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      In Chinese Version of ‘Friends,’ Ross’s Lesbian Ex-Wife Goes Missing

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      The popular show has become the latest target of China’s censorship campaign. The awkward cuts have not been missed by fans of the show in the country.HONG KONG — The wildly popular sitcom “Friends” is back on China’s best-known streaming services, but with some big changes to the script.In the latest Chinese version, when Ross tells his parents he has split from his wife, he doesn’t explain the reason: She is a lesbian living with another woman, is now pregnant and plans to raise the baby with her partner. Instead, the scene simply cuts to his parents’ stunned faces, and the plotline ends there.There are other, more subtle changes to the show, too.Joey’s suggestion of a trip to a strip club is translated in Chinese subtitles as “going out to have fun.” When Paul the Wine Guy tells Monica, “I haven’t been able to, uh, perform sexually,” the subtitle says that he has been in “low spirits.” A lament by Rachel that she is more “turned on” by a gravy boat than her fiancé is translated as Rachel being more “happy to see” tableware.The changes have prompted biting commentary on social media from the show’s many Chinese superfans, who mocked the prudishness of censors and said the alterations reinforced gender stereotypes.“Friends” is the latest example of foreign entertainment being rewritten in China, as the country embraces more traditional gender roles under its leader, Xi Jinping. Officials have gone so far as to ban portrayals of effeminate men on television.Even before the regulations went into effect in September, Chinese censors had already been hard at work. In the Chinese version of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the Queen biopic, a crucial scene in which Freddie Mercury, the band’s lead singer, tells his fiancée that he is gay was removed.The Communist Party wields enormous power over the entertainment business, bending it to produce the narratives it wants to promote. In January, censors changed the end of the movie “Fight Club,” replacing a scene in which a series of buildings were destroyed with a message saying the effort had been thwarted by police, although the original version was soon restored after a massive outcry. That move came after a much anticipated “Friends” reunion episode last year was missing cameos from Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and BTS when it aired in China because those celebrities had at some point offended the country’s leaders.“Friends” is hugely popular in China, where at one point many major cities had look-alikes of Central Perk, the cafe that was a gathering point for the show’s characters. Viewers in China had been able watch the show in an uncensored format over the past decade, but fans of the show are now limited to an officially edited version that is streamed on multiple platforms.Superfans have been quick to point out omissions or changes in censored episodes and debated the reasons for the cuts.The hashtag #FriendsDeleted was viewed more than 54 million times on the Chinese social media site Weibo over the weekend, according to a CNN report. By Monday, it had been removed.“Mostly they don’t want the women in their own country to be awakened,” one person wrote on Chinese social media. “They don’t want them to know women can love women. Otherwise who will help the men to carry on the family line.”Another commentator pointed out that the writers of “Friends” helped to normalize the L.G.B.T.Q. community with the episode. “And this is something that ‘Friends’ managed to do in 1994,” they wrote, questioning why homosexuality was being censored in China decades later.Only the first season of “Friends” was made available through online streaming platforms in China earlier this month, and many viewers in the country were already joking about what other scenes would be removed as future episodes become available.One person wondered how the censors would handle the season in which Phoebe becomes a surrogate mother to her brother. Another quipped that they were willing to bet the equivalent of $15 that the episode in which Monica, Chandler and Rachel discuss seven parts of a woman’s body for pleasure would be deleted.“I bet 100 yuan,” the person wrote on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. “That ‘Seven Seven Seven’ is absolutely deleted.”Cao Li More

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      ‘Fight Club’ Ending Is Restored in China After Censorship Outcry

