The Expulsion of American Films from China, 1949-1950

64 TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINA THE EXPULSION OF AMERICAN FILMS FROM CHINA, 1949-1950 ZHIWEIXIAO, CALIFORNIASTATEUNIVERSITY, SANMARCOS American films were shown in China as early as 1897. By the end of World War I, Hollywood studios had firmly established their dominance over China's motion picture market and, in the process, became one of the most important modem cultural institutions in the country. A survey of the available data from 1925, 1935, and 1947 indicates that, during those years, ninety percent of the films shown in China were of U. S. origin.\ As one commentator observed in the 1930s, Hollywood had "replaced the missionaries, educators, gunboats, business men and English language literature as the most important venue through which the Chinese learned about Western cultures and life in industrialized societies.,,2 However, two years after the Communist takeover of 1949, American movies completely vanished from China's screens. This tum of events held profound implications for Sino-U.S. relations, the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) new cultural policy, and the early development of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) film industry. Despite its importance for our understanding of early PRC history, the expulsion of American films from China in the early 1950s has not been given the scholarly attention it deserves.3 Many people simply assume that the Communists banned Hollywood films because of ideological incompatibility or an anti-U.S. stance. Such a view ignores the complexities of historical reality. As a result, many questions about the anti-Hollywood campaign remain unanswered. For example, why did the Communist regime "tolerate" American films until late 1950? Indeed, in some parts of the country American films continued to be screened as late as 1951. To what extent was the campaign to expel American Funding for the research of this article was provided by a Faculty Development Grant at CSUSM. I would like to thank Stephen Averill and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. My thanks also go to Cecily McCaffrey for proof reading the essay. 1 See Luther M. lee, "Interest in Motion Pictures in China Not Far Behind West," The China Weekly Review, New Year's Supplement, 1927,12,81; "1935 nian wai pianjinkou e" (The import data on foreign films for 1935), Yule zhoubao (Entertainment weekly), 2: 16 (1936): 322; and Shanghai dianying zhi bianji zu ed., Shanghai dianying zhi (The history of Shanghai cinema), Shanghai shehui kexue chubanshe, 1999, 596. 2 Wilbur Burton, "Chinese Reactions to the Cinema," Asia, October 1934, 594. 3 Neither Li Suyuan, et aI., eds. Xin Zhongguo dianying 50 nian (Fifty years of PRe cinema ) (Beijing: Beijing guangbo xueyuan chubanshe, 2000) nor Maria Galikowski's Art and Politics in China, 1949-1984 (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998) makes any mention of this significant development.©Twentieth-Century China, Vol. 30, No.1 (November 2004): 64-81. 2004 THEEXPULSION OFAMERICAN FILMSFROMCHINA,1949-1950 65 films from China engineered by the CCP and to what extent was it driven by genuine and spontaneous anti-U.S. sentiments among the Chinese viewing public? Who organized the campaign? Did the CCP respond to the American films in a systematic fashion? And how did Hollywood and the U.S. government react to the crackdown on American cultural institutions in China? This essay argues that the CCP's policy with regards to American film was driven by pragmatism as much as by ideology; that the initiative to expel Hollywood from China did not derive from Party directives, but from "public demand;" and that the anti-Hollywood sentiment had a genuine popular basis and struck a resonant cord with people in the native film industry who had long harbored resentment towards Hollywood. Therefore, it is too simplistic to regard the expulsion of American films from China as motivated only by politics and to ignore the cultural and economic dimensions. IDEOLOGY, POLITICS, ANDPRAGMATISM The CCP's cultural policy was first formulated by Qu Qiubai (1899-1935) and later canonized by Mao in his 1942 Yan 'an wenyi zuotanhuijianghua (Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature).4 The Party policy on arts and entertainment dictated that culture should serve a positive social function and help...