Generation Gap for Disney in China
GUANGZHOU, China — Ever since Mickey Mouse visited Lin Huanbin's school here last summer, telling fairy tales and passing out Mouseketeer certificates, the 11-year-old boy has been unable to get Mi Laoshu out of his mind.
The boy loves the big mouse's funny misadventures. He keeps a photo of Mickey and himself in a chest for safekeeping. And every chance he gets, he asks his parents to take him to Hong Kong Disneyland when it opens this fall.
His parents aren't so enthused. They're wary of the theme park's planned high admission cost. The boy's father, a businessman, also has a more deep-seated worry.
"If Huanbin receives too much Western culture, in the future he may not cherish family relations, forget his ancestors and not go back to our hometown," Lin Zhengguang says.
Inside the Lin home and many others in China, there is a distinct generational, cultural and economic divide -- and it figures to be a major challenge for Walt Disney Co. and other Western companies trying to sell entertainment in the world's fastest-growing emerging consumer market.
Although many Chinese children have grown up eating at McDonald's and watching Shaquille O'Neal take on Yao Ming, their parents' generation isn't so familiar or comfortable with many aspects of American life, especially if they cost a lot.
Chinese movies, theme parks and entertainment merchandise -- although often lacking in technical or artistic sophistication -- are much cheaper, although not always legal. Inexpensive pirated DVDs and other knockoffs of Western films continue to run rampant, despite government efforts to crack down.
What's more, even as Beijing has recently eased restrictions on foreign media as part of an effort to encourage foreign investment and expertise in China's entertainment industry, officials remain suspicious of Western cultural influences.
That's particularly true when sex, politics and social mores are involved. Popular American television programs such as "Friends" have been censored. Beijing has long had a quota of how many foreign films it will approve for theaters, and movies like "Ocean's Eleven," which makes heroes of criminals, have been rejected even for the DVD market. Hollywood movies, shown on prime-time TV a decade ago, are now scheduled only late at night, past children's bedtime.
"The government is cautious about opening the youth media industry to foreign companies," says Yin Hong, vice dean of the journalism and communication school at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