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      Last month, viewers noticed that the ending of the 1999 film had been replaced with a pro-government message. Now the ending is back, and the message is gone.Some viewers who watched “Fight Club” on a popular Chinese streaming platform last month noticed that its violent, dystopian ending had been cut, and replaced with a message promoting law and order.Now the original ending is back on the platform — and the pro-government message is gone. The only parts still missing from the Chinese version of the 1999 cult classic appear to be nude sex scenes.The changes, which drew international attention, were spotted in recent weeks by people watching the film on a streaming platform owned by Tencent, a giant Chinese entertainment company.Tencent has now restored 11 of the 12 minutes that were previously cut, The Hollywood Reporter said in an article this week. The New York Times confirmed that about one minute remains missing, mostly consisting of sex scenes involving the characters played by Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. “Fight Club” is not the first foreign movie in which the version made for the Chinese mainland audience differs from the original. The Chinese version of the 2018 Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” for example, cut references to the singer Freddie Mercury’s sexuality.Still, it’s unusual for foreign movies in China to include the pro-government written codas; those are typically reserved for Chinese-language films. It is also rare for people who censor movies for the Chinese market to undo their own handiwork.It was not immediately clear on Tuesday why, or precisely when, the original ending of “Fight Club” was restored on Tencent — nor why the ending had been altered in the first place.Kenny Ng, a film professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, said in an interview that he believed the changes to the ending last month were a result of self-censorship by Tencent. But he said it was also possible that the film’s Chinese distributor made the changes.Tencent declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the film’s Chinese distributor, Pacific Audio and Video, said that the company was not involved in editing the Tencent version of the film and had merely applied for clearance to have it released in China.New Regency, the Los Angeles-based company that produced “Fight Club,” did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The rules governing what movies released in mainland China may or may not include have grown more stringent over the last few years.In the past, the rules were set by a division of China’s State Council, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. But since 2017, censorship has been governed by a comparatively stricter rule, the Film Industry Promotion Law, which gives the authorities more latitude to define perceived offenses.The law says that films shown in China may not include anything that jeopardizes the country’s unity, sovereignty, public order or “social ethics.” Also banned is anything that disrupts social stability, propagates superstition or defames cultural traditions.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      The Ending of 'Fight Club' Was Censored in China

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      The 1999 cult classic starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton is not the only foreign film to be altered for audiences in mainland China.When viewers watch “Fight Club” on a popular Chinese streaming platform, most of the film looks exactly as it did when it was released in 1999 — except for the apocalyptic ending.Instead of a successful plot to destroy a series of buildings, the Chinese version of the cult classic starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton ends with a note to viewers saying that the police “rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.”As for Pitt’s character, the note says, he was sent to an asylum and later discharged. (Never mind that the character is actually a figment of Norton’s character’s imagination.)The censored ending was discovered recently by fans in China who watched it on a streaming platform owned by Tencent, a giant Chinese entertainment company. It has led to criticism from Human Rights Watch and chatter on social media in China and the United States.“This is SUPER wonderful! Everyone gets a happy ending in China!” Chuck Palahniuk, the writer whose 1996 novel inspired the film, wrote sarcastically on Twitter. But he also said in an interview with TMZ on Wednesday that the censored ending was closer to the ending of his book, in which the bomb malfunctions and the narrator wakes up in a mental hospital after shooting himself.It is unclear whether the changes to the film’s Chinese edition were the result of self-censorship, a government order or a combination of the two. The film’s production company, based in Los Angeles, did not respond to requests for comment, and its Chinese distributor declined to comment.But this much is clear: “Fight Club” is not the first movie where the version made for the Chinese mainland audience differed from the original. Over the years, a number of Western movies and television shows — including “Men in Black 3,” “Cloud Atlas” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” — have been altered before they were shown to local audiences.A ‘reluctant compromise’To some extent, recent censorship echoes how the mainland Chinese authorities once demanded changes to movies from Hong Kong, the former British colony that was promised a high degree of autonomy when it returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.Hong Kong’s golden age of cinema included Bruce Lee kung fu films and Wong Kar-wai dramas, and, for years, local production companies there would export films to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and other countries in the region.But when those international sales were battered by a 1997 financial crisis in East Asia, Hong Kong production houses began looking to mainland China as their main source of overseas revenue. As a price of admission, they often agreed to produce alternate versions of their movies to suit local censorship requirements.