As Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government looks to tame China’s celebrities, the popularity of a new Universal Studios theme park in Beijing shows Hollywood’s enduring soft power among the nation’s 1.4 billion people.
Tickets for yesterday’s grand opening, priced at 638 yuan (US$98.67), sold out within 30 minutes of going online last week — as did rooms costing as much as 20,000 yuan at the resort’s two hotels, state-run media reported.
Fliggy (飛豬), an online travel site operated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), last week apologized for overselling the 500 yuan Universal Express Pass that lets visitor skip lines.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Yesterday morning, the park became the most-searched topic on the Sina Weibo microblogging site, as hundreds of visitors queued for entrance in the rain while those inside posted videos of their experiences.
A grand opening ceremony was attended by top officials, including Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary of Beijing Cai Qi (蔡奇), state-backed news Web site The Paper reported.
The surging demand underscores the challenge Xi faces in dampening the appetite for celebrities among the general public, as the CCP looks to curtail foreign influences and promote the concept of “common prosperity.”
A commentary published widely in state-run media last month warned against “fan culture” and “worshiping Western culture.”
Earlier this month, the National Radio and Television Administration — China’s broadcast regulator — ordered television companies and Internet platforms to ban film stars with “incorrect politics,” cap salaries and do away with idol worship.
One of China’s most popular film stars, Zhao Wei (趙薇), was blacklisted from China’s Internet, while another actress was last month ordered to pay 299 million yuan in overdue taxes, late fees and fines.
The popularity of the Universal Studios theme park shows resistance to the CCP’s tightening of cultural standards after decades of allowing Western influences, said to Adam Ni (倪淩超), co-editor of China Neican, a newsletter on Chinese public policy issues.
“As powerful as the party is, it will have to contend with countless everyday decisions by the Chinese, which would together make up the moral fabric of the People’s Republic,” he said.
In the lead-up to the park’s public opening, dozens of Chinese celebrities — including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) and supermodel Liu Wen (劉雯) — visited attractions related to Jurassic Park, Transformers and Harry Potter.
Photographs of other guests dressed in Hogwarts cloaks, and posing with Minions and Transformers characters, became trending topics on Sina Weibo.
“Universal Beijing Resort is popular with the Chinese because there is part of the global culture that the Chinese thirst for,” Ni said. “Beijing is trying to reinforce this dichotomy between ‘Chinese’ and ‘foreign,’ but there is still much admiration and curiosity for foreign cultures in China. So the public attitude toward Western culture is two-faced.”
The project, which is expected to attract 30 million visitors a year, is a joint venture between state-owned Beijing Shouhuan Cultural Tourism Investment Co (北京首寰文化旅遊投資) and Comcast NBCUniversal. It has been in the works since 2001.
New Chinese ambassador to the US Qin Gang (秦剛) last week compared one of the attraction’s roller coasters to bumpy diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing.
“After all tumbling and shakes, the roller coaster came to a soft landing in the end,” Qin, who visited the park before moving to the US in July, wrote on Twitter.
That positive spin was shared by the Global Times, which last week said the popularity displayed China’s “cultural confidence.”
However, there were other signs the attraction would face challenges from the government.
Cai on Thursday urged the US side to add more “Chinese elements” to the park in a video call with Comcast Corp chief executive officer Brian Roberts, the Beijing Daily reported.
Universal Beijing Resort did not respond to a question on how it would deal with China’s requests.
Harrison Wang, a 39-year-old Beijing resident who works in the film industry, heaped praise on the theme park after he attended the soft launch.
“People are here for the famed scenes and characters of these well-liked movies, as well as the world-class entertaining experience,” Wang said. “As the country’s borders are closed now, it offers a taste of the authentic Western culture.”
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle