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March 26, 2024 - Epoch Times

50:24

Hollywood’s Dirty Little Communist Secret: Producer Interview

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	The level of infiltration that communist China has achieved into the American movie industry is startling, to say the least.
	In fact, many films are so expensive nowadays that they desperately depend on the China market to make a profit.
	A movie might make $200 million domestically, which covers their production and marketing costs, but then, in order to make an actual profit, they need to enter China.
	And in order to do so, studio heads are willing to do almost anything.
	Because it used to be that the Chinese Communist Party would consider allowing American films into the country, so long as they did not mention these so-called taboo subjects.
	Things like Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong, things like that.
	However, over the past 20 or so odd years, this censorship has evolved into an altogether different type of beast.
	Knowing the importance of China, studio heads, writers, showrunners, and so on, they not only ignore the topics they know they should ignore, but even further, they add Chinese Communist Party talking points into their actual films, in the hopes of being allowed into the market.
	Furthermore, actors self-censor their views, because they've seen what happens to actors who don't.
	And all the while, American audiences have been presented a picture on their screens of a benevolent, communist China.
	Now, in a certain sense, we all knew that this was happening.
	However, the extent of it, as well as the specifics of how this infiltration has manifested, were recently uncovered in a new documentary called Hollywood Takeover, China's Control of the Film Industry.
	And I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sit down and speak with Miss Tiffany Meyer, the lead investigative journalist, as well as the producer of that awesome documentary.
	And she explained to me in rather great detail what the Chinese communists are really doing behind the scenes in regards to films.
	Take a listen.
	Tiffany, thank you so much for joining us.
	Great to be with you.
	Alright, so your new film is called Hollywood Takeover, obviously a reference to China's takeover of the American film industry.
	Can you tell the audience, how does this takeover manifest on the surface?
	Right, so it starts out with money, right?
	Movies cost a lot of money.
	And then in 2008, we saw the Beijing Olympics.
	After that, the whole world was noticing we had the financial crisis in the US.
	Following that success, Beijing was like, hey, we want to get into the movie industry.
	And Hollywood needed money.
	So the best way to do that is with joint ventures with Chinese studios, because China doesn't Let all movies in.
	They only have a select few that enter the Chinese market.
	But if you can't get in, there's a lot of money to be made because everyone's like, ooh, 1.4 billion population, right?
	This was a growing economy.
	This was the place to be.
	And so with that, you start seeing things change.
	So we have Chris Fenton.
	He's a film executive.
	In the film, he talks about how he helped change Looper and Iron Man 3 to get them into the China market.
	And so to do that with Looper, they changed the script.
	So it has to do with time travel, which is actually banned in China.
	Can't control the past and the present and the future all at once.
	It's a little harder.
	So it's banned in China.
	But they were able to get this film in because they changed the utopia future from France to China.
	So it became like, that's the place you want to be.
	And there's this powerful line in the movie where this character's future self comes and meets him and is like, you want to go to China.
	And so when they tested that, everyone was like, oh my God, that's such a good line.
	And even the Chinese Communist Party was like, ooh, that's a good line.
	And so things like that, right?
	So you're saying that line, it wasn't like, because I watch some sci-fi sometimes, like Firefly is a good example.
	And they say in the future, you know, the people speak English and Chinese are like a mixture of the two.
	And it's like, okay, well, that kind of, if you extrapolate what's happening today in the future.
	That might be like just an artistic choice by the showrunners.
	But you're saying that particular line, it was added exclusively for the Chinese censors?
	Yes.
	Right, okay, interesting.
	And then so with that success, because Looper then made a lot of money, Marvel came along and was like, hey, you know, We've been having trouble getting our films into the China market.
	What if you had about like, say, 30 million for Looper?
	What if we give you 200 million?
	What can you do with that?
	But Marvel's very secretive, so Chris recounts in the film how they had like 90 minutes trapped in a little room to read the entire script and try and figure out where can they start adding China elements to then make it acceptable to the censors to maybe get a piece of the Chinese market So they inserted a new character called Dr. Wu because China likes to be the innovators of the world, right?
	Probably stolen tech, but we don't talk about that.
	And so instead, this character is inserted in to save the life of Tony Stark or Iron Man, right?
	So think about what that's doing to you psychologically.
	You see, you're a superhero who then gets saved by a Chinese doctor who has like the most advanced technology that the world has ever seen, that even a superhero would need their help.
	And that movie did super well in China.
	So now a lot of studios are like, oh my gosh, we have to do everything we can to get into that market.
	And throughout the years, you start noticing that since 2012, no major film studio has produced a movie with China as the villain.
	Instead, you see Sandra Bullock and Gravity getting saved in space by the Chinese, not the people on the ISS, the Americans or the Russians, but the Chinese.
	And you see all these changes.
	And then it gets to the point where now Chris Fenton, right, and others looking back, they're like, wait, for access to the Chinese market in the process, Americans, Hollywood, everything gave up everything that American stands for, right?
	Democracy, human rights, all these different like taboo topics to China.
	So Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Tiananmen.
	Can't cover that.
	And what is that doing, right?
	So now we get to the point where you see, especially among young Americans, this fascination with socialism to the point where, especially on TikTok, right?
	A lot of young Americans are like, Oh my gosh, life in America is terrible.
	Like it looks so much better over there because you don't get that information.
	It's gotten to the point where the world sees communist China, the way communist China wants the world to see it.
	And it's gotten to that point where it wasn't the Chinese censors coming out and saying, "You need to change this." It's gotten to the point where studios are self-censoring just in the hopes that they might get into that market.
	And so it's gotten to the point where it's now raising all sorts of national security concerns because as many have noted in the past, the communists understood that if you control culture, eventually you reshape politics.
	It gets to that point.
	So that's where a lot of the power is.
	A lot of people talk about government infiltration, but it's like, it actually starts with the culture and how people perceive the world.
	And then when they go, when they go to the voting box, right, they're like, oh, this seems fine.
	So it's like gotten all those issues that have been raised.
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	Yeah.
	So, you know, the example you gave was really interesting with Iron Man, because I imagined that to get into China, the thinking is like, OK, you have a blockbuster movie that the government officials know will do well because it did well in the U.S.
	It did well internationally.
	OK, we'll accept it as long as it doesn't contain the taboo subjects.
	Taiwan, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, etc., right?
	As long as it doesn't contain those topics, we'll consider it.
	But what you're saying is like, was there like a shift where that wasn't enough anymore and you actually had to go overtly pro-China in order to even be considered?
	Yeah, so that's kind of basically been the whole process, right?
	Because they only allow certain films in per year.
	So they're very... it goes through a lot of scrutiny, where they're like, hmm, is this going to touch on any of those taboo subjects?
	Is it going to do well?
	Are people going to like it?
	How is the world going to see it?
	But I think it was that process where as you get more power, right, you want more.
	So it got to the point where I think Pacific Rim was a great example.
	It had a budget of $190 million.
	It didn't do that well in the U.S.
	markets.
	It got about $101 million.
	So it's losing money.
	But in China alone, it got $111 million.
	So just by getting into that market, it doubled its box office profits.
	And it had some Chinese characters in it, but they like died pretty soon in the film.
	But it was really well received in China.
	I think that was the example where you have communist Leaders being like, oh, look, we didn't have to do anything, but they're already portraying China or communist China the way we would want it to be.
	And they're realizing how much power that is.
	But in the film, we talk about Jiang Zemin, who watched Titanic, and he was blown away by it.
	Jiang Zemin was a former leader of China.
	Yes, the one that's known for horrific persecution and human rights abuses.
	You saw Titanic, and he was so blown away by the emotion in it.
	And he actually ordered all of his Politburo, like the most powerful people in China, to watch it.
	So imagine you're like an army commander.
	You're like, why am I watching this three-hour romance film, right?
	But his whole point was never believe that we're the only ones who understand the power of emotion.
	And so they see art as a tool and as a means of serving the cause of the party or the state, as a weapon, basically.
	Whereas in America, we're like, ooh, freedom of the arts, freedom of expression.
	That's not how art is seen in China.
	Everything has to toe that party line.
	And so when something like Hollywood as an institution tries to get in, These are two very different ideologies that then come together.
	So then to get into that market, you lose all of the freedoms that you normally think come with the artistic world.
	How many films are allowed into China from the US every year?
	So it's changed throughout the years.
	It started out with like maybe 12 and then went up to 24.
	The peak was 40 but after the pandemic that's gone down again to like 30 something.
	So it changes depending on politics.
	Joe Biden when he was vice president and helped Xi Jinping who was also like vice premier at the time.
	They really had this commitment and this agreement that then also opened up more films that we talk about in the film.
	Chris Fenton mentions that.
	And so you see that in terms of geopolitics, right?
	If the two countries are doing better, you try to have more exchange, as they called it.
	Chris Fenton, he always talks about how he really believed in that aspiration of more engagement with the two superpowers.
	It's going to help the people of China, right?
	It's going to make them more democratic, more liberal.
	And then later he says he got punched in the face, not physically, but metaphorically.
	And he realizes that This is not the future he wants his children to grow up in.
	It's now gotten to the point of basically a cold war, or maybe even a hot war is brewing on the horizon, and he's realized that, oh, like, we taught them, he says, like, we taught the communists how to fish, as in, like, how to make movies.
	They can make them on the level of Hollywood now.
	But insert all the things they want.
	So after the pandemic, you've seen a shift where the Chinese population actually prefers to watch their own propaganda films that are made in China and not these foreign blockbusters.
	And you are also seeing some changes, like for instance, with Marvel's Sen Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals.
	Those were like custom made for the Chinese people, right?
	These are Chinese legends, Chinese cast, Chinese crew, but neither of those enter the China market.
	And many people...
	Bombed, I believe, in the U.S.
	box office, if I'm not mistaken.
	Yeah, but it's kind of funny, right, because Simu Liu, the lead character for Sanchi, he had just, years ago, said something slightly negative about the Communist Party, about what his parents experienced while in China.
	And Chloe Zhao, she's the director of Eternals, she had said something, I think back in 2017, like a while ago, slightly negative.
	And so just because of those instances, you see those films not entering.
	So then many studios are like, wait, if you have a story that's crafted for that side of the world, and yet it can't even get in, I think that just highlights the amount of control that the Communist Party wants to the point where, like, you had Black Adam, another blockbuster film, come out.
	There's one line that talks about the Dalai Lama.
	Kind of positively.
	Just in passing reference, right?
	But one line, that movie didn't get in.
	And so many, Christian Toto, he's a film critic, he notes, he's like, that's just the amount of control they want.
	That even one line, they're afraid of that.
