The South Korean TV series Squid Game has taken the world by storm, but if you live in China, you will not be able to watch it legally, because Netflix has been shut out of the Chinese market. Despite this, as of last week, a Squid Game related thread on the Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo has attracted more than 1.9 billion views and 395,000 discussions.
The series is widely available for illegal download in China, and unofficial merchandise connected to the show has been selling like hot cakes, including a copy of dalgona — a crisp sugar candy featured in one episode.
This has attracted public criticism from South Korean Ambassador to China Jang Ha-sung, who said: “Our assessment is that Squid Game ... is being illegally distributed on about 60 sites in China.”
He requested that Chinese authorities rectify the situation to ensure that the intellectual property rights of South Korean companies are protected.
The Squid Game phenomenon raises two questions. First, why does China not respect the intellectual property rights of others, as is the norm around the world. Second, why is South Korea able to export its contemporary culture around the world to great success, yet China, with a population 27 times the size of South Korea, cannot?
The answer to both questions is communism.
In regard to intellectual property rights, the communist mentality prescribes that all property belongs to the state. Communists therefore do not recognize the concept of property rights, whether they be intellectual property, land rights or bodily rights, and all of these can be breached or confiscated at the behest of the state.
For example, under the guise of “common prosperity,” the Chinese Communist Party under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is helping itself to the assets of China’s wealthiest business owners.
In such an environment, it should come as no surprise that Squid Game is openly streamed, downloaded and watched in China. It is also precisely because of communism that China is awash with knock-off goods — even academic plagiarism is rife in the country.
Japan and South Korea are able to export their contemporary culture around the world, while China, which boasts that it is a cultural powerhouse dating back 5,000 years and has the second-highest GDP in the world, has been unable to sell its cultural products to the world.
It is hard to think of a single notable Chinese film, TV series or other contemporary cultural product that has achieved worldwide success. Again, this is a result of communism.
In communist societies, people have to demonstrate their loyalty to state-mandated ideology and this leads to a highly affected cultural output, which can be seen in Chinese TV dramas, novels, films and music. They are not popular with audiences, not least with the Chinese public themselves, which explains why Japanese, South Korean and US films and TV series are popular in China.
The country is not lacking in money to splurge on its cultural industry, but its conformist communist ideology saps creativity.
The Chinese public are constantly subject to surveillance and control by the state. As a consequence, Chinese writers and producers dare not speak truth to power, or say anything meaningful. With film and TV scripts examined with a fine-tooth comb by state censors, no wonder China’s cultural products fall flat.
Taiwanese film and TV producers have to work with much smaller budgets, but they enjoy a freedom of expression that their Chinese counterparts can only dream of.
Liu Ming-te holds a doctorate in political science from the Free University of Berlin.
Translated by Edward Jones
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