China has become the worlds’ largest and most important movie market and Hollywood is anxious to cash in. Yet heavy-handed censorship from Chinese authorities reveals a harsh truth: the ideology promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party subverts bedrock Western ideals, including the rule of law, respect for private property and, above all, freedom of expression. Martha Bayles, writing in The Atlantic, scrutinizes the long arm of Chinese censorship and American filmmakers’ craven submission in the pursuit of profits. What ultimately is at stake, writes Bayles, is nothing less than artistic freedom.
A Spite That Knows No Bounds
Gratingly awful global scold Greta Thunberg’s latest stunt is to turn on her own motherland. Sweden has been very good to her, but the former social-democratic paradise’s mugging by the realities of uncontrolled immigration do not sit well with the keffiyeh-clad rabblerouser. “For years, Sweden took more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe,” writes Fredrik Karrholm in The Spectator. “Now asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1985.”
