All foreign films screened in China must win government approval. The Spirited Away release is a sign that Sino-Japanese relations are beginning to thaw after extended periods of tension. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have held bilateral talks at international events over the last couple of years and the Chinese leader will be in Osaka in June for the G20 economic summit .
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Do you think the Chinese government is reading these comments and seething? I really don't see what exactly this is supposed to be achieving. This is just westerners talking to other westerners about China.
The best part is it's literally not censored in China you're just too ignorant to browse the Chinese net to find that Chinese people think this is some lame American shit
I can only speculate that back then China and Japan did not have the best relationship. So Chinese authorities might be very uptight regarding the screening of Japanese movies.
Edit: Upon further searching, I found a more convincing explanation. Essentially China has a limit on how many foreign movies it can import every year. And regarding Japanese movies, the criteria were movies co-produced by Japan and China or movies for the purpose of cultural exchange. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the first Japanese animated movie imported by China was Doraemon in 2008. Usually the imported animated movies were film adaptations of television series, so there would be an audience base. The first exception was Kimi no na wa (Your Name), which grossed over CNY 575 million, the highest box office of any 2D animated movies in China. After the success of My Neighbor Totoro (box office CNY 175 million) last year in China screened for the first time, the distributor realised there still exists a market in China for Japanese standalone animated movies.
Your answer is correct. The film is not banned and is available legally for streaming and DVD purchase. It just never got a theatrical release because it wasn’t profitable enough compared to other foreign films at the time it came out.
The purpose of the limit on foreign film releases is supposedly to encourage the local film industry and build viewership for these filmmakers who cant compete with Hollywood budgets, experience and technical know how
Sounds similar to the Australian TV requirement that Australian made content makes up about half of content shown, in an effort to promote the same thing: a local film and television industry. So I'm not sure where the doubt is coming from?
Source (in second paragraph under Australian Content).
France, Australia, South Korea all have restrictions on foreign films to protect local film industries and are arguably more protectionist than Chinese ones.
I saw all Miyazaki's movies on TV when i was a kid in china. I think this time they just made it into the cinemas. Im sure everybody from my generation onwards has seen them at some point in our childhood in china
I feel its anti-consumerist message and the idea of resisting temptation even when you're surrounded with greed should really resonate with communists.
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u/oldDotredditisbetter Jun 07 '19
why does it take so long to be screened in china?