The curious censorship of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland
Fortunes shift quickly in Chinese cyberspace. On March 1, Chloé Zhao, the Beijing-born film director, was the ‘pride of China’, according to the Chinese Communist Party’s The Global Times. Zhao had just won the best director Golden Globe for her film Nomadland, becoming the first Asian woman in history to win the award, and only the second woman full stop. As news of her victory emerged, Chinese social media was awash with congratulatory messages for the 38-year old director. But the tide soon turned after diligent Chinese netizens dug up comments made by Zhao in a 2013 interview, in which she said that China is a place ‘where there are
