Hanoi considered the presence of the “line of nine lines”, used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over this disputed maritime area, “offensive”.
The Vietnamese authorities confirmed on Monday the ban on the movie “Barbie” for a scene in which the map of the South China Sea appears with a U-shaped dotted line representing China’s territorial claims over this disputed region.
“Barbie ,” starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling , was scheduled to open in Vietnam on July 21, the same date as in the United States.
However, Vi Kien Thanh , head of the Department of Cinema within the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, confirmed today to the Thanh Nien news portal that the film will not finally be distributed in the country.
“We do not grant a license for the release of the American film ‘Barbie’ in Vietnam because it contains the offensive image of the nine-dash line,” said the Vietnamese official in reference to the aforementioned map. It is unclear which scene depicts what a senior official called the “offensive image” of China’s nine-stripes line.
Warner Bros. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The U-shaped “line of nine lines” is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims to vast areas of the South China Sea (called the East Sea in Vietnam), including swaths of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf, where has granted oil concessions.
The line of nine lines delimits the waters that China claims as its own, where there are some islets disputed by other countries (Radio Free Asia)
In recent years, there have been multiple episodes of tension between Beijing and Hanoi over the incursion of Chinese prospecting vessels into Vietnamese territorial waters and the occasional harassment of Vietnamese fishing vessels by Chinese vessels.Beijing claims almost all of this maritime space, where it has built facilities for military use on various islets and which are also partially disputed by Vietnam , the Philippines , Malaysia , Brunei and Taiwan .
Background
“Barbie” is the latest film to be banned in Vietnam for depicting China’s controversial nine-stripe line , which was repudiated in an international arbitration ruling by a court in The Hague in 2016. China refuses to recognize the ruling.
In 2019, the Vietnamese government withdrew DreamWorks animated film “Abominable” and last year banned Sony action film “Unchartered” for the same reason.
In 2021, the Netflix platform also removed the Australian spy series “Pine Gap” for the same reason.