When Trump proposed a 100% tariff on movies from “foreign lands” last weekend, one X user said, “Why not, China does it!”
It’s true that China has strictly censored foreign movies since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, warming up a bit during China’s reform era in the 1980s. Perhaps a high point for China’s embrace of American film was in 1998, when then-leader Jiang Zemin (江澤民) urged the Politburo to watch “Titanic” for its portrayal of class relations.
However, in contrast to Trump’s proposed 100% movie tariff, which would immediately and traumatically impose a blanket cost on the distribution of all foreign films in the U.S., China’s relatively flexible system for vetting foreign films has developed gradually over the past few decades. The steadiness and flexibility of this approach works to China’s advantage — allowing it to adapt to new economic and political realities without sacrificing control.
The main lever China pulls to stymie the flow of foreign films into China is a quota system, which limits the number of foreign films distributed in Chinese theaters each year. China first set a foreign film quota of 10 per year in 1994, but increased this number to 20 when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In 2012, following a dispute resolution with the U.S., China upped the quota to 34 foreign films per year. These films are admitted under a revenue sharing agreement, which allows foreign and local distributors to split profits, with the foreign studio typically receiving 25% of box office revenue. China has flexibly enforced this system, routinely admitting additional foreign movies on an ad hoc basis for a flat fee.
Movies distributed in China as a part of the quota system are vetted for sensitive content. This includes the Chinese Communist Party’s core interests like its territorial claims or historical flashpoints like the Tiananmen Square massacre. Other sensitives include religious themes, LGBTQ content and excessive violence. Occasionally, China’s treatment of movies imported from particular regions shifts in tandem with evolving geopolitical realities. For example, between 2020 and 2022, following skirmishes on the China-India border, no new Indian movies were approved for distribution.
Last year, China admitted 93 foreign movies through a mixture of revenue sharing and flat fee arrangements for circulation in Chinese theaters, a high since 2019. Echoing this shift, official statements indicate that China is increasingly open to international perspectives in film. At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024, Mao Yu (毛羽), the Deputy Director of the China Film Administration, said, “We will optimize film introduction policies, support introduction business, and extensively introduce more diversified and abundant films from other countries with an open and inclusive attitude, allowing Chinese audiences to see the best films in the world.”
Since Trump took office in January, China has taken advantage of the opportunity to contrast this “open and inclusive attitude” with the U.S.’s protectionism. In April, the China Film Administration announced that it would “moderately reduce” the number of American films imported to China in response to Trump’s rapidly accelerating tariffs. But the administration was careful to frame this protectionist measure as a direct and necessary response to U.S. tariffs, emphasizing that China follows the law of the market and remains committed to “high-level openness” to movies from more countries. This is just one part of a broader critique that aims to position China as a responsible and benevolent global leader in contrast to Trump’s “bullying.”
However, China’s decision to let in more foreign movies likely wasn’t the result of a shift toward more openness to foreign perspectives. The Chinese government has been in desperate need for solutions to boost its sluggish economy, a major contributing factor of which is low consumer confidence and demand. This is evident in the box office revenues, which have struggled to pick up after Covid-19, dropping 23% year-on-year in 2024. Improving the film supply in China was announced in August 2024 in an official plan to boost consumer spending, and expanding the supply of foreign films was presumably a part of this effort. China also labeled 2025 as “film consumption year,” offering discounted theater tickets to entice more people to the theaters and malls.
The economic factors likely driving China’s evolving treatment of foreign films are put into sharper relief by China’s parallel treatment of foreign and domestic content on streaming services. In the past year, the National Radio and Television Administration, which oversees streaming and broadcasting in China, has made similar statements about being open to fostering a wide selection of media that enriches cultural and intellectual life in China. What makes these statements ring hollow is that they come on the heels of tightening control over the space, which has accelerated in recent years as more and more entertainment has moved online. In 2022, the National Television and Radio Administration instituted a new regulation requiring all television and film shown on streaming websites to receive a broadcasting licence, just like films shown in theaters are required to obtain. While the official line was that this new regulation would enhance the “quality” of media shown in China, experts think the true aim is to exert tighter control over the online space.
Additionally, throughout the past few years, China has taken down foreign content from streaming websites that deviate from sanctioned ideology. For example, in 2022, “Friends” was re-released in China on Tencent, Bilibili and other streaming platforms, but scenes with LGBTQ characters were removed. An uncensored version of the show had previously aired in China from 2012 to 2018. In the same year, 19 Keanu Reeves movies were pulled from Tencent Video after he expressed support for Tibet.
Even if China selectively and incrementally chooses to admit more foreign movies, it likely won’t be able to convince the world of its genuine openness to a diversity of perspectives. But the deliberateness of its censorship regime is strategic — as long as China moves more slowly than the U.S.’s relatively erratic protectionist policy making, it can seem more reasonable and reliable in comparison — and maybe that’s the ultimate narrative triumph for China.
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