Vietnam has officially banned the release of an upcoming Barbie film due to a scene featuring a map depicting China’s contested territorial claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam, along with several other countries, disputes China’s claim to almost all of the South China Sea.
The film, centered around the famous doll, has gained significant attention on social media but will not be screened in Vietnamese cinemas on its scheduled release date of 21 July.
The exact scene that includes the “offensive image” of China’s nine-dash line, a representation used in Chinese maps to indicate territorial claims in the South China Sea, remains unclear.
China has been constructing military bases on artificial islands in the area for years and frequently conducts naval patrols to assert its territorial claims. However, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled against Chinese claims in the South China Sea in 2016, a decision that Beijing has chosen not to recognize.
This is not the first time a film featuring the nine-dash line has faced a ban in Vietnam. In 2019, the DreamWorks animated film “Abominable” was pulled from Vietnamese theaters for the same reason. Additionally, the Department of Cinema, a Vietnamese government body responsible for licensing and censoring foreign films, prohibited the release of the Sony action movie “Uncharted” in 2022 due to the presence of the disputed map.
Vietnam has taken similar measures in the past to enforce its stance on the South China Sea dispute. In 2021, the Australian spy drama series “Pine Gap” was removed from the Vietnamese market by Netflix following a complaint from Vietnamese authorities.
The South China Sea remains a contentious issue involving multiple countries, including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei. As territorial disputes persist, the ban on the Barbie film reflects Vietnam’s efforts to maintain its position on the matter and protect its national interests.