	And why are they afraid, right?
	Because the Chinese Communist Party knows, fundamentally, that it's an illegitimate government in China.
	Its greatest fear is its people, the Chinese people realizing that.
	And so it does everything it can to control its population, but now through Hollywood and also other means like media, lawfare, drug warfare, all these different means to control how the whole world also views it and gets that information.
	Yeah.
	And I imagine like some of the examples you gave are very overt, but I imagine like just sitting in one of those rooms as a writer or as a studio head, you kind of you've internalized it.
	I mean, you know, you know, the writing on the wall, you understand the landscape you're operating in.
	And so I'm sure that That we only know about the overt things that have kind of been made public, like with Top Gun Maverick removing the Taiwanese and Japanese flags from the back of the jacket.
	In the commercial, at least, they put them back in.
	Doctor Strange, actually, because they had the Epoch Times box in one of their scenes, they weren't allowed in China.
	So we know about those very overt examples.
	But I'm sure it's probably impossible to know about the Tens of thousands of tiny decisions that were made in the process of the film being made itself, even in the draft phase, in the storyboard phase, where they're knowing, okay, Doctor Strange went to Tibet, technically, to study magic arts, so who are we going to cast in Tibet to be the spiritual leader?
	Well, how about an Irish woman or a Gaelic woman?
	Let me ask you this.
	So I love watching old 007 movies, like old James Bond movies, the ones with like Sean Connery, Lazenby, you know, the old ones from like the 70s, 80s, even 60s.
	And one of the really stark things that I notice whenever I watch those old films is how just like obvious it is that the Russians are the bad guys.
	It's like, yeah, the Russian spies, you don't trust the Russians, we're going into Russia, we're going to infiltrate, oh, the Russians are here.
	You know, it's like, it's very obvious.
	But like you mentioned, like you watch some recent American productions, you don't get that at all with the Chinese, right?
	At all.
	Even like "Top Gun" Maverick, they stood up a little bit with the flags, but even in that film, even though technically it would obviously be China who would be the country that could actually, you know, in terms of air flight, compete with us, it's like some unnamed Eastern European countries.
	So it's like they're not even willing to poke that bear.
	What do you think this country, America, would be like if that wasn't the case for the last 20 years?
	If movies were free to portray China as the geopolitical threat it actually is, what do you think would be different in this country right now?
	I think it'd be vastly different, right?
	Because if you look at so many different areas right now, whether that's the education or even in company culture, the DEI, all these different things, you have many people who survived the cultural revolution in China saying, These come from China or Marxism, like these ideologies go back to that.
	And so it's infiltrated like everything, right?
	So our education, the company culture, our government, to the point where you have young Americans not recognizing it.
	So I think if that happened different, right, you probably wouldn't have gotten to this point where TikTok is now being debated back and forth all the time.
	Like people would be able to recognize what's happening.
	Perhaps you wouldn't have this Cancel culture if you will that's very similar to the cultural revolution to the point where little kids in school are Being turned against each other on the basis of color or race where schools are turning against the parents right now the teachers aren't allowed to tell the parents if the kid is a Wanting to identify as someone else or something else, right?
	Some people identify as cats, supposedly, in schools.
	All these different things.
	That ties back to the Cultural Revolution, where you turn everyone against each other to the point that everyone's afraid.
	No one knows who to trust, where to look.
	And ultimately, right, that fits into the Communist China's total goal of hegemony, where you can't have two superpowers, so the U.S.
	has to go and the free world with it.
	And to do that, They talk about something called unrestricted warfare, right?
	I'm sure you've covered it a lot on your show where it's like winning without fighting.
	How do you do that?
	You destroy a country from within so that you don't have to come in with your bullets, your guns, your military.
	You just sit from afar and, oh, that's great.
	Look at the chaos unfolding.
	But it goes back to the whole way of communism in general, right?
	It's like you create conflict, you create struggle until it's destroyed and then you come in as the savior and then the people are like, oh my gosh, like, right?
	Everyone talks about communism as atheist, but you have to believe in the party.
	It's to the point where it's like, that is your God.
	You can't believe in anything else.
	It's like, oh, sure, China says they have Christians in the Bible, but Xi Jinping is also on the wall in the church next to Xi.
	Like, think about that, right?
	It's like, the Bible has been rewritten, all these different things.
	Meanwhile, the house Christians, the ones who want to read the unedited and changed Bible, are put in jail.
	They're persecuted, all these different things.
	So you have those elements now seeping into the Western or what we normally call the free world, right?
	It seems like throughout these ages, it's gotten less and less free.
	And many point to money, right?
	The opening up of the World Trade Organization when the U.S.
	especially pushed to let China in.
	That was in the hopes, again, aspirational of making this communist country more democratic, more liberal.
	But if you look at that, what has happened Because China doesn't play by the Western rules.
	These free markets are now less free.
	So you're seeing that in all these different sectors where now you talk about the border crisis, right?
	The Chinese nationals who are single military-age men are the fastest growing group of individuals coming across.
	And they're doing that with the Chinese version of TikTok.
	They don't even have TikTok over there.
	They have their own version called Douyin that has a different algorithm.
	And that's literally giving them step-by-step guides on where the holes in the wall are and how to come in, what questions, how to answer those questions a border patrol would ask you if you do get caught, all these different things, right?
	So it's gotten to the point where many national security and military experts that we talk to are really concerned because they're like, we don't know who these people are.
