No 'Barbie' in Vietnam: Why the Asian country has banned the Margot Robbie movie

There’s a lot of buzz around Hollywood director Greta Gerwig’s new movie – Barbie – a fantasy comedy film based on the famous doll. Now, the movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has gained even more attention after authorities in Vietnam have banned it.

The movie, set for a release on 21 July, has upset officials for a depiction of a map that shows China’s claims to territory in the South China Sea.

Vi Kien Thanh, director general of the Vietnam Cinema Department under the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, said on Monday that the ban was decided by the National Film Evaluation Council. “We do not grant licence for the American movie ‘Barbie’ to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,” said the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper, also citing Vi Kien Thanh.

Also read: Blame Barbie: How the world ran out of pink paint

Row over nine-dash line

Barbie, the movie, according to a senior official, depicts the “offensive image” of China’s nine-dash line. For the unaware, the nine-dash line is used in Chinese maps of the South China Sea to show its territorial claims.

China often uses the U-shaped “nine-dash line” to illustrate its expansive claims over most of the resource-rich sea, often to the displeasure of Hanoi, which also claims parts of the waterway.

The nine-dash line was denounced in a 2016 international arbitration ruling by a court in The Hague but Beijing does not recognise the ruling.

Incidentally, Barbie isn’t the first feature in Vietnam to get into trouble over the depiction of the nine-dash line. DreamWorks’ animated film Abominable was banned for the same reason in 2019 and Sony’s Unchartered, starring Tom Holland, suffered the same fate last year.

In 2018, Vietnam cut a scene from the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians that featured a designer bag with a map of the world showing the disputed South China Sea islands under Beijing’s control. Last year, even Netflix was told to ditch episodes of its Pine Gap series over similar scenes.

Vietnam and China ties

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea through the nine-dash line, while Hanoi is among the several regional claimants to the Paracel and Spratly Islands. The dispute often gives rise to tense stand-offs at sea. There have been multiple incidents where China and Vietnam have had confrontations over these disputed territories, including clashes between naval vessels. China regularly uses its maritime militia to harass Vietnamese civilian and military vessels.

The United States has tried to take advantage of this situation and boost ties with Vietnam. In fact, President Joe Biden reached out to Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong in late March, which was then followed by Antony Blinken’s visit to Hanoi as Secretary of State in mid-April.

However, experts state that the US outreach to enlist Vietnam as an ally won’t bear fruit as Hanoi dares not risk angering its larger neighbour. Zachary Abuza, a professor at the Washington-based National War College who focuses on Southeast Asian politics and security issues, told VOANews, “China is much more important to Vietnam than the United States. Hanoi’s worldview is “far more aligned with Beijing’s than that of Washington.”

With inputs from AFP

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