“THE WOLF AT THE DOOR”：HOLLYWOOD AND THE FILM MARKET IN CHINA FROM 1994.docVIP

“THE WOLF AT THE DOOR”：HOLLYWOOD AND THE FILM MARKET IN CHINA FROM 1994 Stanley Rosen 　　Department of Political Science University of Southern California Los Angeles，Clifornia 90089-0044E-MAIL ：rosen@ 　　PROLOGUE 　　”‘If only 1%of the people go and you only charge one-fiftieth of the admissionthat you’d charge here，you still get to some pretty big numbers ，’said Logsdon，who estimated that Hollywood would reap tens of millions of dollars from a moreopen Chinese market early on.”（Entertainment analyst Jeffrey Logsdon of SEidlerCos.in Los Angeles ，in Alan Citron and Claudia Eller ，”Hollywood Moves to ColonizeChina ，”Los Angeles Times ，April 26，1994，p.D4）。 　　”Who knows if they will enforce it？ The way things work over there ，negotiationsare incredibly protracted.They could not cooperate with you and you wouldn’t evenknow it.”（A studio official at MGM who spoke on condition of anonymity on hisreaction to a Chinese ban on cooperation with three Hollywood studios.The ban stemmedfrom a memo from China’s Ministry of Radio，Film and Television that singled out”Seven Years in Tibet”（Columbia Tristar），”Kundun”（Disney）and “Red Corner”（MGM/United Artists）as films that “viciously attack China [and]hurt Chinesepeople’s feelings.”（Sharon Waxman ，”China Bans Work with Film Studios ，”TheWashington Post ，November 1，1997，p.C1）。 　　The quotations above neatly encapsulate the hopes ，uncertainties and disappointmentsof the Hollywood studios in thEIr dealings with China.The market beckons ，asalways，but the Chinese government’s “interference”in the market，often seenas arbitrary if not “inscrutable，”continues to prevent Hollywood from “reaping”the profits Logsdon predicted. 　　INTRODUCTION 　　By the early 1990s the Chinese film industry was facing a serious crisis.Accordingto one source ，attendance at Chinese theaters had dropped from 21billion in 1982to just under 4.5billion in 1991.（1）Compounding the problem，new entertainmentoptions began to flower following