	They note that China has exit bans.
	Sure, some of them are coming here, genuinely seeking asylum.
	But many of them, you're like, how did you get out of China?
	There's probably a reason.
	You talk about the Islamic sleeper cells.
	There's a lot that the Chinese Communist Party could do too, because the Chinese Communist Party sees all Chinese people, even if you're born and raised in America, but maybe you had ancestors in China, they see you as one of theirs.
	So they talk about transnational repression, right?
	So it's like, even if you're an American, You get those stories of a Chinese individual digging up a seed in a cornfield in Iowa to steal back for China.
	But what happens if they get caught?
	They get burned, right?
	The Communist Party isn't going to protect you, but they want you to serve them all the time.
	So it's that environment of fear back home that we're now seeing here in America start to unfold, right?
	You have all these different stories in education, companies, and even the government.
	Wow, so you know, I didn't even think of that when you mentioned it, how I think you're actually right.
	Like, looking at those old movies, like the 007 movies that I love, you watch them and you're thinking, like, oh, the people watching, like the American citizens watching these films, they are being entertained, but they're also now aware of, like, honeypot schemes.
	They're aware of surveillance.
	They're aware to look at the mirror in the hotel room to make sure it's not being wired.
	They could be bugged.
	They're aware of that tactic and the Soviet mindset, right?
	But you're right.
	Because the Chinese haven't been portrayed as the modern day villains, I think a lot of people just don't realize it.
	But on the flip side, like you said, if Hollywood wasn't hamstrung, they could have portrayed the Chinese Communist Party as the modern-day villains with modern-day tactics and they could have explained the Cultural Revolution and communism and how it manifests and how bad it is.
	And they could have used that in a plethora of films to actually teach people.
	But let me ask you this.
	Is it a case of the tail wagging the dog?
	Is it the case that the studio heads want to get into China, and so they do this, or even if that wasn't, like, you know, getting into China wasn't the possibility, is it that maybe they're just aligning with the communist belief and they're like, well, you know, we kind of don't want to criticize communism anyway.
	I don't know if that's, you know, that's something you've thought about, but what's your opinion on that?
	I think on that it's two-fold.
	You have certain ones who, you know, just want to, they have the what's called fiduciary right to their shareholders, right?
	They're like, I have to make money so that all these, my workers get paid, you know, all these movies are expensive.
	So you have that part where, for instance, we have Nick Searcy in the film.
	He wants to produce his own film.
	It was going great.
	He's talking to these investors at the end.
	They're like, hey, so, um, we get a lot of money out of China.
	Can you, like, Make the story more appealing to them, right?
	So he's like, you know, this is about terrorists coming across the border.
	Can you make them Japanese?
	The Chinese really don't like the Japanese.
	Well, everyone knows about those Japanese terrorists coming across the U.S.
	southern border, right?
	He just starts laughing because he thinks it's a joke.
	He's like, what?
	Like, no.
	And then he was like, oh, wait, they're serious.
	He's like, I can't make the terrorist Japanese.
	Like, to him, it's just way too funny, right?
	So you have that aspect where it's literally just money.
	But you do have the other flip side where many people talk about, say, the World Economic Forum, the globalization movement, where you do have people who genuinely think that there is a global world order coming.
	And in that case, you want China on your side because they have already come up with the social credit system.
	They have widespread surveillance.
	So they're like, oh, we should get in with that because This is total control of not just, you know, this massive country, but the entire world.
	And there are those people who maybe see themselves as the ones in charge and want part of that.
	Whereas, you know, in America, if you look at the Constitution, it talks about individual freedoms or like, you know, liberties.
	You can freedom of religion, all these things, as long as you don't hurt other people.
	Right.
	But that's the opposite.
	It's fundamentally opposite of what communism is.
	So you can't really mix those two ideologies.
	But then if you talk about globalism, that's an entire different can of worms, if you will.
	Right.
	So then I think you have those two aspects.
	One is just money.
	You know, you want to make a dollar here.
	You don't think about nationalists, you're all those things.
	It's someone else's business.
	And then there's this other aspect of really seeing the whole world as something different.
	Okay, so far we've talked about the levers that the Chinese Communist Party has over to control what Hollywood studios produce in China.
	But what about here in the U.S.?
	Because I know at least one large chain of movie theaters is actually owned by a Chinese conglomerate, right?
	It's AMC, right?
	That one's a little tricky because I think they sold them again.
	It did used to be owned by Wanda Group, but then now if you look into it, it's like it's not.
	It's a little complicated on that, but for a time it was.
	Okay, but like at this moment domestically, they don't really have that kind of lever in the U.S.
	market that they can say like, hey, Probably towards bigger studios, it doesn't matter, but I know smaller studios, if I'm not mistaken, we actually here at the Epoch Times tried to put some movies into some large theaters, and they came back to us saying, we're not interested.
	And hey, maybe they weren't interested, but I do sometimes wonder if it's like, well, are you really not interested?
	Or is someone telling you to not be interested?
	So you don't know of anything like that?
	On small ones, yes, it gets a lot more tricky, especially on, say, university campuses, right?
	So, FK Rubachek, she did this film on finding courage, talking about the human rights abuses in China, specifically the live forced organ harvesting of Prisoners of Conscience, mainly Falun Gong, now a lot of people talk about the Uyghurs.
	So she made this film and tried to get it into a lot of colleges and universities, and most of them were just like, hey, no.
