The Steven Spielberg affair rolls on. He announced in mid-February that –because of China’s lack of action in stopping the killing in Darfur– he was resigning as adviser to the committee that is staging the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, but the news is still generating considerable heat and light. Danwei has a good round up of reactions among some prominent Chinese bloggers here. while there are the inevitable nationalist overtones, these are measured pieces in general reflecting as usual that the Chinese web is way ahead of the official media (the People’s Daily published a predictable rant about “a certain director”; why do they so often refuse to name the object of their vitriol? It is a habit I have noticed in other countries where the media is also heavily controlled. Do they feel, idiotically, that it would give him too much face? Or is there something else I am missing? Perhaps someone could clear this up for me…). However, the tabloid Global Times , a junior cousin of the People’s Daily that concentrates on world news, was much more reserved, which may have come as something of a surprise give that its stance is often described as “nationalistic,” rather in the way that Fox News is similarly labelled. Anyway, my colleague Austin and I had lunch last week with the paper’s genial editor, Hu Xijing and a couple of sharp young reporters. He said he had deliberately kept things from getting out of hand as he “understood the pressure Spielberg was under” from Hollywood which basically left him no choice but to quit. I concur with Mr. Hu, who spent a year and a half in Los Angeles as a reporter and clearly knows of what he speaks. Rose Liu of Phoenix TV notes in her blog on the issue (see the Danwei link above) that she once asked Spielberg about coming to Beijing and he became very excited and talked about how he was looking forward to coming to China. I have never interviewed the man myself, but it does seem highly likely that he quit reluctantly rather than face a storm of criticism in LA, a reputed hotbed of bleeding heart liberal types.
What’s interesting here (as I have written before) is whether the activists can now turn the same trick with any of the the 12 big corporate Olympic sponsors, who have already committed upwards of $100 million to the Games. If they can get even one big corporation to back away for fear of bad publicity, it would be a major victory. Certainly, as I have been repeatedly told by some senior organizers of the campaign, that is their next target. Some senior PR officials from General Electric (the biggest sponsor) are coming to town next week. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this. The last thing they want to do is anger the Chinese government by cutting and running. They must equally dread the prospect of being held up as ignoring genocide for the sake of increasing their Chinese market share, though. Tricky business…..
PS: apologies in advance to Hu of Global Times, who said he found it irritating that his paper is so-often described as “highly nationalistic.” Tough to find another description, though. If “nationalistic” has a tinge of opprobrium, “patriotic” goes too far in the opposite direction (the last refuge of a scoundrel, as the good Doctor described it); “pro-China” is silly (of course they are); “anti-foreign” is worse. Any other suggestions from those of you who read the paper?