China Film Industry’s ‘Bleak Winter’ Deepens as Coronavirus Adds to Censorship Woes

A staff member carrying sanitizing equipment walks past a closed cinema at a shopping mall, as the country is hit by the outbreak of the new coronavirus, in Beijing, China on Feb. 3, 2020. Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

BEIJING/SHANGHAI—Even before the new coronavirus, people working in Chinese entertainment had been calling the industry’s struggles their “bleak winter”—as tighter censorship, a crackdown on tax evasion and new government restrictions strangle opportunities for work.

The epidemic is only exacerbating that misery.