Authorities Shut Down Film Festival in New York

Only using the word "Authorities" in the title understates the significance of this.

This is not the US government shutting down a film festival; this is the Chinese government engaging in an illegal overseas harrassment campaign in order to suppress negative depictions of itself.

Fascism is in vogue. The United States isn’t far behind.

tl,dr: It's China policing the Uyghur issue in the context of the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival: https://indiechina.org/about/

No they didn't...

It's third party harassment and they chose to pull out of the festival over it.

Don't suppose there's a torrent of the suppressed film?

Already there

Ironic, considering it was China effectively suppressing expression in the USA

The FBI and Canada seem to feel differently enough to investigate, and have arrested a few individuals operating these types of "overseas police stations". [1]

"Chen Jinping, 60, of New York, New York, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),"[2]

The films weren't just pulled - the festival was cancelled.[3]

Sources:

1: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlm...

2: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/new-york-resident-pl...

3: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/07/indiechina-ind...

How is it different? It's still not US authorities shutting down a US festival as the title would make you believe...

I understand this is pressure from China, that they were threatened and that yes this is a horrible situation. All I'm saying is the actual decision to shut down the festival was not (and cannot) be made by China.

Well, this sucks! Whether its the Chinese gov. (like in this piece), or the U.s. gov in other areas (and w/more frequency this year), its an awful state of affairs for everyone. I remember years, maybe a couple of decades ago, there was this rush to "remove the borders" for "better global business"...this helped capitalism spread (for better or worse), and now it feels like more and more the borders that might contain fascism are disappearing...so fascism is spreading more and more. Ugh! :-(

Sadly the Uyghurs are a third-class genocide. It’s been known for years, but for some reason no one is complaining.

All those loud protesters screaming genocide in palestine up to two weeks ago are strangely quiet on this.

Poorly worded title, something like this would be clearer:

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Chinese Authorities Threaten Mainland Relatives to Shut Down Film Festival in New York

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Even the subheading from the article seemed better: "Chinese Police Harass Filmmakers, Families to Undermine Free Expression Abroad"

Though I would of made it "Filmmaker's Families".

How can you be free if your family is held hostage. As soon as a person from China becomes free or achieves anything, this is what happens.

This is what they do just because of a movie they don't care for. Imagine what they do when they actually want or need something.

The coercion is very strong, and why some end up in jail for spying or other criminal acts in the hosting country, even if they end up citizens, and love the place. Very messed up.

Yea and the use of the phrase "severe repression" in the article is arguably a bad faith euphemism given that millions of Muslims have been detained by China while women were forcibly sterilized, which is genocide by the United Nations definition. Meanwhile their culture has been repressed as well, in a manner consistent with cultual genocide, which the United Nations does not recognize as a concept.

This is actually textbook communism. Stasi used to run a lot of similar operations, though arguably with more finesse[1] than what the CCP's playbook for dealing with dissidents (at least as far as it is known.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

> After the festival was suspended, Zhu issued a statement that the decision was not out of fear, but rather to “stop harassment of … directors, guests, former staff, and volunteers associated with the festival, including my friends and family.”

I don’t quite get the distinction being made here. Surely the Chinese authorities have succeeded in scaring the people involved in the festival into calling it off.

I think authoritarian fits better. They may be copying Soviet techniques which is a government that happened to espouse a communist economic philosophy, but in practice this has nothing to do with the economics and everything to do with exerting control. Fascists are just a different type of authoritarian regime.

I see what you're saying, I didn't make the assumption it was the US authorities, simply that an authoritative entity was involved. In this case, that entity applied enough pressure to directors to make the organizers feel the need to cancel the event. I consider the headline to be clickbait, but obviously we drew very different conclusions from it.

I hear you though, clickbait gonna clickbait.