Yes, it was a way for western powers to show their support of free speech and liberal values. Now that the communist block is gone, there is less incentive to support the arts and claim cultural victory.
Actually, communism controls our own movie industry. Take the famous case of the remake of Red Dawn where they changed the antagonist from China to North Korea. That was done at the TOP levels, communist pressure on Obama, who then exerted pressure on the studio. On behalf of Xi.
John Cena learning Chinese so he could apologize for supporting pro-democracy protests in Taiwan is another one. Our bland culture is partly designed by communism.
> That was done at the TOP levels, communist pressure on Obama, who then exerted pressure on the studio. On behalf of Xi.
Source? All I can find is https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/18/407619652/... a producer named Peter Shiao claiming that "Chinese diplomats asked him to arrange a conversation with the makers of Red Dawn" but by then they "were already erasing references to China in post-production." Which seems to suggest they were persuaded by some other means, but doesn't tell us how.
Probably not some shadowy conspiracy. There was a lot of pandering to China from the studios back then because they held onto the hope that the market in China would open up to them more. But it never really materialized.
You don't need a conspiracy theory here when there is a far simpler explanation:
China has 1B potential viewers/customers that hollywood wants as an audience to grow and increase profit, so they'll do their best not to anger the chinese government. As a consequence movies avoid showing China in a bad light and they avoid topic that could get movies censored or forbidden in China.
