The Movie Beijing Doesn’t Want You to See | Yan Ma

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] Canadian-Chinese filmmaker Yan Ma knew from the outset that he was putting himself at risk for making a political thriller about a lab leak in China. “The Unrestricted War” is a movie that was inspired by the cover-up and outbreak of COVID-19 and spotlights how the Chinese Communist Party coerces its citizens, and even foreigners living within China, to achieve its ends.

Officials pressured Ma’s family members back in China in attempts to coerce him to stop the project. His Chinese team members faced similar pressure. Ethnically Chinese actors refused to participate in the film for fear of the Chinese regime targeting them, ruining their careers, or threatening their families. The actor cast as the lead of the project abruptly backed out just three days before filming, leaving Yan and his casting director scrambling to audition a new lead.

In this episode, we dive into some of the extraordinary challenges Yan and his team faced to make this movie a reality, and why he feels it was all worth it.

The film “The Unrestricted Warfare” is available for rental and streaming on GJW+, a censorship-free streaming platform. 

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Yan Ma, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Yan Ma:

Thank you for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’ve made a really, really excellent film, but there were some moments when you were wondering to yourself if maybe this film wouldn’t be made at all. And I want to get you to tell me about them. I’m talking about the ones that are not typical of most movies.

Mr. Ma:

As a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker, we kind of knew this from the very beginning of the production, that there would be many challenges and even real-life risks. Because many of our team members are from China, including myself. My family members faced a lot of pressure from the local government, and the Chinese government.

Mr. Jekielek:

OK, wait a second. Explain this to me. At what point did they experience pressure?

Mr. Ma:

After I started the project, they were called to the government office. And then when they got there, they realized they were actually led to what they called a national security office. So they had the officers in there tell them that everything has consequences. So basically, the issue is a threat to them, right? And then later they cut some of my family members’ income. They cut their paycheck. So that’s at the beginning of the project. So it’s almost two years. It’s still ongoing.

Mr. Jekielek:

How did they know that you were making this film just at the beginning of the project?

Mr. Ma:

We don’t have concrete evidence, but we know they have informants everywhere. Whatever we do, they are closely watching. So they will know right away. It’s surprising. Many instances I experienced before, like when we decided to do something, and right away, the next week, someone from our team just got a notice from the national security, and they know right away. We don’t even know how they learned that because a lot of those discussions happen behind closed doors. It’s a closed-door discussion. So yes, but we did experience many of these kinds of situations.

Mr. Jekielek:

What do you do when this happens? Were you talking to the local police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service [CSIS], or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP]?

Mr. Ma:

No, I wasn’t. I don’t think there’s anything they can do because obviously it’s like a foreign, it’s a government operation. This is the strange thing about the Chinese Communist Party because they treat this kind of instance as an enemy of the state. So it’s on a different level. For us, if they wanted to treat us as political criminals, it’s not really something a foreign police can help us with. The only thing I can do is just comfort my family because it’s been a lot of pressure, obviously, and a very upsetting situation. Jan, I’m going to harp on this a little bit longer. 

Mr. Jekielek:

I think that, for example, you know, we get cyber attacked a lot here at The Epoch Times. I mean, extremely often by any standard. And I remember some years ago, I was telling someone this, you know, I was basically saying, we get cyber attacks, you know, weekly. It’s pretty, and they’re like, they looked at me and said, you get cyber attacked weekly? I said, yeah, yeah. That’s crazy. That’s unbelievable, right? And I realized I just had gotten so used to it that it sort of seemed normal, like in a free society, that’s not normal, right? 

And what you’re describing to me, right? I mean, this is, you know, completely unacceptable behavior by a foreign actor, right? But I think I’m getting the sense that it’s just become so normalized, that the Chinese Communist Party we’re talking about here, you know, is interfering in just your activities as one filmmaker that for you, you know, I don’t even know what I can do here to talk to the police or intelligence. I mean, and this is if I may right this is what your film’s about It’s kind of like us experiencing unrestricted warfare in real life 

Mr. Ma:

Yes, it is. It feels that way, yes. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So explain to me the genesis of this film.

Mr. Ma:

This film is inspired by the epidemic. I just feel like it’s important to reflect on what happened, what really happened, especially at the beginning of the outbreak. So I think that we need to see how, that’s why in the film I mainly show how the antagonists use their power to manipulate people and censor information, basically weaponize the crisis and eventually lead it to a global pandemic. So I just feel like it’s very important to shine a light on this because this may happen again. And if next time we have something much more deadly than COVID, I would say we may not have a second chance. So I feel like it’s important for us to talk about it. 

