The Barbie movie won’t make it to Vietnam’s silver screens, apparently due to a scene starring the nine-dot line map that depicts China’s claims to disputed waters in the South China sea.
The Warner Bros. film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling was due for release in the country on July 21, the same date as the US. According to local news website VnExpress, the announcement came on Monday (July 3) from Vi Kien Thanh, the head of the Vietnam cinema department at the ministry of culture, sports, and tourism, who attributed the decision to the National Film Evaluation Council.
Maps featuring the U-shaped vague and broken line through the South China Sea was declared unusable by an international tribunal in 2016. Several governments, including Taiwan, Vietnam, The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, claim stake in the disputed waters. Beijing rejected ruling.
The Greta Gerwig-directed movie isn’t the first to fall foul of regulators because of the map.
update :
Here is the picture of the map via a twitter user 
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0HNdA1aYAAr_eE?format=jpg&name=large
Between banned in China vs banned in Vietnam I think the capitalists are gonna go with the Chinese market.
I can't imagine they actually needed to show the line unless they were specifying exactly where Barbie was in the ocean, so seems like an own goal
Yeah just don't show it is the easiest one. Same with like Ukraine or Cyprus and all the other incredibly controversial borders in the world.
I suspect a lot of these happen because people are simply uneducated about what borders are and why they can be controversial.
Hollywood needs to hire terminally online Hexbear posters to tell them all of the geopolitcal things that will alienate international audiences bc they are too
It's literally an incorrect map as a joke, why would someone who can't draw a map apparently know a disputed boundary in the South China Sea lol
"China's dominion over the Spratly and Paracel Islands SHALL BE RECOGNIZED, oh yea India feels a bit empty let's draw a turtle."
Also the plot of the movie shows Barbie is ignorant of the real world and what people do there so the map would be incorrect on purpose. The line could've been placed as a dig against China even.
I wanted to reply with an image of Barbie wearing a Mao Suit and I'm genuinely surprised nobody seems to have photoshopped that together yet.
Its one of those gibberish world maps that happens to have dashes through an ocean.
you mean "east sea" (or however the vietnamese would be transliterated)
Several governments, including Taiwan, Vietnam, The Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, claim stake in the disputed waters. Beijing rejected ruling.
The ROC has the exact claims to the South China Sea as the PRC and has build two naval bases in the region. They strictly speaking have an even more expansive claim than the PRC since they technically don't acknowledge Zhou Enlai removing two dash lines, meaning they subscribe to an 11-dash line that includes the Gulf of Tonkin as Chinese territorial waters instead of the 9-dash line which excludes the Gulf of Tonkin. PRC formally recognized the Gulf of Tonkin as Vietnamese territorial waters in a 2000 treaty.
They’ve both signed declarations to think of up solutions without outside interference lol. Unfortunately with these plans for planning, they take forever to bear anything.
The article cites several other instances of the nine dot map in other movies, Netflix shows, and even ESPN. I'm not one of those "everything is an op" guys, but it's strange how often disputed maps of the South China Sea are popping up lately.
My nephew got a globe last Christmas that has the nine dash line and also includes Taiwan as part of China
Please tell me this is a bit and Vietnam didn't actually take that map seriously.
Am I the only one who cannot interpret the map in that link? Can someone please highlight in it where is the disputed line?
I have to assume it's the one right off of Asia going off towards the end of the chalkboard
Was this the actual stated reason, or is it just "apparently," as the article states. They mention an announcement by some head of cinema but it never actually states what the announcement said.
Stuff like this feels like an op just to keep the "China bad" narrative in people's mind.
I mean maybe it really is the reason but like holy fuck just look at that map. Oddly enough the lines bare a resemblance, but like, why? We live in such an absurd world.
