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Over 20 years ago, Zhang Zhao was a bicycle delivery man working his way through film school at New York University. One day, the Shanghai native bought a ticket to Farewell My Concubine, his countryman Chen Kaige’s 1993 epic movie about Beijing Opera players caught up in mid-century political turmoil. “[The movie] made me cry Read More

Dalian Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin (a.k.a. China’s richest man) is perhaps the leading representative for the realization of the “Chinese Dream,” a vision of a revitalized national greatness that takes global soft power as a central theme. Yet even as Wang’s empire reaches around the globe, his words are being curtailed back home. Last week, Read More

Zhang Yimou's next film, "The Great Wall," due out in November 2016, is an unlikely departure for him and for China—a mega-budget English-language picture co-produced by Le Vision Pictures and China Film Group in China with Legendary and Universal in Hollywood, and starring Matt Damon, a big Chinese monster, and the most Chinese of landmarks. Read More

In the recent high-profile public relations battle between artist Ai Weiwei and Lego, significant attention has been directed to the toy behemoth’s rapidly growing business interests in China. Read More

Just days after the recent publication of the full transcript of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s major speech on arts and culture from October 2014, the country’s top leadership gave further indication that Xi’s retro vision of patriotic and morality-infused entertainment is meant to have an actual impact on China’s cultural scene. On October 20, the Read More

If he’d had the time after meeting American captains of industry in Seattle and Barack Obama at the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping might have ducked out at the close of his United Nations appearance and into a New York movie theater to check on how China’s other soft power ambassadors—its movies, not its Read More

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United Kingdom ushers in a widely heralded “golden age”  in relations between the two countries, and may also represent a watershed for China’s global soft-power ambitions. Creativity and cultural exchange are “at the heart of developments” in the strengthening of the U.K.-China relationship, according to the British Read More

IMAX is giving wealthy Chinese the luxury to stay home for that next blockbuster to come to the big screen. All they need is $400,000 and a large house to fit the gargantuan 20-feet-by-10-feet screens. The Canadian company partnered with Chinese company TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd. to launch its home theater system earlier this Read More

Last October 15, at the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art, Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke to a high-level audience involved in the creative industries on the role and direction of China’s arts and culture. While the occasion of the speech, titled “Talks at the Forum on Literature and Art Work,” along with some excerpts, was Read More

Developer Dalian Wanda dropped a big one on China’s southwestern region at the end of last month with the grand opening of its $2.5 billion Xishuangbanna International Resort. The entertainment complex is the second head-turning opening from the Dalian Wanda Group in the past year and another in a line of massive developments, such as Read More