And also, we feel a responsibility to do it because there are so many Chinese people around the world who have become victims of this event. So many people were blamed for this because there’s a lot of increase in Asian hate because people don’t understand the difference between Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese people are actually the biggest victims of all this. So this film is also, I hope that we can, this film can shine a light on that too. So the Chinese people are actually victims, just as everyone else. It is just the system itself, the authoritarian system that is to blame. There are so many brilliant filmmakers in China, but they just simply don’t have the freedom to do this kind of film. So for me, as a filmmaker living in Canada, I just feel, yes, I guess I just have to do it. 

Mr. Jekielek:

So there’s this chilling moment in the film, and I think it’s incredibly important because it does relate to what happened during the actual pandemic, where the People’s Liberation Army general, who seems to be running the biosecurity bioweapons programs for the CCP, basically says, never let a good crisis go to waste, in essence, and basically sends this out to the world. And this is an important point that I like to remind people of, that however the pandemic exactly began, whether it was a lab leak, there are all these theories about how it all happened from the beginning. 

What’s certain is that movement inside China was locked down, but there was this vociferous attempt to prevent the stopping of any international movement from happening. So this was this weaponization. There’s no question there was weaponization there of a pandemic. And then you show that actually happening.

Mr. Ma:

Yes, absolutely. I believe so. We did a lot of research about this. And yes, we are confident that it’s not easy to find the information behind the subjects, especially in China. They did a lot of cover-up. But we know that this instance was actually reported very early. I watched the interview. Now it’s probably gone. 

But I watched an early interview by the doctor who first discovered the patient’s error, an old couple. And then she reported, but they didn’t take a proper reaction to it. So that’s one thing, like, yes, there are all kinds of possibilities. We may never know because since the CCP is still there, we don’t know what happened. But definitely, what they did after that turned, I think, turned a crisis, a public health crisis, into a global disaster.

Mr. Jekielek:

There is this whole kind of idea over the last several decades in the West that if we invest enough in China, if we give all our money, we give all our intellectual property, we kind of ignore the theft of it, we ignore this sort of asymmetrical relationship, we support them almost like a Marshall Plan type situation, they’ll become more like us, right? And I think that there’s something that is portrayed repeatedly in your film, which is very powerful, which is essentially the way that the decisions are made, the public health questions are completely, you know, sidelined and that interaction happens multiple times with different people. It’s an incredibly important idea. 

And my concern is that that mentality was the political consideration in a totalitarian communist regime, that’s always the case, that has rubbed off on us in the West because we saw a lot of decision-making that was clearly political, that wasn’t public health-oriented during the pandemic. And it took us a while even to figure out that that was the case because it was so shocking that people would make decisions that way.

Mr. Ma:

As someone who grew up in China, I actually understand how they behave, how they use their power to control people. They build this systematic brainwashing system, and the propaganda is all for one purpose, to gain their power and keep everything under their control. When the free world tries to do business with them, I mean they can take this opportunity and use it for their own political purposes. So the benefit never really goes to the people. And even if it does go to the people, they will use propaganda and brainwash the people, making them feel like, oh, it’s actually because of the benevolence of the party that all this happened. So they will use it as propaganda to control people’s minds. 

And I guess this stay in power feeling is very attractive to human nature. That’s why when a lot of, I guess, the governments or politicians in the West feel all the Chinese, like the way the Chinese government operates is so efficient, so efficient that they can just get things done real quickly, but at the cost of the values that we believed in. We all know what happened in the past decades. This eventually will lead us to a bigger disaster. So there is a saying in Chinese: you get a sesame seed and you lose a watermelon. So that’s how I see it. So yes, it’s powerful, it’s efficient, but we actually lost the most important thing and the ultimate purpose of why we’re doing this. Actually, in the long run, it’s going to hurt the people in public.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to go back to some of the irregularities that happened around your film. And I understand that just a few days before you actually started production, before you started filming, you lost the protagonist, the main character in the film. So just tell me about that.

Mr. Ma:

Yes, that was a very tough situation. Because three days before the shoot, our lead actors received a lot of pressure too from their family and friends. The lead actor got really worried because he really believed that he would get harmed by the Chinese government. And one day, in the middle of the night, he got a phone call, and there was nobody speaking on the other end. And it just really scared him. And the next day he just told us that he had to leave, he had to go back, he had to go home. 

