The Hollywood-China Relationship: Past and Future

Dr. Wendy Su — The Hollywood-China Relationship: Past and Future

*Tuesday, March 1st, 8:00AM – 9:15 AM CT*

https://utexas.zoom.us/j/92681447180

The Hollywood-Chinawood is defined by an alternately competitive and collaborative partnership. By the first decade of the 21st century, China had cannily used Hollywood resources to modernize its film industry. Up to mid-2017, this partnership even entered into an unprecedented honeymoon period, marked by an inpouring of Chinese capital, the acquisition of Hollywood studio shares, and a record high number of film coproductions. However, this close partnership has been interrupted in 2017 and 2018 under the shadow of both the Chinese state’s tightened control on outflow capital and the Trump administration’s trade war with China. The COVID-19 pandemic further devastated US–China relations and brought the fear of a possible all-around de-coupling between the two countries. Both Hollywood and Chinawood are caught in the crossfire. 

This talk provides a general survey of the history and current state of Hollywood-China interactions, and estimates their future prospect. Situating the Hollywood-Chinawood relationship in the larger context of global cultural flows, the talk unveils competing forces that shape US-China and Hollywood-Chinawood relations, discusses the interplay between globalization and nation-states’ protectionism, and deciphers the changing attitude of China’s youth toward Hollywood films and American culture.  

Dr. Wendy Su is Associate Professor of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at University of California Riverside. Her research falls along the intersections of global communication, Chinese media studies, and cultural studies. Specifically, she is interested in China’s communication and cultural policy study, cultural industries research, transnational film studies, audience research, youth culture andAsian modernity. She is the author of China’s Encounter with Global Hollywood: Cultural Policy and the Film Industry, 1994-2013 (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), and co-editor of Asia-Pacific Film Co-productions: Theory,Industry and Aesthetics (Routledge, 2019). She was a winner of the 2014 William L. Holland Prize for the best article granted byPacific Affairs.She sits in the editorial board of the journal Global Media and China, and serves as manuscript reviewer fora number of academic journals and two publishers Routledge and Palgrave McMillian.