The Gate of Heavenly Peace, an American-made documentary on the 1989 student uprising in Tiananmen Square, was a hit movie in the first half of this year in Hong Kong. In March, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that the film, directed by the Beijing-born Carma Hinton, had grossed over a million Hong Kong dollars in the five weeks after its January opening at Columbia Classics, the colony's premier art house.
Chinese embassies around the world protested screenings of the film. But not in Hong Kong. Why? The weekly speculated that it might be because so many Chinese officials were going to see the film themselves, or it might be because of "the current spell of tolerance by Beijing on Hong Kong issues, apparently intended to calm local nerves before the takeover." And it might be that Beijing simply had a better plan in store.
On June 30, the day before the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong, a "complex deal" was consummated, closing the doors of Columbia Classics and (not coincidentally) ending the run of The Gate of Heavenly Peace. As the Far Eastern Economic Review now reports, the cinema's owners insist that their closing has nothing to do with The Gates of Heavenly Peace but is part of an effort to find a cheaper lease elsewhere.
Other sources told the magazine that the theater "was not given the option to renew its lease after it expired on June 30." The old premises are owned by a family business whose most prominent son, Vincent Lo, is an adviser to Beijing. Indeed, he's considered a favorite "to become Hong Kong's next chief executive."
Here we have the paradigm of the suppression of speech. No censorship, no violence, just capitalism in the service of the totalitarian ideas that destroy capitalism. Money buys silence.