Oscars 2021: Nomadland and Chloe Zhao win censored in China

Mention of Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao and her film Nomadland have been scrubbed from the internet in China.

Chloe Zhao made headlines today as the first Asian woman in history — and only the second woman ever — to win an Oscar for Best Director with her film Nomadland, but in China the news was harder to find.

Posts about the Beijing-born 39-year-old — whose movie was the night’s biggest winner, taking home Best Picture and Best Actress for its star, Frances McDormand — were removed from online services including Weibo, WeChat and Baidu, research conducted by Storyful found.

The crackdown, which began last month, is likely in response to a Filmmaker Magazine interview Zhao did eight years ago, in which she was accused of “smearing China” after she described being a teenager in “a place where there are lies everywhere”.

Promotional material and references to the film have been wiped from the internet, show times for Nomadlandwere removed from major ticketing websites, and there were calls for a boycott, also prompting fears about the Chinese release of Zhao’s forthcoming Marvel film, Eternals.

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Mention of Chloe Zhao and her Oscar-winning film Nomadland have been censored on Chinese social media platforms. Picture: Chris Pizzello/POOL/AFP

Zhao made history at today’s Oscars as the first Asian woman to win Best Director. Picture: Chris Pizzello/POOL/Getty Images

Since Friday, “self-media” blog accounts also found that censors had deleted earlier articles related to Nomadland, Varietyreports.

One “particularly well-regarded” WeChat account posted a screenshot with two messages it had received from censors, according to the publication, starting that its content had, “after examination by the platform”, been found to have transgressed the “Development and Management Rules for Public Information Services on Instant Messaging Platforms” and had been deleted.

The articles in question were titled ‘This Film Industry Person Probably Knows Chloe Zhao Better Than Anyone in the World” and “‘Nomadland’ Sets an April 23 China Release; Chloe Zhao Becomes the First Asian to Win the Best Director Golden Globe”.

Searches for the hashtags #Nomadland and #Nomadland Release Date have also been blocked on Weibo, with a message that “The topic’s page cannot be shown due to related laws, regulations and policies”.

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The Chinese name for Nomadland on Weibo turned up zero results. Picture: Supplied

The Chinese name of Nomadland and the Chinese name of Zhao both returned one result from today, Storyful found: a repost of a congratulatory message by the Consulate General of the United States, Hong Kong and Macau.

The main post that the consulate reposted was banned by Weibo. The next post was from March 23.

On Douban Movie, arguably Mainland China’s main movie discussion website, typing Zhao’s and Nomadland’s Chinese name into the search bar yielded zero results.

While this year’s Oscars ceremony wasn’t broadcast in China, many residents saw Zhao’s acceptance speech, adding comments of congratulations to clips shared on social media, which began disappearing within minutes of being posted.

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The censorship of filmmakers and their work in China isn’t new — its cinema market is the world’s second-largest, the South China Morning Postreported in 2019, but also one of the most heavily regulated.

“Every film must be cleared by the government to appear in China and an informal cap has been imposed of about 34 foreign films a year on a revenue-sharing basis,” the publication wrote.

A lengthy report last August declared that US film companies were “increasingly” tailoring their casting, content, dialogue and plot lines to appease Beijing’s censors and avoid losing access to China’s lucrative box office market.

Conducted by PEN, a non-profit organisation that campaigns on free speech, the report suggested that Hollywood is “often gleefully willing to speak truth to American political power” yet it takes the opposite approach to the Chinese government.

“In effect, Hollywood’s approach to acceding to Chinese dictates is setting a standard for the rest of the world,” the report stated.