	Most of them didn't give a reason.
	Some of them did, and they're like, we love this film, but we can't play it because we have a lot of Chinese international students.
	and normally Chinese or international students in general you don't get scholarships so you pay the full price it's a lot of money and then also some more say medical universities there's a lot of scientific cooperation with China so it's like they're afraid that if they let something like this that might pressure the Chinese Communist Party, then they're going to lose all of that.
	To the point where even, say, Joshua Wong, right, he was one of the pro-democracy protesters or activists in Hong Kong, he went to Yale, was going to give a speech.
	They gave him a very small venue that was off to the side because the main one was funded by a famous Chinese person who still has ties to China.
	So you have all those instances where we see our universities as the beacons of democracy, free speech, all of that.
	But even there, you're having that influence when it comes to money.
	So I could see that playing out in terms of small theaters as well.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	So it seems like, you know, America is a very, at least in theory and in some ways in practice, a very open society in terms of, especially the markets, you know, that's why the Chinese are buying up a lot of farmland, because we're just an open society.
	So same thing in general with studios and the studio heads making the decision in order to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities, because a lot of them are publicly traded companies.
	And so it seems like there's this capitalist system to maximize shareholder value.
	The Chinese, they fully understand our system and they sort of use the system to push their own agenda.
	What would you say to someone who's looking at this situation?
	And kind of taking morality out of it, even the morality of keeping America safe from Chinese soft power invasion.
	And they're saying, hey, you know what?
	This is just market forces playing themselves out.
	China's a big market.
	They have access to that market.
	And if these studio heads want access to that market, who are you to say otherwise?
	You do see a lot of that, but then I think at the same time it gets back to what Chris Fenton was saying, right?
	It's like we taught them how to fish and now what happens down the road is you don't have a job anymore, right?
	It's like you gave away too much to the other side in the hopes of making the money in the short term, right?
	You're like, oh my gosh!
	Of course we'll work with you, have these joint ventures, all these things.
	China's great at reverse engineering.
	That's why they're having all those innovation breakthroughs, right?
	They see the U.S., especially the government, subsidize, give all these grants and funds into a specific sector.
	And they sit there and they're watching.
	And then these U.S.
	companies compete.
	One of them has that breakthrough.
	China starts sending people in, whether it's a janitor, an engineer, a student, all these different aspects with the goal of stealing it.
	Someone is successful, steals it, brings it back, they reverse engineer it, they just save billions of dollars.
	And so you have that aspect.
	So when it comes to these free markets, You have to be aware of what you're up against.
	If you don't want to talk about human rights, right, that's a huge issue on itself, the human rights abuses happening in China.
	But just here in America, right, you're giving away all of your know-how.
	Maybe you make money now, but down the road you're going to be out of jobs because they know how to do it cheaper and better.
	So where does that leave everyone else?
	Now you're like, ooh, are we going to become the new slaves?
	Like, what are the jobs left here?
	So that would be one aspect if you just want to talk about Right, right.
	That's a great point.
	Sort of a more long-term view, which, you know, that's sort of, unfortunately, the case that many people make for authoritarian regimes, that because of their design they can take that very long-term view versus a system like America, whether it's like you know, quarterly earnings reports or like, you know, two or two, four year terms of office, it's like a little bit harder to plan long term versus an authoritarian regime that can plan like, you know, whatever, 10, 100 years down the line.
	And it seems like they're sort of using that, they're using our free system.
	And they're using the sort of advantages of their not free system to take it to steal our lunch.
	That's, that is shocking.
	Okay, let me ask you a few more questions I don't want to take up too much of your time.
	To what extent does the media have culpability here?
	Because I know, so when you look at, for instance, sort of the messaging that's being pushed out by studio heads, internally, here in the U.S., they're very high and mighty.
	I mean, you look at the messaging that's coming out of Disney, Universal.
	Marvel, I mean of course that's a subsidiary of Disney, but whatever, like any of the big studio heads, like every messaging is like, oh, we need to have half of our characters be minorities.
	We need to, you know, have as much diversity as we can.
	That leaked Disney internal conversation that was like, we need half our characters to be LGBTQ+.
	You know, all that stuff.
	They're just fully in on the LGBTQ trans identity politics side of things.
	Okay, so that's their stance internally.
	In China, in order to appease that market, they're willing to do anything.
	They're willing to praise Xinjiang's local government, which is completely involved in the genocide there.
	They're willing to do anything, get black people off of the posters, change anything they want.
	They're willing to go all in for that market.
	These two things, they don't seem like they sort of can exist in the same world, but they do.
	Let me ask you this.
	Is it because the underlying sort of fiduciary responsibility is to the shareholders.
	And so because of the media environment, they feel comfortable pushing these agendas internally because even though at the box office they might not get returns, it seems that way, like people are sort of rejecting those messages being put in the films, but they get brownie points by the media.
	They get tons of publicity, tons of rave coverage by the mainstream outlets, saying, it's so brave.
	You know, this is the first all-female cast and crew on this film.
	It bombed in the box office.
	But like, you know, 2,700 articles about how great this is and how this is so innovative.
	So that's like, that's the sort of carrot and stick internally, that the media is actually pushing this.
	But then in terms of China, it's just straight money.
	So I guess my question to you is, Is this sort of juxtaposition, is it caused by the media?
	And without changing the media, will studios just continue to do it this way?
