The Philippines Considers ‘Barbie’ Ban over Pro-China Map as Vietnam Expands Probes

The Philippine government is contemplating a ban of the film Barbie over reports it displays China’s “Nine-Dash Line” propaganda map.

The map is also the reason Vietnam banned the soon-to-be-released film. Now Vietnamese officials have opened an investigation into a K-Pop girl group called Blackpink for ostensibly including the map in advertisements for an upcoming tour.

The Nine-Dash Line is the notorious map created by China that shows its borders extending over nearly the entire South China Sea, gobbling up numerous islands and shoals where Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and others have competing territorial claims.

China’s version of the South China Sea border was conclusively defeated at the International Court of Justice in 2016 when the Philippines filed a legal challenge against Beijing’s territorial claims.

The Chinese Communist government resolutely ignores the 2016 court ruling and tries to insert its Nine-Dash Line map into as much international pop culture as possible. American entertainment companies that do extensive business with China have an unsavory habit of currying favor with Beijing by slipping China’s map onto movie sets, including films made for children.

The Vietnamese Communist government is equally vigorous about banning public displays of China’s map. On Monday, Vietnam’s Department of Cinema announced it would ban Barbie for displaying the map, apparently several times. Barbie is scheduled to open in both Vietnam and the United States on July 21.

Observers who have pored over the film and its trailers say the Chinese map can be seen hanging on the wall of a Barbie house when the protagonist Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, pays a visit. (The movie is about Barbie dolls coming to life. The highly profitable toy line has long included elaborate plastic houses for Barbie to dwell in, cars for her to drive, and so forth).

On Tuesday, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board of the Philippines (MTRCB) announced it has “reviewed the film Barbie” and is “deliberating on the request of Warner Brothers F.E. Inc. for a Permit to Exhibit.”

The board’s notice did not explain why granting this exhibition permit seems to be in doubt, but several Filipino politicians said the Nine-Dash Line map was the major issue.

“If the invalidated nine-dash line was indeed depicted in the movie Barbie, then it is incumbent upon the MTRCB to ban the same as it denigrates Philippine sovereignty,” said Sen. Francis Tolentino.

“This will not just be injurious to the Republic of the Philippines, but it would be contrary to what our country fought for and achieved under the Arbitral Ruling in 2016,” Tolentino said, referring to the Philippine court victory that China has been studiously ignoring for the past seven years.

“The movie is fiction, and so is the Nine-Dash Line. At the minimum, our cinemas should include an explicit disclaimer that the nine-dash line is a figment of China’s imagination,” said Sen. Risa Hontiveros.

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada said the issue was serious, even if the Barbie film is frivolous.

“It may be a work of fiction but still, this is a very sensitive issue. It is contrary to our national interest and China has no historic rights in the waters within the nine-dash line,” Estrada said.

Jose Antonio Custodio, a Philippine military historian, found it puzzling and annoying that an American movie company would toss a politically-charged map depicting a border that America does not recognize into a movie about children’s toys.

“Because precisely it legitimizes China’s illegal claims on the entire South China Sea, which not one government around the world supports. Most specifically, the United States itself. So to have an American company legitimize what the Chinese are doing is patently outrageous,” Custodio told NPR on Thursday.

The Hollywood Reporter noted that Warner Bros. may have painted itself into a corner because if it takes the obvious step of editing the Nine-Dash Line map out of Barbie, it could alienate China and lose a substantial amount of money at the huge Chinese box office. Even if the Chinese government did not bother to ban Barbie over such an edit, the hyper-nationalist “Little Pinks” who infest Chinese social media would probably be outraged and call for a boycott.

Meanwhile, Vietnam on Thursday opened an investigation into a South Korean girl group called Blackpink for promoting the Nine-Dash Line map, which the Vietnamese amusingly refer to as the “cow-tongue line” due to its shape.

Blackpink’s tour organizer iME apparently included the Chinese map in some promotional images on the website for their first performance in Vietnam, scheduled for July 29 and 30. Vietnamese fans of the group noticed the Nine-Dash Line on the website and began canceling their tickets for the tour in protest.

The government responded to these complaints by opening an investigation into whether iME was in violation of the agreement it signed when procuring a license for Blackpink to perform in Vietnam. Some observers believe the dismayed fans are overreacting to the graphics of the tour map, which might not depict the Nine-Dash Line at all:

Netizens commented in frustration & called for a boycott of #BLACKBINK concerts in Vietnam. The dots though appear to show locations & names of countries, not necessarily China's nine-dash line. Another vivid illustration of Vietnam’s public anxiety over China’s territorial claim pic.twitter.com/WTPdIuPsj8

— Tung Ngo (@TungNgoCNA) July 4, 2023

The website for iME Entertainment was down for “maintenance” on Thursday. It would not be surprising if the tour map looks different when the site comes back up. Blackpink is one of the most popular K-pop acts, and even the Vietnamese fans glumly canceling their tickets to express their patriotism made a point of saying how much they love the group and hold its members blameless, so efforts will doubtless be made to keep the tour alive.

In 2020, Blackpink was targeted by the government of China because the singers allegedly cuddled a panda without wearing safety gloves. The predictable hashtag of outrage that appeared on China’s state-controlled social media site Weibo translated to #BlackpinkTouchedPandaCubWrongly.

The actual reason for the swiftly organized vendetta against the group probably had more to do with Beijing’s discomfort at the popularity and cultural impact of K-pop groups in China. Blackpink’s management insisted the group members were properly sanitized before petting the panda.