What goes into making the business daily podcasts from the BBC World Service?

Well, first we take a cup full of business news. Naturally.

Then we add a healthy measure of technology.

Mmm. Along with a pinch of exciting innovation.

Business daily from the BBC World Service. Find out more at the end of this podcast.

Welcome to the inquiry with me, Tanya Beckett.

Each week, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer.

In December of last year, moviegoers across the world grabbed their cartons of popcorn,

filed into cinemas and settled down in front of the silver screen to watch Spider-Man, no way home.

The film was one of the biggest box office triumphs of all time,

breaking in some two billion dollars.

Its success was assigned that the lure of Spider-Man was enough to tempt fans back to movie theatres after the depths of the pandemic.

Except that is fans in China, where the film was banned.

It's nothing new that Beijing will move to block content that challenges its authority.

It's been doing it for many years. But no way home didn't feature an attack on China's values.

In fact, it didn't feature China at all.

All this begs the question, what is going on between Hollywood and the Chinese government?

And is there more to Beijing's agenda than simply blocking negative coverage of China?

So this week we're asking, why did China ban Spider-Man?

Before 1949, China had a modest movie industry with homegrown films and some from Hollywood

for which they paid a very small flat fee.

But with the rise of Chairman Mao and the founding of the People's Republic of China, everything changed.

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