Hollywood’s admittance into China might have appeared to be an opportunity for America to promote Western ideals in an authoritarian country. However, according to Wendy Su, an associate professor of media and cultural studies at UC Riverside and the author of China’s Encounter With Global Hollywood, Hollywood only ever had one, all-encompassing objective: “the vast Chinese market and the potential for greater profits,” she wrote over email. The country had been “extraordinarily underscreened” only two decades ago, Schwartz noted, but built theaters so quickly that it now boasts more than 75,500 screens, according to a report released in February (the U.S. had roughly 41,000 as of 2020). Films that underperform in the States can thus recuperate their losses abroad.

Today, China’s box office doesn’t just represent opportunity for Hollywood; it can mean the difference between a studio’s success and failure. This has resulted in “anticipatory self-censorship” by the American film industry, says James Tager, the research director at PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes free expression, and the lead author of the organization’s exhaustive 2020 censorship report. Besides casting mainland-Chinese actors and shooting on location in China, the study says, studios even have regulators visit their sets—as was reportedly the case for Iron Man 3. (Marvel and Disney did not respond to a request for comment.)

The Chinese government encourages this chilling effect by setting confusing, ever-shifting expectations, Tager told me. Time-travel narratives like Back to the Future were deemed “frivolous” and disrespectful of history—especially if such stories suggested the ability to alter reality. But 2012’s Looper, featuring scenes shot in Shanghai, with dialogue depicting China as a representation of the future, made it past censors. A culture of trying to predict the country’s needs is now the norm: Stories portraying Chinese characters as antagonists or featuring disagreement with Beijing in regions such as Tibet, Taiwan, and Xinjiang have been assumed off-limits. But China has also banned scenes from Bohemian Rhapsody apparently for depicting same-sex relationships, and prohibited Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest altogether for including ghosts and cannibalism.