	I guess if you talk about Chinese infiltration, they have this term called like, you know, infiltration is a thousand grains of sand.
	So it's not just one.
	It's not just Hollywood, right?
	It is also the media.
	It's also, if you want to talk about more serious ones, drug warfare, the fentanyl pouring across, you have TikTok, you have all these different means.
	So I do think the media plays a huge role.
	I'm sure you've covered it probably more than we have, but basically all the major media in the US have a lot of China money.
	And they have these ad inserts that aren't labeled as ads.
	And China's very good at this thing where they make it sound like it's a local writing something.
	So, especially not the national newspapers, but the local branches in all around the world.
	This is not just in America.
	I'll also say Africa.
	There's a lot of infiltration there.
	And it sounds like it's a local community member who's writing this.
	But if you read it, You start seeing these things where it's like, ooh, it's praising communism, or socialism, or bashing capitalism, or freedom, all these different things.
	But it's very subtle, and it's like maybe you're talking about the local grass, you know, something really random.
	But it's super widespread, it's everywhere, to the point where you trust these, because you're like, oh, this is one of my people, right, this is a local.
	They get it.
	They have my best interest at heart.
	But then it's like a lot of those are ads.
	You don't realize it.
	And so you have that type of perception change happening in this area, right?
	And then you go to the theaters to be entertained.
	You're not there with your guard up, right?
	You're like, ooh, let's see what this film is about.
	You're not like, ooh, let's look for the infiltration points, right?
	Well, I am like that, but not many people are.
	Yeah, so then it's like you leave and then it's like if you ask people, right?
	Like you're mentioning the Soviets or the Russians, the Cold War spies.
	That's what you think of when you think of that country, right?
	What do you think of when you think of China?
	Depends if you've researched it versus if you just look at the media or pop culture all these different things You're like, oh look, they're like us maybe you know, they saved Sandra They're very cutting-edge.
	I think people think like oh, they're very like innovators in the world There's no no country's perfect, right?
	They have their issues whatever you start whitewashing what's happening there And I think that's the biggest thing you don't know what's happening to the Chinese people So even the big business folks go over there like I love this form of government.
	It's so efficient.
	It's like oh That's what you see!
	That's not the reality on the ground of the Chinese people who are suffering.
	And so I think you see that in all different aspects where, yeah, media does play a huge role because that is how most people get their news.
	Especially now, right, where one-third of young Americans get their news from TikTok.
	So that's gone to the next level where Many people point out TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
	TikTok is very different because of their algorithm, right?
	Normally, it's like, you like things, you write things, you search things, the algorithm's like, oh, maybe you're interested in that.
	It starts trying to change things.
	TikTok doesn't.
	It gives you things.
	And if you spend more than a few seconds on it, it's like, ooh, you like that.
	Which is why you have all these terrible stories, right?
	Especially about preteens who go on there, they think it's full of jokes, full of pranks, fun things.
	And then some of them kill themselves because they start getting fed these really dark, really depressing things or drugs, right?
	There's a massive fentanyl trade on there.
	All these different things where it's not talking about the thought being hijacked anymore, it's talking about the thought being planted.
	So you have people joking, it's like, oh, TikTok knew I was gay before I did.
	It's like, did it though?
	Or was it planted in you?
	And so you're seeing all of that play out to the point where that's where they're getting their news, right?
	And then there was this AI firm in Taiwan that did a They did a deep dive into TikTok over a while and looked at how it portrays different things.
	Apparently about the US, everything was negative.
	Whereas about Taiwan, it was 90% negative.
	So even Taiwan was slightly less negative than about America.
	And so when you see those things playing out, right, think about how that's influencing people's perceptions.
	And meanwhile, of course, in America, normally freedom of the press, you see all the issues happening here.
	So you're like, oh my gosh, this country is terrible.
	But then when you see the painted picture of what's happening over there, like even when Xi Jinping came to San Francisco, right?
	And suddenly homelessness disappeared in San Francisco for three days.
	So that's what you see over there.
	That's not the reality, right?
	The homeless are back in San Francisco, even here.
	But that's what's happening on a grand scale over there.
	And so when that starts being fed in, but we think this is free information, free news, that's when it gets really tricky because what are you actually reading?
	And then now with the rise of generative AI and all these different things, it's even more complex because you could have anyone sounding like that person saying things that they never said, which some are saying it's great for, you know, science and things, but at the same time criminals see an opportunity, especially when it comes to ransoms and kidnappings.
	And there's been a ton of cases about that already, which is driving a ton of concern.
	And obviously it's an election year, so there's other concerns where you had President Biden supposedly calling people in New Hampshire being like, don't go out and vote.
	And apparently it was someone that worked at Dean Phillips camp, but not on behalf of Dean Phillips.
	It was very tricky.
	So it's just a new world, basically, is what we're seeing.
	And listen, I think you should be more worried about this AI stuff more than anybody else, because I think for the AI to be really effective, at least in its current iteration, there should be a lot of images and videos of you online that they can draw from speaking and moving around.
	So given the fact that you're a public person, I'm sure there will be...
	There's also you.
	Yeah, there's also me.
	I mean, when I'm talking to you, I'm actually talking to myself.
	Well, okay, let me ask you this.
	So I feel like if you asked me eight years ago, I would be very pessimistic about where things are going.