“When exploitation of the new mainland market becomes a matter of life and death, such a reluctant compromise with market entry limitations is totally understandable as a measure of expediency,” the scholar Hilary Hongjin He wrote in a 2010 study of Hong Kong cinema in the Chinese mainland.Early censorshipAn early example of such censorship is “The Inescapable Snare,” a re-edited version of “Naked Ambition,” a 2003 Hong Kong film about the local sex industry. The mainland version adds a plot twist in which Hong Kong police officers team up with Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security to crack down on pornography and prostitution.Other Hong Kong films were edited for audiences in Southeast Asia, a region where governments and film audiences tend to be socially conservative. Notably, the directors of “Infernal Affairs,” a 2002 crime drama, produced an alternate version for the Malaysian market in which a criminal who has infiltrated the Hong Kong Police Force is apprehended after murdering an undercover officer.“Liu Jianming, we have found out that you are a spy for the mafia,” a policeman tells the criminal in the alternate ending, moments after Liu kills the undercover officer in the elevator of an office tower. “You are arrested.”In the original version, Liu rides the elevator to the ground floor and leaves the building.Pro-government codasToday, Hong Kong’s world-famous film scene has become the latest form of expression to be censored, since Beijing imposed a national security law on the territory in 2020. The Hong Kong government has been cracking down on documentaries and independent productions that it fears could glamorize the pro-democracy protests that roiled the city in 2019.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Li Yundi Is Detained in China on Suspicion of Prostitution

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      Li Yundi, a famous performer, was accused of soliciting a woman, state news outlets said. Officials often use such accusations against their enemies.A prominent Chinese pianist, Li Yundi, has been detained on prostitution suspicion in Beijing, state-run news outlets in China reported on Thursday.Mr. Li, 39, who had gained celebrity in China as a performer and a reality television personality, was accused of soliciting a 29-year-old woman, according to People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party.The authorities in Beijing did not provide many details of the incident, saying in a statement that a 39-year-old man with the last name Li had acknowledged wrongdoing and had been detained “in accordance with the law.”In an apparent reference to Mr. Li’s case, the Beijing authorities later posted a photo of piano keys alongside the text: “The world is not simply black and white, but one must distinguish between black and white. It must never be mistaken.”The Chinese government often uses accusations of prostitution to intimidate political enemies, and it was unclear why Mr. Li had been singled out and what punishment he might face. Mr. Li and his representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Reports of Mr. Li’s detention quickly became one of the most widely discussed topics on the Chinese internet, with hundreds of thousands of people weighing in. Many expressed shock at the detention of Mr. Li, who rose to fame after becoming one of the youngest people to win the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2000, when he was 18.“He has accumulated popularity for many years, and now it has been ruined after 20 or 30 years of hard work,” wrote one user on Weibo, a Twitterlike Chinese site.Under China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, the government has taken a tough line on artists and has led efforts to “purify” the country’s cultural environment, often in pursuit of political goals. The authorities have in recent months tried to rein in China’s raucous celebrity culture, warning about the perils of celebrity worship and fan clubs.Mr. Li, who has more than 20 million followers on Weibo, is a regular guest on the annual Lunar New Year gala on Chinese television, which is watched by hundreds of millions of people. This year, he performed “I Love You China,” a patriotic song.He rose to fame as a pianist and in the West is sometimes called only by his given name, Yundi. But in China he has become known more recently for his work on reality shows, including “Call Me By Fire,” in which male celebrities compete to form a performance group. Several episodes of the show were removed from the Chinese internet on Thursday after news of Mr. Li’s detention spread.Chinese commentators pointed to the case as an example of a lack of ethics among artists.