This kind of thing never happened in the film industry because the wardrobe was prepared for him. And it just put us in a very difficult spot. And so we had to find a new actor and basically start over three days before. So this is kind of a challenge we were facing during the production. It happens a lot, this kind of thing. So, yes, it’s real. I mean, this fear, this effect of the CCP in the Western world, they’re real. We felt it throughout the whole production. It’s not something that we felt so far away. It’s not far away.

Mr. Jekielek:

Something worked out, because your lead actor, Dylan Bruce, nails it. How did you find him in three days? It seems like perfect casting.

Mr. Ma:

Yes, Dylan did a fantastic job, absolutely. Our casting director, after we told her the news, freaked out. Because again, this kind of thing is really rare in the film industry. And she basically worked 24/7 just to get us a new lead. It’s brand new, we did everything. We started over, so it’s an audition and everything.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let me get this straight, okay, three days before filming, you auditioned a new lead for the film?

Mr. Ma:

Yes, that’s how crazy it was.

Mr. Jekielek:

And it worked somehow.

Mr. Ma:

Yes, it worked. Because once they start shooting, you can’t change it. Once you schedule the days, you have to do it. So we just worked around the clock to fix the problem, I guess. This is saying that during the production, this is the situation we had to face. Sometimes we showed up on the set and the owner suddenly got scared. It’s like, oh, this is, I think it’s going to put me in danger and I’m not going to rent you this set anymore. This kind of situation we’re running through all the time. 

Mr. Jekielek:

We cover the Chinese communist regime’s influence activities in America on the show quite often. But what you’re describing just as a practical tactical reality, right, is astonishing. And again, I mean, I think clearly your film is called The Unrestricted War. What happened to you is, you know, in the name of the film, in the production, I think the young people these days call that meta.

Mr. Ma:

It’s kind of unbelievable in a way. Ironically, I have, you know, there last year or two years ago they had this overseas police station from the Chinese government established in North America. I actually got one of these right in my neighborhood, like a one-minute walk from my house. I was watching the map, like you know, from the news they showed where all the overseas police stations are. I said, oh, one of them is actually right in front of my house. It’s in the back of the convenience store.

Mr. Jekielek:

Just remind me about what these CCP overseas police stations are. What is that actually?

Mr. Ma:

Basically, it’s like the CCP, they send out this news to all the Chinese people outside the country. They said they are establishing these police stations overseas so all the Chinese citizens can go there and basically provide information. If they see anyone doing anything that will harm China or doing anything that makes the government look bad, they can just go to this police station and report them, and they have overseas operators who will help. I don’t know exactly how they will help, but this is how far they reach into the Chinese community.

Mr. Jekielek:

Again, we hear about the Chinese police stations, but it hits home a lot more when it’s one minute away from your home and you’re making a film that’s critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Ma:

Yes. It feels unreal. Because it’s like the convenience store next to my house. The store actually turned into a secret Chinese police station. Yes, that was ironic to me.

Mr. Jekielek:

As you told me earlier, your relatives have been threatened. They’ve had their pay cut because of your work. What do you think they’re trying to accomplish with that?

Mr. Ma:

Obviously, they wanted to put pressure on me, just stop whatever I’m doing. But to me, I think the best way to react to this is to do even more because you can’t back down. Once you back down, they know they have you in their pocket. They know that this works. It will just get worse.

Mr. Jekielek:

If this film becomes big, and I think it really has the potential to, you’ve made a really powerful film here. Aren’t you worried that it might have greater repercussions on your family back home?

Mr. Ma:

Yes, all the time. It really is like, especially to me, as Chinese, this kind of thing really can impact us a lot. But I don’t think I can walk away. And my conscience won’t allow me to do that, firstly. And then secondly, if I stop because of this, then they know, oh, this works for him. They won’t stop. They will just do more. I experienced many of these kinds of cases from my friends. They all experienced this before. 

There was a first time, there is always a second time. They will go to your family again, and now this time they will say, okay, we need you to do this for us, otherwise your family is gonna be in trouble again. So they slowly turn you to work for them. This is how, you know, for someone who doesn’t have a bottom line, they can, yeah, this is how they manipulate people. As I said, like again, as a Chinese, like someone who grew up there, I knew all their tricks very well.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes, and this is shown in various ways with the Canadian family, right? I mean, I’m not going to give away some of the plot twists, but let’s talk about unrestricted war, okay? Of course, in this instance, I think the unrestricted war is using the virus as a weapon in effect, right? Again, whatever the origin was to basically, you know, affect the West in a very negative way, right? 

