While all eyes may be on TikTok right now as Congress debates the app’s future, this type of influence by the Chinese regime isn’t new. It goes back to the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of hegemony -- to win without fighting. 

With the promise of massive profits in China, institutions like Hollywood started self-censoring for a piece of China’s market. For decades, the Chinese regime has used its soft power influence to shape perceptions in society, ultimately impacting politics. 

As French philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” James Scott, founder of the Center for Cyber-Influence Operations Studies wondered, “But who does one become when the thought is hijacked?”

TikTok takes that a step further, where the thought isn't being hijacked, the thought is being planted. 

With over 170 million Americans on the app, stories of teens signing up for some laughs, but ending up dead doing challenges, have been making headlines. 

Is this just for entertainment, or is it, as some say “digital fentanyl” with deadly consequences?

That's where soft power comes in. 

As Andrew Breitbart said, “Politics is downstream of culture.” Communist China understands that the power to influence and control culture eventually one reshapes politics. 

The new NTD Original Documentary Hollywood Takeover: China's Control in the Film Industry, which has been streaming on EpochTV since March 8, explores just that issue. 

How did Hollywood end up as a tool of communist China? 

Money.

It costs a fortune to make movies. And when the financial crisis hit the United States in 2008, Beijing seemed the place to be. Fresh off its success with the Beijing Olympics, communist China set its sights on the next big goal: China's own version of Hollywood. 

Film executives saw an opportunity for a massive market, with boatloads of cash to be made. Diplomats saw an opportunity for cultural exchange, perhaps a way for the two superpowers to grow closer. Communist China saw an opportunity for indoctrination. 

But it's not that easy to get a film past the Chinese censors and into that big market. 

So where does that leave Hollywood? 

That's when all sorts of changes started popping up in films. 

Red Dawn: 2 was supposed to show a communist Chinese invasion of America. Instead, the studios spent $1 million changing every insignia to North Korea. In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark gets saved by a Chinese doctor. In Gravity, Sandra Bullock gets saved in space by going to the Chinese Space Station. 

But it didn't stop there. 

In the 2016 Marvel blockbuster Dr. Strange, the Tibetan character gets replaced by a White woman. Disney's live-action remake of Mulan was partially filmed in Xinjiang and included end credits thanking the local government municipalities there. The same Xinjiang that's committing genocide against the ethnic Uyghur population. 

Since Mao Zedong and the beginning of communist China, art has been seen as a tool serving the cause of the Party. There is no art for art’s sake. In Mao's 1942 speech in Yan'an, he said, “Revolutionize literature and art to follow the correct path of development” to be used to “help overthrow our national enemy.” Since Mao, that idea has been expanded on. Under the current regime head, Xi Jinping, there is a part of the Chinese military’s handbook that talks about the battle for “mind control happens on a smokeless battlefield,” adding that it “happens on the ideological front.”

The national security alarm bells are now ringing across the nation. From former film executives to lawmakers, there's a dawning realization that the aspirations of opening up to China did not end up making communist China more free, instead the free world is slowly being torn apart. 

Is it too late to blunt the influence of the CCP in America? 

Since the pandemic, the world finally began to wake up to the fact that what happens in China doesn't stay over there. Instead, it has an impact on life at home. 

In Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise's iconic flight jacket from the 1980s had the Japanese and Taiwanese flag patches swapped out. The fact that an American icon would kowtow to the Chinese censors led to international backlash. Ultimately, the flags were restored. 

Top Gun: Maverick went on to gross over $1 billion globally, without ever entering the China market.

Why did we make Hollywood Takeover: China's Control in the Film Industry? Because it’s not too late if we continue to wake up. 

Tiffany Meier is a producer, host of NTD’s “China in Focus,” and film host of Hollywood Takeover: China’s Control in the Film Industry, Tiffany Meier is dedicated to presenting an accurate picture of China. With her unwavering commitment to finding and presenting the facts that the CCP doesn’t want people to know, the show has grown to over half a million subscribers since its launch in late February 2019 and has received overwhelming support and positive feedback. Ms. Meier is dedicated to truth, integrity, and high journalistic standards in her reporting on China. With a network of underground sources in China, she has stayed ahead of the curve. Viewers say she presents tomorrow’s news today.

Image: TikTok