Would love to learn how this works behind the scenes. Are Chinese officials giving the Studio a deadline for this kind apology? Or is this proactive self-censorship triggered solely by social media?
The major studios work very closely with Chinese Censorship board to get their movies cleared for China even during production and the board goes as far as changing scripts, characters and settings so this most likely came down from Chinese officials talking to the studio.
it was triggered by social media. Chinese social media behave the same way as in US, except it spreads even faster times more population. John Cena actually went to China and learnt to speak Mandarin, but China is not a WWE market to be honest.