China’s Film Industry is Run Like Hollywood But By the Party
The Chinese Communist Party plays the leading role in the world’s largest film market by viewers. As its sophistication catches up to its size, it will attempt to export films globally.
The Chinese audience for film, whether in cinemas or on online streaming, is now comparable in scale to the U.S. audience and still growing. By revenue, the U.S. domestic box office is still somewhat larger than the Chinese, at about $9 billion versus $7 billion projected for 2023.1 But by number of viewers, China is far larger. At an estimated 530 million, there are more moviegoers in China than there are people in the United States.2 Today, China’s film industry has summer blockbusters, diverse genre pictures, prestigious awards, and extremely popular celebrities—just like Hollywood, which dominates the global film industry. But in China, the entire film industry is not just legally regulated and censored by the information arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but in large part directly owned and operated by it too. Rather than importing Hollywood’s movies and stars, China has instead built its own Hollywood under the Party, and hopes to soon begin exporting its films to the world.