!!! COOL EXPAT SITE !!! - Cherry Lane Movies
Cherry Lane Movies is a non-profit, non-commercial service to the foreign community. Three Friday evenings of every month, they show Chinese films with English subtitles in a comfortable Beijing theater with a large screen. For more information visit their website http://www.cherrylanemovies.com.cn/, Issue 72 of Beijing This Month brings up a very interesting China-WTO question:
--What will happen to China's movie industry if China joins the WTO?
While politicians and business types celebrate the prospect of China joining the World Trade Organization, workers in China's film industry have more reason than most to wonder if this is really a Good Thing.
Hollywood dominates the screens of many countries to such an extent that local productions have virtually ceased to exist. Vibrant national film industries only survive where governments have acted to protect them.
France is the classic example, but French protectionism has been threatened by the WTO, which the United States has tried to use to force its movies into French cinemas. A similar scenario appears to be written into the Sino-US agreement on WTO access signed last November. Film imports are restricted to 10 a year under current policies, but this limit is raised to 40 by the deal with the US, rising to 50 three years after WTO entry.
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