21st century Hollywood science fiction films as China’s global nationalistic propaganda

This paper argues that 21st century Hollywood science fiction films function as global nationalistic propaganda for country of China. As China is the second largest territorial box office behind North American, it is a significant theatrical release destination for Hollywood film such as the Transformers series (2009-2014), Pacific Rim (2013), Robocop (2014), The Martian (2015), Arrival (2016), and Godzilla: King of Monsters (2019). In order for films to be imported into China, they must pass governmental censorship regulations, often beginning during the drafting of the script, and abide by the Film Industry Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China, which was drafted in light of President Xi’s statement, reaffirming Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin, that art serves politics.

Archival research of Chinese government documents and laws that regulate China’s domestic and imported film industry identified their strategies and tactics for using global cinema as nationalistic propaganda to support China’s public diplomacy effort of ‘telling China’s stories well’ as part of China’s ‘going global’ initiative. A textual analysis of 21st century Hollywood science fiction shows how their content presents both China and the Western world in ways that show China as a world leader whose government, citizens, or ideologies either directly save the world or provide the turning point for success, how collectivist values exceed individualism, and promote China as the most advanced technologically capable country. Such story-lines only began when the Chinese box office became economically important.