Pentagon rule can cut off help for movies, games over China censorship

The Pentagon has finalized a rule that can shut out movies, television shows, documentaries and computer games from military help if they comply with Chinese censorship demands. For production companies that want Defense Department assistance, the question is now whether their project has bowed, or is likely to bow, to a demand from the Government of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, or an entity acting for either one to censor content in a material way.

At the federal level, the rule carries out section 1257 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. That law bars assistance to entertainment projects that have complied, or are likely to comply, with censorship demands meant to advance the national interest of the PRC, short for the People’s Republic of China.

The certification gate

The practical change is a certification requirement. Before a project can be considered for approval, an authorized representative of the production company must say the project has not complied, and is not likely to comply, with that kind of foreign demand. The Defense Department is putting the burden on the people asking for help, not on the Pentagon to guess later where a script compromise came from.

That matters because the rule is aimed at the point where entertainment and government support meet. A production that trims a story, a scene or a character decision to satisfy a Chinese censorship demand can now lose access to military assistance under the department’s process.

The projects it reaches

The rule covers feature motion pictures, episodic television programs, documentaries and computer-based games. That is a broad enough list to reach the kinds of projects that often turn to the military for cooperation, and it makes the underlying issue plain: the Pentagon does not want its support to help projects that have already traded away creative control under pressure from Beijing.

The final rule gives the department a cleaner line to draw than case-by-case judgment about foreign influence after the fact. For studios and game makers, it turns a political pressure point into a compliance question before the cameras roll or the code ships.