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by izacus 2445 days ago
Yes, movies about old operations can be made because you can get/mock hardware without military approval. But note how those are all more than 50 years in the past.

And we didn't even get to censorship of any sexual content, where depictions of human bodies make sure that US will censor it.

It's really hard to be sympathetic to this US hand-wringing where we've had our own content censored constantly under conservative American value system on American platforms.

3 comments

This is a spurious comparison- at the end of the day if you wanted to make a movie or Documentary denouncing the army- you can in america.

You can’t in China.

The act of NOT giving resources and bases to film makers is not censorship.

It doesn't matter if something is forbidden by directly via law or via indirect pressure of money. The result isn't all that different.
Since The results are very different, in practice and observable reality, I would have to say that the statement is wrong.

For all the indirect pressure, anti war movies do exist as do movies that challenge American systems and narratives of superiority - from within their own country.

Dissent is enshrined as a part of existence in america.

In China it is anathema, and they explicitly and implicitly act to maintain that strength.

Hence the whole point of the article - it’s not america which is asking Apple to take down apps because they hurt China’s image, and it’s not America telling the NBA to correct its errors.

When people kneeled in america during football games, or highlighted their protest, it was handled publicly and all sides were audible. political tribes fought over the act on the air waves- but that’s something that doesn’t happen in China at all; No one was whisked away to a re-education camp.

This is nonsense. The U.S military doesn't fund the U.S film making industry. The result is different, there are plenty of films critical of the U.S armed forces. In contrast that's not even a possibility in China because they have no freedom of speech and censorship is ubiquitous.
China won't allow even foreign companies to criticize it == US army won't help others criticize it. That's exactly the same. Not.

P.S. Just wait until you get the Chinese value system, which surprisingly censors everything US does and much much more.

Everyone knows about sexuality anyway, but not about all of the topics that China wants people not even to mention.