And, you know, which is actually what happened in reality. I mean, the whole, you know, the whole economy was ultimately closed down, right? And certainly that decision on the CCP side played a role in that, whatever the total decision-making was. Tell me a little bit more about other realms of this unrestricted war.

Mr. Ma:

Nowadays, to be honest, I just feel it’s everywhere because we are so closely connected to China in so many ways. I’ll give you a fun example. Like all the international students, I came to Canada as an international student and my producer too, Sophia, she was sent to Canada as a student to study, right? And she actually was recruited; they tried to recruit her to be a spy before she left the country, right? That really happened to her, and she said, of course, she said no, she refused. 

But even for all the normal students that you decided to go to a different country and then you were approached by a Chinese spy agency to, you know, for this kind of task. I’m just giving you an example like this to show that to them it’s really there’s no boundaries, like they do anything necessary to get what they want. Like right now we have so many Chinese internet influencers, even platforms, and like filled with their ideology and propaganda even. It’s really everywhere, including the fentanyl, you know, what happened on the streets, right? And the so-called made on the foreign politicians. So that’s what I’m saying.

Mr. Jekielek:

In Canada, there’s pretty strong evidence that a number of elected parliament members were elected in significant part with CCP money.

Mr. Ma:

Yes, I heard that on the news.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s talk a little bit about the fentanyl side. The FBI director here in the US, Kash Patel, calls it CCP fentanyl. We’ve done a lot of work on this show to explain how these precursors are coming in, that the Chinese banks are helping launder the money, that in the ports, there are Chinese operators working with the cartels. The pill presses are made in communist China. 

The fact that these different companies that sell the precursors seemingly operate with no problems, even though the Chinese are saying, yes, we’re working on it, is one of these textbook examples of unrestricted war. Because it leads to tens of thousands of military-aged American men being wiped off the map. And in wartime, that’s a lot, right?

Mr. Ma:

For the Chinese government, if they want someone, or even some company or some industry to disappear, they can’t make it happen overnight. There’s all this civilian system; it’s a play state. If they want to do it, they can’t just do it very fast. So if they tell us, oh, we can’t control those people who sell you this material, that is a lie; that’s impossible. So what has been the response?

Mr. Jekielek:

Of the film you’ve screened in a number of places. I just watched it when you screened it in Congress here in Washington, D.C. What has been the reaction of the audiences? 

Mr. Ma:

Oh, the reaction from the audience is actually incredibly good. I’m very happy about it. I think the audience really gets the message behind the film. We tried a few festivals, but we received a response that they are a little concerned about the topic. Because some of the very big festivals are usually very connected to China. A lot of filmmakers, Chinese filmmakers, come every year. 

So they’re concerned that, because this has happened to them before, if they accept our film, the Chinese government will ask the rest of the Chinese filmmakers to leave the festival. So they will suffer a loss. We experienced this before at the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan. They said the same thing—if we accept you, that means we lose all other Chinese films. The government will just force them to withdraw.

Mr. Jekielek:

There’s a really powerful book called The Collaboration. It was written about how Hollywood worked with the Nazi regime in the 1930s to make sure, I believe in the middle of the 1930s, there was not a single film made critical of Nazi Germany, even though these extreme anti-Semitic policies were already kind of being put in place. Not just anti-Semitic, there were all sorts of red flags, but Hollywood basically didn’t notice, even though there were filmmakers who wanted to make those films. Right? We also know that there’s an eerie parallel here. 

Mr. Ma:

That just happens in normal culture markets, sometimes, even including the Holocaust. In the beginning, when the Nazi regime was still there, before they were defeated, it was like no one believed it. The same thing reminds me of all the organ harvesting too. I don’t know if you’re probably familiar with the topic. When we first heard about it, that was 2003, 2004, very early. But yes, not all of this happened gradually. I mean, the cultural products are picking that up. 

I hope that will make a difference because this is what opens people’s minds so they want to do something about it. Some news is too shocking. Maybe the general public will react to it very slowly. That’s why it’s actually a great responsibility for all the filmmakers and the writers to focus on an issue like this. Because it really can shape public opinion, right? So they can start thinking about this.