“No matter how skilled he is, he will not be able to convey his sadness through performance once his image is damaged,” People’s Daily wrote in a social media post. “There can only be a future by advocating morality and abiding by the law.”The Chinese government has a history of using charges of prostitution to sideline political enemies, and experts said Mr. Li’s detention should be looked at critically.Jerome A. Cohen, a New York University law professor who specializes in the Chinese legal system, said the lack of transparency about his case was troubling.“Can one be confident that the facts alleged are true?” Professor Cohen said. “Prostitution is such a time-honored Communist Party claim against political opponents that one has to be suspicious of this case.”Claire Fu More

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      ‘Found’ Review: Three Adoptees Seek Their China Roots

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      This documentary, taking emotional cues from the teenagers at its center, is smart, illuminating and tender.A nanny at an orphanage in China’s Guangdong Province speaks of the infants she cared for over the years. “My heart ached whenever I sent a baby away … What was to become of them?” Amanda Lipitz’s adoption documentary “Found,” rife with poignant moments, provides not one simple answer to that plaintive question but three beautifully complex ones — in the cousins Chloe, Sadie and Lily, who travel to China from Arizona, Tennessee and Oklahoma.When we meet Chloe, she is at her bat mitzvah, her parents beaming. Before that gathering, Chloe (the filmmaker’s niece) had already met Sadie, via 23andMe, a consumer genetics testing company. Through its website, the two located Lily. The teenagers (with ample parental support) embark on a journey to learn the facts of their origins and perhaps locate their birth parents.The documentary finds a sympathetic character in a researcher, Liu Hao, who leverages her genealogical sleuthing skills on behalf of adoptees. She is based in Beijing, and she is upfront, explaining that her work seldom leads to genetic matches. Searching is a tender undertaking — for the teenagers and their parents, who are white, as well as for their potential birth parents. While the young women harbor overlapping questions, “Found” makes it clear they also have yearnings unique to them.In one scene — endearing for its mix of the casual and the deep teenagers are so good at — Liu shares with Sadie news of where she was found before being taken to the orphanage. “That’s so cool,” Sadie replies, then thinks again. “Not cool but awesome.” If by awesome she means staggering and wondrous, then the journey in self-discovery she, Chloe and Lily share in “Found” is awesome indeed.FoundRated PG. In English and Mandarin with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘All About My Sisters’ Review: Family Matters

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      Wang Qiong’s debut feature traces the tragic effects of China’s one-child policy on her family.Often in “All About My Sisters,” the Chinese filmmaker Wang Qiong’s documentary portrait of her family, you might forget that what you’re watching is filtered through a camera. Over a period of seven years, Wang filmed her parents, siblings and relatives from within the emotional thicket of their lives, capturing moments of piercing, private intimacy. Her approach yields a film bristling with the kind of familial rancor that usually only emerges behind closed doors.There’s plenty to warrant this bitterness, starting with the fact that Wang’s younger sister, Zhou Jin, was abandoned as a newborn before being retrieved and then given to an uncle to raise. That was in the 1990s, when the combination of China’s one-child policy and a widespread cultural preference for sons had tragic consequences. As we learn over the course of the film’s epic (yet impressively brisk-moving) three-hour arc, Jin’s is one of the many stories of abandoned babies, sex-selective abortions and female infanticide that haunt Wang’s family history.Wang is neither a staid observer nor a formal interviewer, but an active participant in the scenes she captures, often intervening gently from behind her hand-held camera. “Have you ever thought that induced abortion is horrible to baby girls?” she asks her older sister, Wang Li, whose husband is desperate for a male heir. Li’s response is simple but profound: “The world is horrible to us, too. Every move is a risk.”At times, Wang’s candor can be unsettling: I wondered about the ethics of her unflattering portrayal of Jin, who is seen being cruel to her toddler, as if re-enacting her own traumas. In such moments, “All About My Sisters” teeters discomfitingly between the personal and the political, revealing how little separates the two.All About My SistersNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 54 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How Hong Kong Censors Films to Protect National Security

