Senators Probe Netflix Partnership With Chinese Genocide Denier
Republican senators are demanding Netflix explain its decision to adapt a Chinese science fiction trilogy written by a Xinjiang genocide denier into an original series.
The senators, including Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) and Rick Scott (Fla.), are marshaling support against the streaming giant’s plan to adapt Chinese author Liu Cixin’s bestselling Three-Body Problem trilogy into a live-action series. Cixin defended his government’s brutal suppression of Muslim Uighurs in a 2019 interview with the New Yorker.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing atrocities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR),” the legislators wrote. “Sadly, a number of U.S. companies continue to either actively or tacitly allow the normalization of, or apologism for, these crimes. The decision to produce an adaptation of Mr. Liu’s work can be viewed as such normalization.”
Bela Bajaria, a Joe Biden campaign megadonor who gave as much as $500,000 to a group affiliated with the candidate, was in charge of “international content” when Netflix ordered the series. She now oversees all of Netflix’s original series across the world, according to the Wall Street Journal. Netflix, which did not return a request for comment, previously told the Washington Free Beacon that she “works on the series side of the business.”
Netflix’s collaboration with Liu reflects Hollywood’s willingness to cater to the massive Chinese market, even if it means turning a blind eye to the country’s human rights abuses. Disney’s recent live-action remake of Mulan even thanked Xinjiang authorities—some of them directly implicated in the Uighur crackdown—in its closing credit. Hollywood studios also routinely avoid topics that might anger Chinese censors, going so far as to change movie villains’ nationalities from Chinese to North Korean. (Read more from “Senators Probe Netflix Partnership With Chinese Genocide Denier” HERE)
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