Republican Senator Ted Cruz blasted the upcoming “Barbie” movie for including what his office described as Chinese communist propaganda.
The film came under fire for its pro-China, on-screen representation of islands in the South China Sea, which are disputed and have been the subject of two separate military campaigns in 1974 and 1988, the New York Post reported.
A United Nations court ruled in 2016 that Hina’s claim to the regions had no basis in international law.
The ‘Barbie’ film was banned in Vietnam because it visualizes the “nine-dash line,” a geographical indicator that these territories, including the Paracel and Spratly Islands, are under Chinese control.
Ted Cruz torched the movie’s pro-China choice propaganda, tweeting, “I guess Barbie is made in China….”
“China wants to control what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think, and they leverage their massive film markets to coerce American companies into pushing [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda — just like the way the Barbie film seems to have done with the map,” a representative for Cruz told The Daily Mail.
For years, nations like the UK, France, and Australia have also contested China’s claims to the area.
“[China] has built artificial islands in the South China Sea, harassed foreign naval and military aircraft passing through the region, intimidated Vietnamese and other foreign fishermen, asserted rights to explore and exploit maritime oil and gas reserves, and continued to publish maps depicting the nine-dash line claim,” Donald Rothwell, an international law professor at Australian National University, wrote in an article for The Conversation.
“This is why any legitimacy given to the nine-dash line, even in Hollywood movies, is so sensitive,” Rothwell added.
“The film review board watched the film and made the decision to ban the screening of this movie in Vietnam due to a violation regarding the ‘nine-dash line’,” Vietnam’s Department of Cinema director, Vi Kien Thanh, told the Dan Tri news site.
Tien Phong, reported that the nine-dash line scene appeared multiple times in the movie.
All films in Vietnam must be approved by censors who screen for gratuitous violence, suggestive sex scenes, or politically-sensitive material.
Nations, including Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia, all lay claims to territories within the energy-rich corridor.
Tom Holland’s film “Uncharted” was barred from Vietnam for showing the nine-dash line.
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China probably told them to do that of no showing there. I don’t know how big a money income they are, but are you willing to pee off everyone else to do it? Seems so.