Chinese cinema battles against Hollywood rhetoric to win new markets

Beijing. An artificial island, which extends over almost 400 hectares, equivalent to 560 football fields, forms the Oriental Cinema Metropolis, the seedbed of a Hollywood which is located in Qingdao, China. The city built from scratch is the enclave of an industry that struggles between attracting international productions and generating a presence abroad with its own identity.

Aside from a powerful internal market with 1.4 billion inhabitants, China seeks to make the country known through its different cultural industries. In the field of cinema – which the United States has saturated as an export product – the number of Chinese productions on international platforms is increasing, but they have not yet achieved a benchmark in box office successes.

The film industry in China is driven above all by the private sector, with productions as expensive as those made in Hollywood, explains Pablo Mendoza, a Mexican filmmaker living in Beijing. However, its presence abroad is still limited because selling a film in the second most populated country in the world – the first is India – is already a business in itself since Chinese commercial cinema has not yet finished developing. connect with audiences that for decades have been influenced by the United States.

Mendoza, also coordinator of Cultural Diffusion and Linkage of the representation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in this country, emphasizes that China continues to generate quality commercial films, especially on historical themes, but they have not been given sufficient dissemination nor has it been known to place them abroad; something contrary to Chinese auteur cinema, which is internationally recognized, but not so easy to find at the box office.

It is with science fiction themes that China seeks to export its film industry; especially as part of a policy to promote the technological developments of this country and how these are applied to cinema, explains Medonza. However, although there are titles such as The Wandering Earth, whose dissemination is amplified through Netflix, no great Chinese science fiction works yet, probably in the future.

Part of why it is difficult to export productions is because much of Chinese science fiction cinema It has so much Hollywood influence that many productions try to emulate what is done in the United States, and Hollywood is not going to buy something they produce from you.says Raúl Parra, Communication and Liaison coordinator at the UNAM headquarters in China.

This science fiction, close to Hollywood, stands out from other films such as The Tiger and the Dragon, Hero or The House of Flying Daggers, says Mendoza. The characteristic of these films is that they are about martial arts, but they are not karate kicks, but rather they have a whole aesthetic and were very popular in Mexico.he points out. While the more commercial versions of these stories did not have the same acceptance.

Added to the influence that the US industry has on international audiences is that in China there is no age classification of the audience.

Commercial films are oriented more towards family themes, since everything projected must be able to be seen by any age, which also somewhat limits the breadth of narratives that can be covered.says Parra.

Another obstacle that Chinese cinema faces in being exported is a dubbing that is still in development, on par with the influence that the American industry has imposed since the Cold War.

“Whether we like it or not, we grew up with Hollywood movies, where they (the Americans) always save the world. Then, suddenly, when a Chinese movie arrives where they save the world (…) it cuts with international rhetoric,” considers Edmundo Borja, head of the Management Department at UNAM China.

Regardless of the brakes on exports, producing a film in China is already a business for the simple reason that it is the second most populated country in the world, explains Pablo Mendoza. In 2023, the global box office reached $33.9 billion, an increase of 30.5 percent from 2022. China contributed 23 percent of global sales.

Private production companies look for a return, so a market abroad is like risk capital and even more so if they do not have the distribution channels, which is why some do not even consider it. In fact, when we approach production companies to promote documentary films and tell them that we can help put the content in Spanish, it seems that the issue of internationalization is not of interest to them.comments Raúl Parra.

Chinese cinema has its main income in the domestic market, followed by Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. However, although only 34 foreign films can be shown in the People’s Republic of China each year, it represents the second most important market for Hollywood, only behind the United States. As an example, Inside Out 2, the most successful film at the box office in 2024, grossed $2.36 million on its opening day in China, June 13.

However, the career in the entertainment industry is very new. In China we do not have that habit of exporting cultural products, that is, we started very late; 10 years ago the president began to put emphasis on producing, on telling the history of China to foreigners, before we did not have that conceptexplains Wang Zhen, student of the master’s degree in Spanish-Chinese translation and scholarship holder at the Institute of Mexican Studies.

Mendoza, Wang, Parra and Borja agree that there are several productions that could be liked outside of China, but that have not had enough diffusion. Among them they recommend A Lifelong Journey, Ode to Joy and Story of Yanxi Palace, which range from historical themes to focusing on the role of women in current Chinese society.