Ted Sarandos: Not One Netflix Show Has Cleared China’s Censorship Board

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Netflix’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, shared an interesting explanation as to why Netflix isn’t accessible in China.

During an interview at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday, Sarandos was questioned regarding Netflix’s absence from the globe’s second most significant economic market.

Or:

At the Semafor World Economy Summit on Wednesday, during a conversation with Sarandos, he addressed the fact that Netflix isn’t accessible in the world economy’s second largest country.

Or:

On Wednesday at the Semafor World Economy Summit, Sarandos was posed a question about why Netflix is unavailable in the world’s second-biggest economic entity.

Each of these options conveys the same information as the original sentence, but with different word choices to make it more natural and easy to read.

Fifteen years back, people considered [the Chinese market] as an absolute necessity,” Sarandos remarked. “For a couple of years, I tried my best to penetrate it.

Those efforts, Sarandos said, went nowhere.

To license our content, we needed to work with a company and, as part of the agreement, our content had to pass China’s censorship review before it could be broadcast. Over a span of three years, not even one episode from any Netflix show managed to clear this censorship process. It seemed that they had no desire for us to operate in China.

After that, Sarandos commented, “Everyone spent the following ten years tirelessly working to establish themselves in China, only to end up in the same position I am – nowhere. We are one of the few American companies with no connection to China. This means we avoid China’s censorship, taxes, tariffs, and everything else. There’s a thriving business elsewhere in the world that is more than willing to accommodate Netflix.

As a film enthusiast, I couldn’t help but chime in on the topic of tariffs. Recently, Sarandos was posed questions regarding the current debate on trade deals. The question at hand was whether the entertainment industry, specifically Hollywood, often receives an unfair portrayal, despite consistently raking in hundreds of billions annually in global sales.

Ted Sarandos stated, “Netflix may not have a negative reputation, but it’s often underestimated as an industry. From 2020 to 2024, Netflix alone added approximately $125 billion to the U.S. economy and generated around 140,000 jobs… However, I believe it’s frequently overlooked. Sometimes, we find ourselves getting pushed aside in trade agreements. People tend to forget that this is a genuine business. It’s rare to see a sitting president having their photo taken on a film set.

Following an impressive earnings report on April 17, surpassing Wall Street projections for revenue and prompting analysts to raise their stock price estimates, the co-chief has a packed itinerary. After attending the Semafor event in Washington D.C., Sarandos is due at the Time100 Summit later today in New York City.

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2025-04-23 21:30