China enters Hollywood with a trick of TikTok
The China Letter: May 20, 2020
A different kind of viral
The growing international popularity of short-video app TikTok increasingly raised concerns due to ownership control based in China. But its quest for global domination now comes with new clout: Kevin Mayer, a former top executive at Disney, was recruited to run it. His job will no doubt involve having to defend the company to US lawmakers:
Words already gone viral
Canada’s postal workers are looking to control the message and prevent delivery of The Epoch Times, a newspaper that is often critical of the Chinese Communist Regime. The postal union has been known for backing up strongman governments in the past, such as that of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela and that of Castro in Cuba.
Back in China, Weibo was the social network where 65-year-old novelist and poet Fang Fang posted 60 daily diary entries as the coronavirus spread through Wuhan. Now she’s gaining wider attention due to those posts being translated into English, drawing responses that label her a traitor to China by working with a multinational American publisher.
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Wuhan’s current condition
Masked outdoor dancing has become a fixture in the city where the pandemic began, but the crowds outside testing clinics have raised fears of a new outbreak. And while China’s claim that it only had 80,000 cases of COVID-19 remains under suspicion, its Communist leader acknowledges the threat remains, while trying to shift the narrative:
Xi Jinping says he supports a World Health Assembly probe into the origins of the virus, but said it should wait until the pandemic is contained. Australia claimed vindication for rallying international support for an inquiry, which drew ridicule from its Chinese embassy. (China recently slapped 80 per cent tariffs on Australian barley.)
Freedom fighting forward
Recent headlines from Hong Kong include pro-democracy politicians dragged out of the chamber during a debate on whether to criminalize disrespect of China’s national anthem, and the extension of a gathering ban that ends after the annual vigil to mark the Tiananmen Square massacre, as government continues to pinch protesters.
The last words, for now
Er Shun and Da Mao, the two pandas welcomed to Canada with much fanfare in 2013, spend the last two years as an attraction at the Calgary Zoo. But this round of panda diplomacy has reached its end due to transportation barriers to acquiring fresh bamboo to feed them. New restrictions on flights from China became the last straw:
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