	But, and I'd love to know your thoughts, you know, with the trade war that President Trump kicked off with between US and China, With COVID and more people waking up to, at the very least, the CCP hiding the true numbers and 95% chance conducting this research, which ultimately leaked out of the Wuhan laboratory and the way that they sort of handle everything there.
	When Joe Biden came into office, he sort of actually continued a lot of the hawkish policies of the Trump administration.
	I mean, he tried to soften up some of the language, but in terms of policies, it's still pretty hawkish.
	And then just a few days ago, the House passed a bill that would force TikTok to be sold away from a Chinese-owned company.
	Do you feel like the winds are blowing in a direction that this Chinese takeover of Hollywood, it could actually be stopped?
	Because are people waking up to it enough that It could actually be enough to have people go, wait a minute, what is this?
	This is ridiculous.
	Stop.
	Just stop it.
	We're not interested in this CCP version of events anymore.
	Do you see that trend?
	I think you are seeing glimpses of that, because even you were pointing out the House bipartisan bill.
	That was voted on bipartisan, right?
	We also have the House Select Committee on the CCP, also bipartisan.
	So that's unheard of that you have a House committee that's specifically on that.
	So you're seeing it get to that point where it's even gotten into the government.
	But I think, yeah, throughout the years, probably with reporting by the Epoch Times and all these different ones.
	where you are seeing a change in perception and then especially when covid hit right suddenly the whole world was like wait something over there actually does impact me over here right it's like back in the day you said what happens in china today affects you tomorrow most people like yeah big world over there i'm over here you know maybe their communists were americans right that's not really how it is anymore it's gotten so intermingled that
	You know now when you have people talking about economic decoupling they're like can we because the two economies are so intertwined like that's the state it's not like back in the day where it's like you had your village and you had to walk a really long time to get to that one right now with the advance of technology and everything everything is interconnected so what happens there does have an impact here but I think with COVID it really did Change a lot of things because people felt firsthand what happened, right?
	So when there was a shortage of PPE or masks, all these things, China brought them all back, right?
	They had factories around the world.
	They're like, oh, we're going to take it all back.
	So suddenly people can feel directly that impact, not just something that says made in China that may be less quality than they wanted, but they're like, wait, this is impacting if I live or die, right?
	It's gotten to that point.
	So now you have this House Select Committee on the CCP that's bipartisan.
	You have more news about it coming out, a lot more.
	You're seeing the, when there were more than one Republican running for president, they were all trying to out hawk each other when it comes to China.
	They're all very hawkish to begin with.
	That's gotten to the point where you are seeing the administrations becoming more and more hawkish on China to the point that China is almost always one of the talking points.
	It's not just Russia or Iran.
	It's like China is now Part of everyone's discussion, almost, where it has gotten to that point.
	But I think you are also seeing some changes, like, for instance, with COVID, right?
	Theaters are letting in less movies, if we go back to the Hollywood topic.
	And then you're seeing the rise in streaming, but also independent films, right?
	So you had Angel Studios come out with Sound of Freedom that did super well in theaters, ended up on Amazon.
	They just released another one called Cabrini.
	So you are seeing that, where even with, say, Top Gun Maverick, once they changed it.
	So actually, the massive Chinese tech giant Tencent was funding the film initially, because super expensive film, Top Gun.
	And then, as you pointed out right, patches disappeared off the jacket, international backlash, COVID hit, studios had time to change things.
	Tencent backed down, was no longer funding it.
	They didn't back their funding?
	Yeah, they just weren't part of the project anymore.
	And so then you saw the patches go back on, the movie did not go to China, but it made over a billion dollars.
	That was the first Tom Cruise movie to make over a billion dollars.
	And you saw people, if you will, vote with their dollars.
	They're like, ooh, this is an American film.
	Like, sure, the enemy isn't explicitly named, but, you know, it's very patriotic.
	And people are like, yes, you know, this is what it stands for.
	Of course, every country has their issues, but it reminded people of something to be proud of, right?
	We're seeing record low recruitment in the army.
	People don't want to fight for this country anymore, right?
	That's where it's gone to, where you have that infiltration has gone from the point of like, why would I die for this country?
	Whereas back in the day, people were pretending they were older so they could go fight in the world wars because they believed in what their country stood for.
	And so I think you are seeing those changes where there is that shift.
	Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
	And what about the economic strength of China?
	Because I can imagine when they're extremely strong, like India, for instance, no one seems to be willing to change their movies to get into the Indian market.
	I mean, maybe the dynamics there are a little different, because they do have their own, like, kind of well-established Bollywood, Tollywood, you know, studio, what do you call them, regions, I guess, technically.
	So maybe the dynamics are a little bit different.
	But I wonder, now that the foreign investment into China is, like, nosediving, They have a lot of, well they have more internal problems than before, and a lot of the even global manufacturing is moving to India, is moving to Vietnam, it's moving to Mexico.
	I wonder if they will have, between people sort of waking up to the China threat, you know, bipartisanly waking up to the China threat, and them getting weakened economically, I wonder if there might be actually a shift in the next few years and who knows, maybe the next Tom Cruise movie will not have an ambiguous enemy and it'll be China.
	It'll be Ming the pilot who you're fighting against in a dogfight.
	Okay, the film is out, March 8th I believe it came out.
	What is the absolute best case scenario for you?
	So the film comes out, what's the best case scenario?
	What's the most good this film can achieve?
	Many of the people in it, already their dream is that this is in theaters so that more people can watch it.
