As the Hollywood Reporter recalls, in past years the ceremony was made available in China starting in the morning following the live event on the streaming platform 1905.com, the online service of the CCTV6 state TV dedicated mainly to cinema. An abridged and re-edited version was then broadcast on the same CCTV6 channel. In 2021, however, this tradition was abruptly interrupted: while no official explanation came from Chinese TV, there are those who speculate that the decision was made after the nominations for the Norwegian documentary Do Not Split, dedicated to the protests in Hong Kong in in favor of democracy, and to the Chinese naturalized American director Chloé Zhao, guilty of statements considered hostile to the Beijing government.
Also this year every reference to the Oscars has disappeared from the TV schedules of the eastern country, while no official communication has yet explained the reason for this turnaround. Here, too, hypotheses are wasted: on the one hand there are those who say that even Jessica Kingdon's film, Ascension, nominated among the best documentaries, is not frowned upon for how it describes the sometimes ruthless mechanisms of social climbing in the Chinese economy; again, there are those who say that Beijing is worried about possible externalizations by conductors, actors and prize-winners in favor of Ukraine, given the still ambiguous mediation position that China is holding between Russia and the country it invaded. The constant tensions between China and the United States certainly do not help, even if Hollywood in recent years relied heavily on the very populous Chinese market to ensure the international success of its broadcasters: could this also be the end of this era?