Mr. Jekielek:

And here’s the thing, right? I mean, in the 30s, it wasn’t really clear that there would be this mass killing of Jews that happened during World War II. It was clear there were these extreme anti-Semitic policies and the language of genocide and things like that. And so you’re talking about this kind of denial; it’s easy for us to deny. Part of it is human nature, I think. Part of it is we don’t want to know about some of the darkest things. We don’t want to believe that they’re happening. I’ve encountered that. I’ve discussed this again on this program in the past. 

On the other hand, there’s also this aspect where you have to make a sacrifice. You have to make a sacrifice. You have to make a personal sacrifice, financial or otherwise, maybe prestige, in order to publicly accept that a government is doing something terrible and say yes. So I guess my question is, why have you chosen to make this sacrifice?

Mr. Ma:

I just feel the responsibility because most of the Chinese makers, there are so many brilliant Chinese filmmakers; they don’t have the freedom to do it. And I’m here; at least I can say something. For the Western filmmakers, for most of them, it’s also very difficult for them to do research and access information, and find information behind the subjects. It is almost impossible. 

So for me, I feel I have to do it. I’m still lucky because I’m here. At least I’m still safe. Thinking about other people, like the whistleblowers for the pandemic, right? And think about the human rights lawyers in China and all the Falun Gong practitioners in China. They paid a much higher price for speaking the truth or just having a different voice. It’s tough, but sometimes you have to do the right thing, just like the whistleblower in the film. If you don’t do it, it’s always going to be like this.

Mr. Jekielek:

There’s something really beautiful about what you just said. So where can people watch the film? 

Mr. Ma:

It will be released on Gan Jing World Plus. We will release the film on all the major platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and YouTube movies. So, yes, we can find the film on all the VOD platforms.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’ll just comment that Gan Jing World Plus is a partner of The Epoch Times. It’s a platform that is committed to no political censorship. So this is a big reason why you’re starting there, because you don’t have to negotiate all of these difficulties. 

Mr. Ma:

Yes, we find that the independent platform is important, and I appreciate that Gan Jing World is actually doing that. You see that there are always people, you know, deciding to do the right thing, and we stay together; that’s good. We’ll make a difference. 

Mr. Jekielek:

Wonderful. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but there’s something really interesting that happens in the film. And that is, you know, one of the characters at the beginning feels like they have to kind of, for a variety of reasons, go along with what the regime wants. But then later on, finds basically some kind of inner strength to resist that, again, against all odds. And it’s a very moving, hopeful, and inspiring moment, I guess. And I guess what I want to ask you is where do people find that? You know, I’m sure you’ve meditated. I’m sure you’ve thought about this.

Mr. Ma:

From my personal experience, I’ve been through all this transformation. I’ve been through the whole process because I grew up in communist China, and again, everyone is so brainwashed and we grew up in a propaganda environment. We only believe what the party taught us. So that’s how most Chinese people are. Even my family members, a lot of them still have difficulty believing some stuff I tell them, some information, because they can never see any of this in China. 

So yes, that’s how initially Chinese people are confused and they are basically deceived by the CCP. And that is what is the most terrible thing, I think, what the Communist Party did. They hide behind people and manipulate them and make them turn on each other. Not only Chinese to Chinese; that’s what they did during the Cultural Revolution, right? They turned the people on each other so kids will betray their parents, their teachers. And nowadays, they become part of the world academy. They start turning Chinese people against American people, making many Chinese people hate the Japanese, hate Americans, hate basically whoever says bad things about the Communist Party. 

So this is how the brainwashing system works. And it’s very effective, very, very effective. And it’s very dangerous, very dangerous to me. So to your question, that’s actually one of the very big reasons I made this film. I actually want Chinese people to see it too, right? So I know there’s no way to do screenings in China ever, but I will try my best to find a way to get the film into China and show it to Chinese people. So let them understand what their government is really doing to them because they can’t access this information. 

But once we reveal the truth, we reveal the information, like when I first came to North America, I learned a lot of shocking information. It was really shocking to me. And then I slowly opened up and I understood, oh, okay, well, I understand, you know, what the truth is and what I should do, right? This is always the power of stories—the power of this kind of story. So we wanted to slowly change and free people from the propaganda and the brainwashing. And eventually, I feel like Chinese people, because they are brave and kind people. I believe in China and Chinese people very much. So I believe there will be a difference in the near future.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yan, this film is profound and incredible. I’m going to encourage everybody to watch it. It’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Mr. Ma:

Thank you so much.

This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.