NEW YORK, Dec. 12, 2007
Is China Banning U.S. Movies?
The Skinny: China Stops Approving American Films For Use In Theaters; U.S. Suspects Trade Retaliation
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"Transformers," a sci-fi film based on the 1980s toys and cartoon TV series of the same name, was first place in the Chinese box office this year. Now U.S. officials suspect China has stopped approving American movies for Chinese theaters as part of a trade dispute. (AP Photo/DreamWorks)
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Fast Facts China Learn about the people, economy and history.
China was none too pleased when the United States ran and tattled to the World Trade Organization this spring - in the form of a intellectual property rights case - that its government wasn't doing enough to fight the pirating of American movies.
Now, the New York Times reports, Hollywood fears that China is delivering a retaliatory kick where it really hurts: at the box office.
China has stopped granting permission for American films to be shown in theaters in an apparent trade dispute with the U.S., according to several Hollywood executives and American government officials. The Chinese government has not announced any ban, but American movies are no longer being approved for release early next year.
U.S. government officials brought it up during the trade talks in Beijing on Tuesday, but they didn't tell reporters how China responded. A spokeswoman at China's film regulatory body said any ban would have been announced.
But Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, is worried anyway. "There are strong indications that there is at least a stoppage of American films, that the approval process has been closed," he said.
China already limits the number of foreign films shown here to about 20 per year, and films shown here are must pass Chinese censors and often heavy edits. Nonetheless, film execs think it will be an important market eventually.
This year, the Hollywood movie "Transformers" was the top film at the Chinese box office. Before you take this as a measure of the Chinese movie-going public's juvenile taste, consider that the film was only beaten in the U.S. by two well-worn sequels: "Shrek" and "Spiderman."
Still the dispute, as the Times' mostly anonymous sources describe it, does have a ring of a schoolyard squabble.
This year, after the United States filed its intellectual property rights case, Chinese officials complained that it would not help cooperation between the two countries. Wang Ziqiang, a spokesman for China's National Copyright Administration, said he didn't deny that piracy was going on, "but that doesn't mean the United States is founded to file complaints against China in the W.T.O."
More Teachers Coming From The Top Of The Class
Could all that hand-wringing and law-passing over education in the last decade have actually yielded some results?
Yes, says USA Today, in reporting the front-page news that beginning teachers have better academic credentials than their predecessors did a decade ago. The news suggests "that tougher requirements at all levels have forced teachers' colleges to improve offerings while luring more qualified candidates into teaching."
The news comes from a study released by the Educational Testing Service, which designs the Praxis test taken by most new teachers. It found that candidates' verbal SAT scores rose 13 points and math scores rose 17 points. The percentage of candidates who reported at 3.5 GPA or higher rose from 27 percent to 40 percent.
The gains hold across gender, racial and ethnic lines, USA Today reports.
But the New York Times, not called the Grey Lady for nothing, finds a cloud in that silver lining. Tucking the story deep in the A section, it goes high with the report's finding that "those attracted to the profession continued to make up a strikingly homogenous group - prospective teachers were overwhelmingly white and female - at a time when the proportion of public school students nationwide who are black, Hispanic or other minorities was nearly half and rising."
Lame Rover Wheel Kicks Up New Evidence Of Mars' Former Habitability
Had things functioned perfectly, perhaps it would have been many more years before we knew about the rock on Mars further suggesting its watery past.
But as it happened, the New York Times reports, a lame wheel on the NASA Mars rover Spirit, which it stopped turning in March 2006, dragged along the ground and turned up a bright spot in the dirt that made scientist circle it back for a closer look.
The rock turned out to have high levels of silica. The scientists directed the rover to crack it open to see if it was silica all the way through, or just on the outside. That didn't work, but a nearby rock was cracked open and found to be rich in silica.
On Earth, a rock like that can form in only two places: One is a hot spring, where the silica is dissolved away and deposited elsewhere. The other is a fumarole, an environment often near a volcano where acidic steam rises through the cracks, dissolving other minerals and leaving silica. On Earth, both environments teem with life.
The silica discovery is the first time that Spirit has seen signs of widespread water in its surroundings, a 90-mile-wide impact known as the Gusev Crater.
"Whichever of those conditions produced it, this concentration of silica is probably the most significant discovery by Spirit for revealing a habitable niche that existed on Mars in the past."
Which just goes to show, sometimes a broken wheel is more useful than a working one.
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We will bury China. The USA & democracy & capitalism will around forever. Communism & China, not to mention the two-bit pathetic countries of North Korea & Cuba, will not be around forever.
China exports all kinds of products to the USA, and the USA exports its jobs and money to China. We have sent so much cash that China is now in a position to threaten the US. They can at any moment cash in their dollars and destroy our economy. Of course that would hurt their economy too but once we are sucked dry, what would stop them at that point?
China being in this position certainly makes negotiating with them on trade issues difficult and even impossible. How do US negotiators use the economic muscle of the US to create a fair trade agreement with such a, "nuclear dollar bomb" at China''s disposal. The fact is, the US has no option but to go along with ridiculous trade deals with the hope that somehow it all works out in the end.
Check out the article, China threatens ''nuclear option'' of dollar sales, By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 10/08/2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/08/07/bcnchina107a.xml
We the American people have been sold out by our own government, which has been bought by foreign governments and global conglomerates. If and when the US goes bankrupt or in a depression, these companies will dump the American people and move to the next country with a strong economy.
Who''s kidding who? The counterfeit versions of U.S. movies make it to China before the legitimate theater versions.
The only difference is that U.S. filmmakers will make ZERO, instead of the pennies on a dollar that they now make due to counterfeits.
Actually the U.S. is being controlled by the entertainment industry. Everyone is obsessed with CELEBRITY. The MEDIA is obsessed with celebrity. In fact the media is so obsessed because they know that the people are so obsessed. In fact I have heard that the reason we weren''t told about Global Warming YEARS ago is because the media was too busy reporting on celebrities and didn''t want the IMPORTANT stories. Scientists tried years ago to get the media to put the message out there but celebrity news was more important. It is a sick world when celebrity comes first.
The television industry has everyone under their thumbs. They will start the season (sometimes late) and you will get a few new shows then the next thing you know it is Thanksgiving and there are repeats, then a few more new ones and then it is Christmas and more repeats. Those repeats continue into January and sometimes February. They are actually making less and less new shows. And then if that isn''t bad enough they wait till you get interested in a show, then they put it on hiatus for months and put something else in it''s place. It is either that or you will be watching a show at a certain time and day and the next thing you know it is GONE and weeks go by and you realize that is because they changed it to a different day and time. Meanwhile you have missed several episodes. IT IS TIME TO SHUT THEM DOWN.
Corp America don''t care and so what can we really do?
Web search "Microsoft $3 China" and "FOX DVD China" if you want to find examples.
- by speakinup December 12, 2007 1:52 PM EST
- Aw - gee - you mean those Chinese are going to punish our far left friends, like Sean Pencilneck ?
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See all 16 CommentsHurt me!