(Hanoi) Vietnam has banned the highly anticipated US blockbuster Barbie over scenes showing a map featuring Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea, state media reported on Monday.
This map shows a unique Chinese geographic boundary, known as the “nine-dotted line”, which defines Beijing’s claims to these disputed waters, over which Hanoi has rival claims.
The Hollywood comedy about the famous Mattel doll, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was supposed to be released in Vietnam on July 21, but Vietnamese movie chains have removed the release date from their website.
“The National Film Rating and Classification Council has viewed the film and made the decision to ban its screening in Vietnam due to a violation of the nine-dotted line,” said the director of the Department. of Vietnamese cinema, Vi Kien to the information site Dan Tri.
Another state media, Tien Phong, reported that the map showing this line appeared in several scenes in the film.
This territorial dispute has already had consequences for other films in the recent past in Vietnam, a communist country which largely practices censorship.
Last year, Uncharted, the action-adventure movie starring Tom Holland, was also banned from theaters for the same reason.
In the 2018 American romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, a scene was cut in the country as it showed a branded bag with a map showing the disputed islands in the South China Sea under Beijing’s control.
A year later, Hanoi pulled the DreamWorks animated film Abominable from the screens. Then last year, Netflix had to remove episodes of its Pine Gap series for similar scenes.
The South China Sea, home to valuable oil and gas deposits in particular, is the subject of competing sovereignty claims. Several of China’s neighbors fear that Beijing is seeking to extend its hold there.