As Hollywood finds itself increasingly reliant on attracting China’s huge movie-going audiences to turn a profit on its mega-budget blockbuster films, the Chinese government in return is counting on learning Hollywood’s tricks of the trade to help spread the China dream. Following the quickening dance between freewheeling liberal and capitalist Hollywood and conservative centrally planned authoritarian China should prove plenty entertaining in the years to come as movie moguls from the West get into lock step with the real estate and Internet barons of the East to make money at all costs in what remains, like it or not, one of the bright spots in Sino-U.S. relations.
Jonathan Landreth reported from Beijing from 2004 to 2012 with a focus on the media and entertainment industries’ effect on the world’s perceptions of China. He was the founding Asia Editor of The Hollywood Reporter and his freelance work appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The China Economic Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Forbes, and Wallpaper.
In October 2012, Landreth joined ChinaFile as managing editor. In October 2015, he launched China Film Insider, a web site devoted to covering the growing ties between China and Hollywood. From 2002 to 2004 Landreth reported for Reuters in Singapore where he covered the global oil trade. From 2000 to 2002, Landreth reported for Reuters in New York, covering the health and energy industries, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. Before Reuters, he was a founding editor of the web site VirtualChina (1999-2000), and freelanced for NPR and The New York Times Magazine.
