Nomadland director Chloé Zhao’s historic Oscars win censored in China, months after she was accused of insulting the country
- No mainland media livestreamed the event and there was no mention of Zhao’s wins from the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency, China’s official mouthpieces
- On Weibo and WeChat, the two most-used social media platforms in the mainland, bloggers found their Oscars posts heavily censored
News of Beijing-born filmmaker Chloé Zhao’s historic win at this year’s Oscars – she became the first Asian woman to be named best director for her road movie Nomadland, which also picked up the best picture award – has either been downplayed or censored in China.
On social media, there was also little discussion on the subject. On Douban, the popular Chinese film review and community forum, there’s no topic dedicated to the 93rd Academy Awards. Individual bloggers on Weibo and WeChat, the two most-used social media platforms in the mainland, found their posts heavily censored.
Guda Baihua, a popular Weibo influencer with 13 million fans, who mostly translates news of US shows, commentaries and live events, sent out a video of Zhao’s acceptance speech with the vague title “A speech at an Academy Award” to evade the censors. But two hours later, his video was taken down. He later showed a screenshot of a message from Weibo saying the video “did not pass Weibo reviews”.
Another blogger sent out a full list of this year’s Oscar-winning movies, including Nomadland, but the post could not be viewed, shared or commented on. Searches on the Weibo platform were also censored; “#93rd Oscars” yielded an error message showing “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the topic is not found”.
On WeChat, one film blogger Taotao “wrote about something for a whole morning but it couldn’t get published”, hinting the topic in question was Zhao’s Nomadland. Instead, they congratulated Anthony Hopkins, who won best actor for his performance as an elderly man with dementia in The Father.
