VIETNAM'S FILMS VINEYARD

NO-MOVIE, apparently is cute-enough to be immune from thorny international politics.

The news media in Vietnam have reported that the authorities pulled ''Abominable,'' an animated film from the American studio DreamWorks about a Chinese girl who befriends a yeti, from theaters over a scene that shows a map of China.

The map includes China's so-called nine-dash line, which dips far down into the South China Sea -an audacious and hotly disputed claim to territory that Vietnam and other countries say is theirs.

The image was enough to cause Vietnam's-largest-theater chain to apologize for showing it and for government officials to say they were reviewing the movie.

''Right now we are reinspecting the film,'' said Tran Thanh Hiep, chairman of Vietnam's national film evaluation council, Tuoi Tre, a state-run newspaper, reported on Monday.

''If there are any errors, I am ready to accept responsibility.''

The film was co-produced by DreamWorks Animation, which is owned by the American media conglomerate Comcast, and Pearl Studio, a Chinese production company based in Shanghai.

It has been praised for being one of the few big-studio films to focus on a Chinese family, voiced mostly by Asian American actors. It led to the box-office in the United States in its first weekend, at the end of last month, earning $20.9 million, and has received largely positive reviews.

Though the plot of ''Abominable'' has little-to-do with Chinese international relations, the appearance of the nine-dash line amounted to a political statement.

The government of Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all claim territory inside the line, but China has aggressively defended what considers its territory.

China, which has made the claim since the 1940s, has in recent years build islands there, installing runways, and other infrastructure on some of them, and it has used its military to patrol the waters.

The episode comes amid a broader discussion of China's impact on the entertainment and sports industries, as international businesses ensure that they do not offend the Chinese government's sensibilities.

Hollywood studios have pre-emptively ensured that their scripts did-not cross China's sensors, lest they lose access to a country where moviegoers spent an estimated $8.9 billion on movie tickets last year, according to box-office analysts.

The costs of crossing China are clear.

The animated Comedy Central show ''South Park'' was erased from China's Internet last week after it mocked Chinese censors and American businesses' accommodation of them [one of its cartoon children remarked that ''we live in a time when the only movies that us American kids go see are the ones that are approved by China'']

The national Basketball Association scrambled to control the damage last week after Daryl Morey, an executive of the Houston Rockets, posted on Twitter in support of the protesters in Hong Kong.

The league was forced to balance its professed belief in free speech with an angry Chinese fans base : the fallout continued on Monday, when LeBron James, its leading Superstar, called Mr. Morey ''misinformed'' on the subject.

While covering the China.N.B.A., affair, the cable sports network ESPN was criticized last week after including the nine-dash line in an on-screen graphic.

The World Students society thanks author Daniel Victor.