November, 26, 1996

The New York Times

by Seth Faison

Shanghai, Nov. 25 - The Walt disney Company is planning a big future in China: The appetite for animated features like "The Lion King" seems limitless, sales of merchandise at Disney-owned "Mickey's Corner" stores are growing fast, and Disney president. Michael Ovitz, has traveled here repeatedly this year to discuss the possibility of opening a Disney theme park in southern China.

And Disney, like most other foreign business operating in the huge and growing China market, has been willing to follow China's imperative that politics be kept out of the movies, books and toys it sells here.

But Disney has suddenly learned the hidden perils of entering a country that takes its politics so seriously, and the company now faces an agonizing dilemma. Its grand plans for expansion here have been thrown into doubt because by a Disney subsidiary that is not being made in China and is not even intended for distribution in China.

The Chinese authorities warned Walt Disney executives recently that the studio's role in a major film about the life of the Dalai Lama that is now being shot in Morocco by director Martin Scorsese would force China to reconsider Disney's extensive plans for investment in China 's Entertainment market.

Few issues have been touchier for the Chinese than their country's control of Tibet, a policy that has been condemned as repressive by human rights advocates. A Chinese official explained the Government's position that anything portraying the situation in Tibet from the point of view of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan religious leader, is unacceptable.

"We are resolutely opposed to the making of this movie," said Kong Min, an official at the Film Bureau of the Ministry of Radio Film and Television. "It is intended to glorify the Dalai Lama, so it is an interference in China's internal affairs."

Disney executives now face an alarming choice: jeopardize the huge business potential in China or capitulate to pressure on a creative issue, one involving a renowned director and a cause supported by a number of movie stars led by Richard Gere, as well as human rights advocates around the world.

Disney executives, whose Asia-Pacific operations are based in Hong Kong, declined to comment today. Some people familiar with the Western film business in China said they had a hard time imagining that Disney would jeopardize its vast potential for sales in China to take a stand on one film.

"You can't ask an American company to ignore its very treasured freedom for expression, unless it affects other business worth hundreds of millions of dollars," said William A. Brent, publisher of China Entertainment Network in Beijing and an adviser to American media companies in China.

The movie, titled "Kundun," is about the life of the Dalai Lama, the religious leader of Tibet whom the Chinese authorities regard as an enemy to their control over the Himalayan region. It is being co-produced by Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Refuge Productions.

Mr. Kong, the Chinese official, said the director of the Film Bureau, Liu Jianzhong, traveled to the United States in October and told a senior Disney executive that China would be unhappy if the film was made, making it clear that other business could be affected.

As to precisely what China might do to Disney, MR. Kong said it was too early to discuss specific measures.

"We're not sure how to answer this question yet," he said. "We have to discuss it with the Foreign Ministry and other relevant departments."

Disney ha enormous ambitions in China. Mr. Ovitz, the company's president, has traveled here repeatedly this year to discuss its growing array of business plans, including its growing array of business plans, including a Disney World-type theme park as well as the further sale of Disney merchandise and release of films. The stakes are high; "The Lion King" was one of the biggest-grossing movies in China last year.

The story of Tibet in the middle of this century seems like a natural for Hollywood, with a gripping political drama, striking Himalayan landscape and a charismatic central figure in the Dalai Lama, who resisted China's growing control in 1950's and finally fled to India in 1959.

A second Tibet feature now being filmed, in South America, is Columbia Picture's "Seven Years in Tibet", directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Brad Pitt in the lead role of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountain climber who broke Tibet's veil of secretary by venturing there in the 1940's and becoming the Dalai Lama's personal tutor.

Asked whether the Film Bureau had contacted Columbia about "Seven Years in Tibet," MR. Kong said he had not heard of the film.

"In this a feature or a documentary?" he asked. "Maybe we should talk to them, too."

China's position will be the same for all Hollywood studios, he added.

Mr. Brent, the media company adviser, notes that the warning to Disney comes as China is trying to exert strict control over its film, television, newspaper and publishing businesses. Economic growth in China has meant loosened government control over most businesses and more exposure about losing control over the media.

Led by the Minister of Propaganda, Ding Guangen, a campaign to stress "politics at every level" this year has instructed editors, studio heads and publishers to toe the Communist Party line in all manner of topics.

At the same time, Chinese leaders fear that allowing and other studios into China too fully would undermine their own state-run film industry, which is having and increasingly hard time staying solvent.

China's position is that Tibet is historically a part of China that has periodically enjoyed greater or lesser amounts of autonomy through the centuries. Many exiled Tibetans argue that the land was traditionally independent.

Chinese officials proudly point to the hospitals and schools they have built in Tibet, and denigrate the closed and brutally elite nature of Tibetan society before the Chinese army arrived in 1951. But human rights croups say China has sought to destroy Tibetan culture, and the Chinese have been largely unable to melt the adulation for the Dalai Lama among many ordinary Tibetans, who revere him as a god and a king.

Orville Schell, an American writer who is writing a book about American perceptions of Tibet, said that if the feature films attracted popular attention, it would inevitably fuel popular concern over human rights abuses in China.

"There's a building groundswell of interest in Tibet which is going to break like surf on the beach," said MR. Schell, author of several books about China. "I don't know the Chinese are going to handle it."

Undoubtedly, Chinese officials will use whatever leverage they can muster, whether or not they actually have to carry out their threats.

Cui Tiankai, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said Hollywood studies should know that while they have the freedom to make whatever movies they want, anything perceived to be "anti-China" is likely to have consequences on the studios ' effort to do business here.

As Mr. Brent put it: "The Chinese have absolutely no ground to stand on, except that they have all the leverage. And they're very good at using it."