Chris Fenton, long-time Hollywood executive and author of the book “Feeding the Dragon,” said on Tuesday that Hollywood has been making the Chinese communist regime so strong that it’s now out of control.
“It wasn’t until many years later that I realized, not only were we feeding the dragon, which is China, too much, but we were doing it in a way that was making the dragon so strong that at some point in the future, we would never be able to control it and that’s where we are today,” Fenton told NTD’s “Focus Talk” host Jenny Chang.
Fenton said he came up with the title of his book—a memoir that captures his journey over 20 years of being engaged in the commercial and cultural exchange between the United States and China in the entertainment industry—when he was trying to get Marvel to work on the plot of Iron Man 3 in order to make it appease the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) so that it can enter the Chinese market. His wife told him he was “feeding the dragon” a little too much.
“You got to make sure the CCP is okay with what your product and service is and how you’re messaging it to the populace there. That’s the only way you can get it in. And then you get access to the consumer,” said Fenton, insisting to his wife that “that’s just how it is.”
But it wasn’t until the NBA famously drew the wrath of the Chinese communist regime in late 2019 after then-Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong that he got a wake-up call. Chinese businesses cut ties with the league, and state broadcaster CCTV stopped airing games.
“The NBA was kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party in order to have access to the market,” said Fenton. “Oh my God, I’ve been complicit in all this too, for the past 20 years. This is terrible!”
To combat “the dragon,” Fenton believes it’s going to require the efforts of all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation.
“We need to all come together on something I think we can all agree on: This is a national security issue, it’s an economic security issue, it’s human rights issues, it’s justice issues.”
“Everybody starts on a local level and on an individual level, so don’t think that you’re just one person that can’t make a difference. Because I’m one person trying to make a difference in my own little way and I seem to be creaking open some doors every once in a while,” Fenton said.
Cathy He contributed to this report
From The Epoch Times.