For decades, young Chinese devised ways to evade government censors. Sometimes the means were small: a suitcase from abroad full of books and videos. Sometimes they moved entire cultures. As internet access spread, small groups of English-savvy millennials subtitled pirated American shows and films and posted them to the internet — allowing millions of Chinese to glimpse a world beyond.
Catching that glimpse will now be harder than ever. Last month, the government sentenced Liang Yongping, the founder of Renren Yingshi, China’s most popular subtitling site, to three and a half years in jail. His crime was copyright infringement, and there’s little question that he pirated thousands of films and programs. But his greater offense was a yearslong challenge to the government’s information monopoly. Hollywood should take note.
Translations of foreign texts have played a crucial role in shaping Chinese culture for centuries. Thanks to a strong censorship regime, there was little reason to think that American sitcoms might have a similar influence. Yet widespread broadband access undermined those controls, at least for a while. Not only did young Chinese find out about all the content that their government was censoring, they now had the means to download it. Thanks to compulsory English education (of variable quality), many had the means to translate it.
As broadband spread, fans of American television, often based in elite universities, began downloading and subtitling pirated shows, then reposting them for anyone to access. Demand for “fansubs” grew fast. In 2005, an estimated 10 million Chinese watched the fansubbed first season of “Prison Break,” even though it was never licensed in China. “Friends” became an even bigger phenomenon, inspiring cafes, English curriculums and copycat Chinese productions. It was eventually licensed in 2010.
Renren Yingshi — which translates to “Everyone’s Film and Television” — was founded in Canada in 2003. It eventually relocated to China and quickly became the country’s biggest fansubbing group. Within a few years, it was producing quality fansubs of virtually every major American and British film and television production, often within days of their English-language releases. As of February, its website had more than 8 million registered members.
Despite (legitimate) complaints about piracy, fansubbing undoubtedly boosted the long-term popularity of American film and television in China, creating audiences accustomed to uncensored productions that were far more entertaining than the period dramas that prevailed on Chinese television. In May, most of China’s top streaming platforms bought the rights to stream “Friends: the Reunion,” a two-hour retrospective. More broadly, foreign films — and especially American blockbusters — came to dominate the Chinese box office.
The authorities weren’t ignorant of fansubs or the giant hole they opened in the censorship regime, and they made sporadic efforts to crack down. Yet the fansubs always bounced back, driven partly by a legal provision that allowed for the distribution of copyrighted material for educational purposes, and partly by the sheer demand for uncensored content.
Now that charmed life seems to be coming to an end. In recent years, China has become a more inward-looking place, and censors are under pressure to eliminate what the government views as the malign influence of foreign culture. Last month, the government released its Five Year Plan for the Chinese Film Industry, which called for transforming China into a “strong film power” that produces masterpieces and box-office bonanzas while “adhering to the Party’s total leadership over film work.” Foreign fare, licensed or not, is unlikely to succeed in such an environment.
For American film studios, that’s a troubling prospect. While they’ll have less reason to fear copyright violators, Chinese audiences will have fewer reasons to care about Hollywood. Kids that might’ve grown up on pirated fansubs will have little choice but to opt for Chinese productions designed for local audiences. In 2020, that’s precisely what happened: Foreign films accounted for just 16% of China’s total box office, down 55% year-over-year.
Covid and shuffled release schedules contributed to that downturn. But even so, Hollywood has few reasons for optimism. The fall of the fansub communities is a sign that China is running the credits on foreign entertainment.
"Hollywood" - Google News
December 06, 2021 at 08:00AM
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China's 'Fansub' Crackdown Spells Trouble for Hollywood - Bloomberg
"Hollywood" - Google News
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