China's Richest Man Tells MPAA's Chris Dodd To Tell Donald Trump To Be Nice To China... Or Else

I really have no idea what to make of this fairly odd story. The richest man in China, Wang Jianlin, has apparently deputized MPAA boss Chris Dodd as his messenger to Donald Trump on the issue of China. As you may have heard, China is currently "seriously concerned" about Donald Trump's decision to publicly question the "One China" policy held for decades by US officials, which accepts China's position that Taiwan is a "renegade province" rather than its own autonomous country. Whatever you think of this policy, the Trump administration seems to have approached it with something approximating a diplomatic sledgehammer.

You can find all sorts of articles discussing how China might retaliate if this moves forward, but perhaps the oddest is that Wang is using Chris Dodd as his mouthpiece to influence Trump. Wang owns AMC, the largest movie chain in the US, which is where that connection comes in -- but Wang also has strong ties to the Chinese government:

Wang, who is China's richest man, is a former commander in the People's Liberation Army, and a current delegate to the Chinese People's National Congress, as well as a member of an advisory board to the Communist Party. Some of his current and former businesses are closely linked to the family of current president Xi Jinping, the New York Times noted last year.

And, of course, one of Chris Dodd's major focuses as head of the MPAA has been to open up the Chinese market to Hollywood films. And that leads us to Dodd suddenly being the spokesperson asked to deliver the message to Trump to knock it off with the China stuff... or perhaps AMC employees go hungry. Really.

Yesterday, I met with the president of Motion Picture Association of America who said he wants to meet with Mr. Trump and asked me what message I would like delivered. I told him to tell Mr. Trump that I have $10 billion of investments in the United States and more than 20,000 employees there who wouldn't have anything to eat should things be handled poorly, and nothing else mattered. At least in the film and television industry, you must understand that the growth of English films depends on the Chinese market.

Of course, like many threats from Hollywood about "job losses," this one appears to be massively exaggerated. Yes, Hollywood is increasingly relying on China for boosting its record-breaking revenue increases (remember how piracy was killing movies? Me neither), but the idea that 20,000 employees will suddenly go hungry over this aspect of the dispute seems like little more than posturing. Either way, this is just another weird data point in a very weird year on the politics front.

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