Erich Schwartzel has reported on the film industry for The Wall Street Journal since 2013. Previously, he covered energy and the environment for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where his work won the Scripps Howard Award for environmental reporting. From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence also plays out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies. In Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy (Penguin Press), Schwartzel argues that China has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that appeal to China’s citizens and mollify the severe Communist Party censors. Meanwhile, with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into a tool to export its agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century. Populated by a cast of characters including A-list stars like Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, eccentric Chinese billionaires, and zany expatriate filmmakers, Red Carpet is alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining.