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      The Asian film capital has cracked down on documentaries and independent productions that it fears could glamorize the pro-democracy movement.HONG KONG — The director of “Far From Home,” a short, intimate film about a family caught in the tumult of the 2019 antigovernment protests in Hong Kong, had hoped to show off her work at a local film festival in June.Then the censors stepped in.They told the director, Mok Kwan-ling, that her film’s title — which in Cantonese could carry a suggestion of cleaning up after a crime — must go. Dialogue expressing sympathy for an arrested protester had to be excised. Scenes of removing items from a room also had to be cut, apparently because they might be construed as concealing evidence.In total, Ms. Mok was ordered to make 14 cuts from the 25-minute film. But she said that doing so would have destroyed the balance she had attempted to forge between the views of protesters and those who opposed them. So she refused, and her film has thus far gone unseen by the public.“It was quite contradictory to a good narrative and a good plot,” she said. “If a person is completely good or completely bad, it’s very boring.”Hong Kong’s world-famous film scene, which nurtured groundbreaking directors like John Woo and Wong Kar-wai, has become the latest form of expression to be censored since Beijing imposed a tough new national security law on the former British colony last year.Mok Kwan-ling, an independent film director, was ordered by the censors to make 14 cuts and to change the name of her film, “Far From Home.”Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesIn March, a local theater pulled the prizewinning protest documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall,” after a state-run newspaper said it incited hatred of China. At least two Hong Kong directors have decided to not release new films locally. When an earlier film by one of those directors was shown to a private gathering last month, the gathering was raided by the police.Directors say they fear the government will force them to cut their films — and, potentially, put them in prison — if they dismiss demands and show their work.“Under the national security law, Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong,” said Jevons Au, a director who moved to Canada shortly after the sweeping law was imposed. “Hong Kong is a part of China, and its film industry will finally turn into a part of China’s film industry.”Beyond the national security law, the government plans to toughen its censorship policies to allow it to ban or force cuts to films deemed “contrary to the interests of national security.” Such powers would also be retroactive, meaning the authorities could bar films that were previously approved. People that show such films could face up to three years in prison.“Part of the underlying goal of this law is to intimidate Hong Kong filmmakers, investors, producers, distributors and theaters into internalizing self-censorship,” said Shelly Kraicer, a film researcher specializing in Chinese-language cinema. “There will be a lot of ideas that just aren’t going to become projects and projects that aren’t going to be developed into films.”The new restrictions are unlikely to trouble bigger-budget Hong Kong films, which are increasingly made in collaboration with mainland companies and aimed at the Chinese market. Producers already work to ensure those films comply with mainland censorship. Likewise, distributors and streaming services like Netflix, which is available in Hong Kong but not mainland China, are wary of crossing red lines.“Netflix is a business first,” said Kenny Ng, an expert on film censorship at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Film. “They show unconventional films, including politically controversial films, but only from a safe distance. I think Netflix has bigger concerns about access to commercial markets, even in mainland China.”Netflix representatives did not reply to requests for comment.Golden Scene, a Hong Kong movie theater, pulled the protest documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall” after it was attacked by a pro-Beijing newspaper.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesThe most likely targets of the new rules, which are expected to be approved this fall by Hong Kong’s legislature, are independent documentaries and fictional films that touch on protests and opposition politics.