was 20 years before.As a common people in China,i’m proud to say that we have a harmonious society,safty, and the human right as same as Americans.Now we are free to express the different political opinion.Why there are many counterfeits,’cause China has just got rid of penury,we can’t get used to such a lot of new inventions so fast,but we still do our best what we are doing now to improve the situation to protect the intellectual property right,don’t forget there are 1.3billion persons,it’s a huge project.Roma cannot be built in one day.We don’t like the man who is not on the side of the majority,espacially the traitor who must be punished in some ways,it’s all because of the culture.It’s just the same as you don’t like Ben Laden.So if you really want to understand what the other country do,you must know its culture.You can’t just regard something is right or wrong so simplely,it’s dual-standard.We chinese are friendly from the bottom of our heart,we respect the different countries.You just can’t regard us in the blinkers and use the old way.
Feb 17, 2008 - 7:53 am Curly Smith:I think this “Well, he only made a statement to the western media outlets: in China, nobody cares.” should read “Well, he only made a statement to the western media outlets: in China, nobody hears about it”.
If a liberal buffoon criticizes a dictatorship does he make a sound?
Feb 17, 2008 - 8:22 am Concerned American:nobody, if only it were 20 years ago that persecution of different groups in China had ended. Persecution of Falun Gong continues to this day, with tens of thousands imprisoned and over three thousand documented deaths to date. In the past month, another dozen were killed.
Who are these people who are persecuted? Peaceful and gentle people, arrested for the “crime” of practicing a non-violent, compassionate and tolerant belief system.
Why are they persecuted? Because the Chinese Communist Party can’t control it — practice is entirely up to the individual and there is no centralized organization.
When old women are arrested for peacefully meditating in a park or even in the privacy of their own home, something is definitely wrong. Not everyone cares only about making money and supporting the evil.
Feb 17, 2008 - 10:03 am A. N. Pierson:One thing should be obvious - someone with Spielberg’s experience would be perfectly aware of the business implications of his actions. And yet he went ahead and did it. Good for him.
The Chinese may be too paranoid to allow their people to hear about this, but the rest of the world has.
Feb 17, 2008 - 11:14 am JustAnotherInfidel:“Western governments and societies were all founded on the same Christian principles and their laws are built on those same principles of morality and fair play; modern day China was not. China was founded on the atheist principles of communism and has morphed into what it is today: business and making money. There is little regard for “moral” issues when it comes to the competition over business interests. ”
Let’s give the Chinese a little time to adapt. We used to have child labor, indentured servitude and monopolistic business practices in the U.S. before the labor movement. All with the blessings of our good Christian leadership. The Chinese Government is feeling the backlash from it’s citizenry against injustice and corruption.
Feb 17, 2008 - 4:36 pm John Dunshee:They are? I thought the whole point of the piece was that they’re not.
China has seen that Communism leads to poverty.
So they have advanced to Fascism.
The State no longer has a monopoly on business, but they still have a monopoly on censorship and regulation. They don’t need to own it, as long as they control it.
But they will still call it Communism, just as in the U.S. it is called Liberalism.
Capitalism - The means of production are owned and controlled by private parties.
Communism/Socialism - The means of production are owned and controlled by the State.
Fascism - The means of production are owned by private parties but are controlled by the State.
Feb 17, 2008 - 10:17 pm Thomas:It is dead wrong if anyone consider Mr. Spielberg a person another A-Mei. It is also dead wrong to say “In China, nobody cares” about Mr. Spielberg’s decision, indeed it has caused a shock wave in China, the fact of your writing from GZ in China itself mirrors it. The author claims that “China was founded on the atheist principles of communism”, wrong. At no single exception of communism regimes in the world has it helmed by an atheist, Chinese communist party has made every effort to establish and create its leader and the party as the unique God in China– jails open widely the doors for dissents. And this time the jail in Beijing opens its door to those residents who protest being kicked out of the city with their aged homes were shoveled away just to make the city look modern for 2008 Olympic.
Feb 18, 2008 - 2:31 am P. Ami:I lived in China for almost 2 years. From my experience, I found the Chinese people to be marginally friendly, very self-serving and ignorant of the rest of the world.
The moral relativism of Nobody is evident when comparing anyone who does not agree with the majority to an individual who is directly responsible for the deaths of a few thousand people. The fact that Chinese Ren, when I lived in China, thought that the US had it coming to it on 9/11, that you will find Bin Laden t-shirts sold as souvenirs and that every excuse under the sun is provided for the graft, theft and various other wild schemes one sees on a daily basis is partly a function of never having had a genuine experience with cultures and systems outside of their own. Then again, they also excuse Mao’s murder of tens of millions as, “There are too many Chinese anyway”. Then there was the college education computer programmer who once told my wife that if he had only one day to live he would buy a gun and kill as many Japanese as he could and the college educated office manager who told me a Chinese King once conquered half of Europe (Ghangis Kahn). Two things about that last revelation that I found illuminating.
A) China’s rational for its conquest of Tibet is, what was once part of China is always part of China.
B) This same student denied that an Indian Queen once defeated the Chinese armies and took procession of Chinese territories (Victoria of England).
Logic, innovation and property is not respected in China as it is in even this degraded version of the West. It is no wonder the Chinese still light up when you mention their thousand year old invention of gunpowder. Perhaps the progress JustAnotherInfidel wants us to wait for is far off indeed.
Feb 18, 2008 - 11:33 am breezaway:Yes, well, Speilberg is posturing for the folks back home, not to influence some earnest Chinese (which he would regard as ‘Chinese Masses’). He would be most dissapointed that the ‘masses’ do not respond, but after all it’s his US and Western ‘image’ that is important to him. A matter of ‘moral posturing’.
I am not sure how we stomach such a show-off. After all, he’s been doing this sort of thing for years. G
Feb 19, 2008 - 9:20 pm breezaway:Yes, well, Speilberg is posturing for the folks back home, not to influence some earnest Chinese (which he would regard as ‘Chinese Masses’). He would be most dissapointed that the ‘masses’ do not respond, but after all it’s his US and Western ‘image’ that is important to him. A matter of ‘moral posturing’, playing out on TV and in Hollywood.
I am not sure how we stomach such a show-off. After all, he’s been doing this sort of thing for years. G
Feb 19, 2008 - 9:26 pm breezaway:Yes, well, Speilberg is posturing for the folks back home, not to influence some earnest Chinese (which he would regard as ‘Chinese Masses’). He would be most dissapointed that the ‘masses’ do not respond, but after all it’s his US and Western ‘image’ that is important to him. A matter of ‘moral posturing’, playing out on TV and in Hollywood.
I am not sure how we stomach such a show-off. After all, he’s been doing this sort of thing for years. G
Feb 19, 2008 - 9:29 pm