Why don’t Hollywood studios just let the Chinese censors write their scripts?

The Chinese economy may be slowing but it’s still growing at an eye-watering pace in comparison to Europe and even the US.

Films are doing particularly well, with receipts up 30 per cent in the past year to $2.7bn.

But China operates a quota system for imported movies (nearly all Hollywood blockbusters) with only 34 allowed in although that’s an increase from the previous limit of 20. The revenue the studios get has increased too from 13-17 per cent to 25 per cent, a big jump when many of these films take over $100m.

Which means the Hollywood majors are keener than ever to get their films in. But to do this they need to keep the Chinese government censors sweet too so you won’t be seeing many Chinese villains in big budget films in the near future.

Here’s the ever thought-provoking Thoughtful China on the subject.

You do end up feeling that the censorious Chinese government and the supine, money-obsessed big studios deserve each other.