“For those independent filmmakers who really want to do Hong Kong stories in Hong Kong, it will be very challenging,” said Mr. Au, the director who moved to Canada. “They will have a lot of obstacles. It might even be dangerous.”The documentary “Inside the Red Brick Wall” was shot by anonymous filmmakers who followed protesters at Hong Kong Polytechnic University when they were besieged by police for two weeks in 2019. In addition to the film being pulled from the local theater, the Arts Development Council of Hong Kong withdrew a $90,000 grant to Ying E Chi, the independent film collective that released it.The censorship office had initially approved the documentary for audiences over 18, but now some in the film industry believe it could face a retroactive ban.Creators of the fictional film “Ten Years,” which examined the fears of vanishing culture and freedoms that invigorated the resistance to China’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, say it could also be targeted under the new rules. The filmmakers had difficulties finding venues when the movie was released in 2015, but now it might be banned completely, said Mr. Au, who directed one vignette in the five-part film.Kiwi Chow, who also directed part of “Ten Years,” knew that his protest documentary “Revolution of Our Times” had no chance of being approved in Hong Kong. Even its overseas premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July required special precautions. It was shown on short notice near the end of the festival so Beijing couldn’t pressure the organizers to block it.“I need to do what’s right and not let fear shake my beliefs,” said Kiwi Chow, who directed a documentary on the protests in Hong Kong.Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesMr. Chow sold the film rights to a European distributor and, before he returned to Hong Kong, deleted footage of the film from his own computers out of fear he might be arrested.Some of the subjects of the 152-minute film, including pro-democracy activists such as Benny Tai and Gwyneth Ho, are now in jail. Mr. Chow feared he, too, might be arrested. Friends and family warned him to leave the city, release the film anonymously or change its title. The title is drawn from the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times,” which the government has described as an illegal call for Hong Kong independence.But Mr. Chow said he ultimately went ahead with the film as he had envisioned it out of a sense of responsibility to the project, its subject and crew.“I need to do what’s right and not let fear shake my beliefs,” he said.While he has yet to face direct retaliation, he said there were signs it could be coming.When he attended a small, private showing of “Beyond the Dream,” a nonpolitical romance that he directed, the police raided the event. Mr. Chow and about 40 people who attended the screening at the office of a pro-democracy district representative were each fined about $645 for violating social distancing rules.“It seems like a warning sign from the regime,” he said. “It’s not very direct. It’s still a question whether the regime has begun its work: Has a case on me been opened?” More

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      Why 'Shang-Chi' Isn't a Hit in China

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      Marvel’s first Asian superhero movie has yet to be released in the mainland amid fierce debate over its back story and star.Marvel released “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” with China in mind. Simu Liu, the film’s Canadian lead actor, was born in China. Much of its dialogue is in Mandarin. The cast includes Tony Leung, one of the biggest Chinese-speaking movie stars in history.The studio’s first Asian superhero movie is a hit, drawing praise and ticket sales in East Asia and other global markets. Perhaps the only place where the movie has not been well received — in fact, it has not been received there at all — is mainland China.Disney, which owns Marvel, has yet to receive clearance from Beijing’s regulators to show the film in the vast but heavily censored movie market. While the reasons aren’t clear, “Shang-Chi” may be a victim of the low point in U.S.-China relations.China is also pushing back against Western influence, with increasingly vocal nationalists denouncing foreign books and movies and the teaching of English. They have even criticized Mr. Liu for his previous comments about China, which he left in the mid-1990s, when he was a small child.Lack of access to the world’s largest movie market could limit how much money the film makes. But in other parts of Asia, the movie has been greeted warmly by audiences for how it depicts a Chinese superhero burdened by a racist back story.“I was really expecting the movie to be racist,” said David Shin, a Marvel fan in Seoul. “I was surprised at how well they touched upon Asian culture.” Simu Liu in a scene from the movie.Jasin Boland/Disney-Marvel Studios, via Associated PressWorldwide, the movie has earned more than $250 million, all but guaranteeing audiences will be seeing more of Shang-Chi, the title character. Big sales in Asia helped: “Shang-Chi” earned more than $23 million in the Asia Pacific region and debuted at the top of the charts in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. It also set an industry record for a September weekend debut in Hong Kong.The movie is a retelling of the story of a little-known Marvel character created in 1973 — 16 years before Mr. Liu was born — and updated for today’s audiences. It centers on Shang-Chi, a young man working as a valet who is reluctantly drawn into his father’s deadly criminal organization, known as the Ten Rings.The group