Mapping China: Film - Chinese Film Industry History

The Chinese film industry can be said to have got its start in 1993, the year when awareness of the possibilities of a Chinese film market arose. Before 1993, Chinese films operated in an insular fashion, lacking an export-oriented market platform and staying only in the realm of internally-circulating state assets controlled by the government.

The reform of the Chinese film mechanism started when the Central Motion Picture Corporation entered the film import business and began to import ten foreign films each year. The Fugitive was the first foreign income-sharing film imported into the Chinese mainland market.

Hollywood has played a major role throughout China’s more than 20 years of importing foreign income-sharing films. Rarely has the Central Motion Picture Corporation imported films from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy or other countries. Specific statistics are available about the box office accounts of imported income-sharing films in the mainland market since 2006. Among the top 100 box office hits in the domestic film market, there were 49 foreign films, 44 of which were income-sharing films released before the end of March, 2014. These 44 films had a total box office account of 18.557 billion RMB, amounting to 21.73% of the total domestic box office from January 2006 to March 2014. The box office for Avatar was 1.39 billion RMB, putting it in first place in the domestic film market. This record was broken by Transformers 4, with a box office of 1.97 billion RMB. Transformers 4 was the first film to have box office receipts go beyond 0.3 billion dollars in any single country or region except North America. This record was broken on 26 April, 2015 by Fast & Furious 7, with a total income of 2.011 billion RMB in the Chinese market.

After joining the World Trade Organisation, the Chinese film world has been accelerating its industrialization process and keeping pace with foreign income-sharing films, especially Hollywood films. Since 2003, the back then called State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT, since 2013 as SAPPRFT, which stands for the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) has launched a series of regulations, including:

• ‘Film Scripts (Abstracts) Projects, Interim Provisions for Film Censorship’
• ‘Regulations on the Administration of Sino-Foreign Cooperative Film Production’
• ‘Interim Provisions for Business Qualification Access to Film Production, Distribution and Screening’
• ‘Provisional Regulations on Foreigners’ Investment Cinema’ (SARFT Order Paper No.18, No.19, No.20, No.21).

SARFT carried out these provisions in order to lower the threshold for access to film production, distribution and screening, thereby absorbing all the strengths of social forces to participate in the film industry; to invigorate the circulation of films and promote the distribution and screening of domestic films; to reduce the government approval procedures so as to promote the rapid development of the industry; and to encourage the innovation of film products, thus enabling them to cater better to the masses and the markets.

These policies have played an important role in stimulating the Chinese film industry and transforming it into a modern international film industry. The total number of Chinese films in 2002 was 100; that number rose to 526 in 2010. The box office was less than 1 billion in 2002, but had increased to more than 10 billion by 2010. That growth rate was the highest in the world, with the box office squeezing its way into the global top 10.

 In terms of box office market, Chinese film is developing much faster than China’s GDP is growing. Since 2010, the box office data of Chinese city cinemas are as follows:

* Extensive Reading

• "The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) is tasked with approving all films shown in China. As an executive branch within China’s State Council, SAPPRFT has 37 members, including government representatives, filmmakers, and academics. The agency’s director, Cai Fuchao is—like all SAPPRFT officials—a CCP (China Communist Party) member with a long career as a propagandist, serving as the deputy director of Beijing’s propaganda department from 1998 to 2008. While SAPPRFT’s authority is intentionally broad, its mandate specifically includes provisions protecting the interests of the CCP. According to SAPPRFT regulations, all films exported to China must adhere to the principles of the Chinese Constitution and maintain social morality. Therefore, any films depicting demons or supernaturalism, crime or any other illicit or illegal actions within China’s borders, disparagement of the People’s Liberation Army and police, and anything that could be perceived as anti-China—including merely damaging Chinese sites or monuments—are prohibited. How and when SAPPRFT chooses to enforce its authority remains opaque. SAPPRFT is notorious for providing vague feedback, with foreign filmmakers navigating a largely informal process to gain import approval. In addition, because China does not have a rating system for its movies, all films must be appropriate for audiences of all ages, though in practice this standard is not uniformly applied. In general, nudity, violence, and inappropriate language are prohibited." -- S. O’Connor, N. Armstrong, Directed by Hollywood, Edited by China: How China’s Censorship and Influence Affect Films Worldwide, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, October 28, 2015

• J. Perkowski, China's Film Industry, Forbes, March 1, 2013

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