The Barbie movie has dominated the box office in China, in a year when many other US movies haven’t performed well in the world’s second-largest film market. It outperformed movies like Mission Impossible and the films from the Marvel franchise. It’s been eagerly received for its message, raising a question of whether it flew under the radar of the country’s media censors. So what’s behind Barbie’s success in China? 
In this episode: 

Yifan Yu (@YifanYuNews), tech reporter for Nikkei Asia 
Marrian Zhou (@ZhouMarrian), US-China relations reporter for Nikkei Asia 

Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li and our host Malika Bilal. Khaled Soltan fact-checked this episode.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Munera AlDosari and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio.
Special thanks to Ben Li.
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