is named after the magical rings that Shang-Chi’s father, Xu Wenwu, wears on his wrists and that give him destructive power that have helped him destroy and conquer empires.Xu Wenwu is played by Mr. Leung, a legend in Hong Kong cinema. His role in the film was pivotal in attracting Hong Kong audiences to the theaters, said Kevin Ma, a film industry observer and writer from Hong Kong.Tony Leung, a legend in Hong Kong cinema, plays Shang-Chi’s father.Marvel Studios/Disney-Marvel Studios, via Associated Press“It’s hard to imagine anyone who watches Hong Kong films to not know who he is,” Mr. Ma said, adding that Mr. Leung was used as the central figure in advertisements for the film in the Chinese city.To reshape the comic-book character to appeal to Asian and Asian American audiences, Marvel put the movie in the hands of Destin Daniel Cretton, a Japanese American director. In addition to Mr. Liu and Mr. Leung, the cast includes Michelle Yeoh, another major star in Asia, and Awkwafina, the Asian American actor and comedian.The strong showing by “Shang-Chi” comes after a wave of financial and critical success for recent films with Asian casts and production crews, like “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Parasite” and “The Farewell.”But for blockbusters, mainland China is the major market to win. So far this year, its theaters have reaped $5.2 billion in ticket sales, according to Maoyan, which tracks Chinese box office results. Disney has submitted the movie for release there.The director Destin Daniel Cretton, left, and Mr. Liu, far right, on the set. Jasin Boland/Marvel StudiosDespite its absence, the film has generated spirited debate on the Chinese internet. Global Times, a nationalist tabloid controlled by the Communist Party, published commentary that cited the racist origin of the character.Readers of Shang-Chi comic books in the 1970s saw Asian faces colored in unnatural oranges and yellows. They saw the main character shirtless and shoeless, spouting “fortune-cookie platitudes in stilted English,” The New York Times noted recently. And then there was Shang-Chi’s father in the comics: He was named Fu Manchu and caricatured as a power-hungry Asian man, an image that harks back to the stereotypes first pressed upon Asian immigrants a century ago.“How can Chinese people be insulted like this,” the Global Times commentary asked, “while at the same time we let you take our money?”Some critics in China have also pointed to Mr. Liu’s previous comments about China. One nationalist account on Weibo, the popular social media platform, posted several screenshots from a previous interview with Mr. Liu in which he talked about how his parents left “Third World” China where people “were dying of starvation.” (The video is no longer online. A spokeswoman for Disney declined to comment on the remarks.)Mr. Liu has been critical of China before. In 2016, when he was starring in the television show “Kim’s Convenience,” he wrote on Twitter, “I think countries that try to censor and cover up dissenting ideas rather than face them and deal with them are out of touch with reality.” When a Twitter user replied, “sounds like America,” Mr. Liu responded: “I was referring to Chinese gov’t censorship. It’s really immature and out of touch.”Others, including some who said they had seen the movie, leapt to its defense.“There is nothing wrong with the film and half of its dialogue is in Mandarin Chinese,” wrote a Weibo user. “Those who said it insulted China before were too irresponsible.”A marquee for the movie in Los Angeles.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesStill, the movie has found some resonance with Chinese audiences who have managed to see the film. Jin Yang, 33, a Chinese film producer based in Beijing, praised the film after watching it in a theater in Hong Kong, which despite its own rising censorship operates under different rules.“It’s a bit regretful that the film has not been released in mainland China,” Ms. Yang said. “It’d be great if Chinese audiences could see this film that combines Chinese and Western cultures so well.”Debate about “Shang-Chi” predated the movie’s release, as China’s voluble online audience debated Mr. Liu’s looks, an argument that the actor himself noted with amusement. Some claimed to see a passing resemblance to a young Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, leading to Photoshopped images that others predicted might hurt its chances to pass muster with Chinese film regulators.The trouble in China may have unintentionally helped sales in other markets in Asia, where Beijing’s increasing bellicosity with its neighbors has hurt public perceptions of the country.“I thought that the movie might not be well received in South Korea because of the protagonist being Chinese,” Kim Hanseul, 31, a Marvel fan in Seoul, said. But, he said, the movie’s absence in China “has actually led to more Koreans watching the film.”The movie’s fans said they hoped Chinese audiences would be able to see it eventually.“It’s amusing,” said Ms. Yang, the film producer, “that it’s Americans’ turn to read subtitles in a Marvel film.” More