HAVING established its cultural empire across the western world, Walt Disney Co has made the penetration of the huge, untapped, China market a top priority for its films and trademark products.
However, the plans of the Hollywood entertainment giant to break into China in a major way are now in doubt because of Beijing's displeasure over a new Martin Scorsese film about the life of Tibet's Dalai Lama, called Kordun.
There is a lucrative outlet among China's 1.2 billion peopled for Mickey Mouse merchandise and films like The Lion King Aladdin and Pocahontas and the company is making plans for a theme park on the scale of EuroDisney in France.
American "blockbuster"films, like True Lies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks's Forrest Gump, have already made millions in China.
However, China is extremely sensitive to any attempts at home or abroad to honour the Dalai Lama. The communist government regards Tibet as part of China and is campaigning to curb the influence of Tibet's exiled god king.
Beijing routinely protests angrily to any country which formally receives the Dalai Lama, who fled abroad in 1959 after an abortive rising against Chinese rule.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his non-violent campaign for autonomy for his homeland, but Beijing views international support for the spiritual figure as a western plot to split China and contain its development.
"We have an agreement to distribute Kordun domestically and we intend to honour it," a Disney spokesman said this week after Chinese government officials made clear their displeasure at the company's plans.
The film is being made in Morocco by Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Scorsese Refugee productions and is not due for release until late 1997. It features the Dalai Lama's life as a boy.
China has flexed its muscles before to influence foreign media output. Two years ago Mr Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp, decided not to run BBC world television on his northern Asia news service on Star Television so as not to offend China, which objected to some BBC reporting.
But Disney had no plans to release the Dalai Lama film outside the United States, and this is one of the first times Beijing has attempted to put pressure on Hollywood over how Chinese related history is portrayed in the West.
While Disney rebuffed the approaches of Chinese officials, the incident underlines the problems in creating a free market throughout the world for entertainment products, one of the goals of recently formed organisations such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and the World TradOrganisation.
China is currently stepping up its campaign against pro independence Buddhist monks in Tibet, and a local Chinese propaganda official said last month they were determined to defrock radical monks in Tibet in an attempt to erode the influence of the Dalai Lama in his Himalayan homeland.
"Those aspects of religion which fail to adapt to social development and impede social progress will be eliminated to prevent the Dalai Lama from using religion to engage in splittist activities," the official said.
The Tibet Daily estimates there are 1,787 temples in Tibet, with 46,000 monks and nuns, exceeding the number of high school students in the region. The seven year old boy chosen by China as Tibet's second holiest monks attended a ritual in Beijing last week to celebrate the first anniversary of his enthronement as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Chinese newspapers said on Wednesday.
The child, Gyantsen Norpo, visited the Yonghe Lamasery, the Temple of Harmony and Peace, on November 22nd. The Dalai Lama has named another boy as the reincarnation of the 10th Pancheji Lama, the Himalayan region's second holiest monk who died in 1989.
The newspapers showed a picture of the child wearing traditional robes and a cap and surrounded by monks. The whereabouts of the boy chosen by Beijing is not known but Chinese officials say he is living a normal life.