	Because of course right now it's on Epic TV, behind a paywall.
	So these are, you know, former Hollywood industry giants.
	Or maybe still are.
	Roger Simon, he was Oscar nominated.
	Chris Fenden helped get these films in.
	Kevin and Sam Sorbo.
	famous for the Hercules series.
	They are in that industry and they love the film and they are saying that everyone must see this.
	So I think it's really if you can get that word out and not just assume that you already know about Chinese infiltration because we really dig into the history here of the Chinese Communist Party, the military goals, all of that aspect.
	So I think in that aspect, if you do watch it, it will really help people understand so many other things that are happening in America especially, but around the world.
	When it comes to things, you're like, wait, why is this policy in place?
	Or why is it suddenly this?
	If you watch this, I think you'll answer a lot of those questions.
	So it'd be fun if it's in theaters.
	It's very different if you watched it on a big screen, like we had a red carpet premiere for it.
	So I guess you're saying that the best case scenario is that it's in theaters, millions of people watch it, everyone gets informed of what's going on, and Hollywood crashes and you become essentially the next Hollywood top star who made it happen.
	It's not really about Hollywood crashing, because you're already seeing changes happen.
	It's already crashing.
	Is that what you're saying?
	Not to put words into your mouth?
	I think you're already seeing the rise in independent studios.
	That's true, yeah.
	When you were making this film, did you actually reach out to, like, studio heads, any A-list actors, and ask them to be part of it?
	And, like, what was their reaction if you did?
	We did, yes.
	It's tricky, though, because normally you can't reach them directly, so it's agents.
	So we did reach out to a lot of different agents and asked... Never heard back.
	We also... I asked some people who are kind of involved with Hollywood, not maybe blockbusters, but they do have, you know, their own shows and things.
	And one of them told me he was like, you know, no one's gonna agree to this because if they are associated with NTD, they'll be blacklisted from any big money productions that are tied to China.
	And I honestly didn't realize NTD was that powerful.
	So, that was actually pretty interesting because, you know, people talk about the Epoch Times, all these different things, but even if you're, like, not even being, like, this film is critical about the Chinese Communist Party, like, even if you're not critical, right, if you're just associated with the name NTD, you're out.
	You appeared in the film.
	You were walking by as we were doing an outdoor shot.
	That's wild.
	Yeah, so that was quite surprising to me and, you know, I cover this basically every day, right, for China Focus, but I was like, wow, like, that really is the dynamic here.
	Did you reach out to Richard Gere?
	We did.
	Never heard back.
	Never heard back.
	Because his story is very, like, You touch on his story.
	Yeah, it's very, like, exemplative, right?
	Because, like, you have what happened to him, super A-list actor, like, some of the biggest productions.
	I mean, you look back at the movies from the 80s, and he's like, you know, he's like a staple there.
	And then, like, boom, he just disappears off the map.
	And I wonder how many actors... Actually, it would be great if you can tell a story, and then it would be interesting to know, I guess you can't know, but how many actors saw that story and went, like, okay, I'm just gonna shut my mouth about what's happening in China.
	Can you actually, for the people that don't know, what happened to Richard Gere?
	Yes, so he was in a film called Kundun, and it's about Tibet.
	And it's based on a true story.
	But Tibet is one of those very sensitive topics to China because China took over in about the 1950s, brutally.
	And so there was that film, there was also Seven Years in Tibet that had Brad Pitt, also based on a true story with that.
	And when you think about these, right, these are big names, right?
	Scorsese, Mae Koon Doon, Brad Pitt, Sony was the studio for seven years in Tibet.
	You don't see them anymore.
	It's really hard to find them even online.
	So Scorsese's film, everyone pretended it never happened.
	Studios moved on.
	And then, Brad Pitt, Seven Years in Tibet, it wasn't just Sony Studios that was punished, it was Sony proper and Brad Pitt.
	Neither went back into China until about 2014.
	This was 1997 when these films came out.
	So that's how long the punishment was.
	And that was to send a message to all studios and all actors, like, hey, Don't touch topics we don't like.
	And so with that, right, you had Richard Gere, biggest name in Hollywood, suddenly silence.
	And you see him still now, right?
	He's very close with the Dalai Lama, all these different things, to the point where it's just an unspoken rule in the industry.
	It's like, you don't cross that line.
	You don't say anything.
	There was, back in the day, One of the famous actresses, you're supposed to go through like training before you go do a red carpet in Beijing, China in general.
	She's like, oh, I don't need that.
	And then she said something about like Taiwan as a country.
	Everyone was like, oh, everyone's going through training now before you go over there.
	So just any little thing that might provoke you or might be sensitive is changed.
	So it's gone to that.
	to the point where we think of this as a free country, right?
	It's like, oh, you're free to tell the stories you want.
	It's not really, because if you want to have a living and make that money, there's all these hidden rules that actually apply. - Right, yeah, and same thing with, what was his name, John Cena, right?
	He also mentioned that Taiwan was a contract.
	He alluded to it.
	Apologized in Mandarin.
	In Mandarin with, you know, the most ridiculous.
	And his case was funny because, I mean, he's like this big marine, you know, WWE superstar.
	So he's like, you know, Mr. America in a certain sense.
	And you watch him, like, groveling in Chinese, like, you know, begging to be let in.
	It's like those cases are what we know about.
	We know about Brad Pitt, seven years in Tibet, 14 years outside of China.

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