Censorship
That’s a Wrap: 2015’s Top China Film Stories and Trends
The China Film Insider team wishes you a happy 2016. Thank you for reading and for sharing our work with your friends and colleagues as we continue to grow in the new year. — Jonathan Landreth, Sky Canaves, Pang-chieh Ho, and Jonathan Papish. The box-office booms. Again. China’s box office revenues grew at a blistering Read More
A Supporting Role for Culture at China’s World Internet Conference
The World Internet Conference in the east coast city of Wuzhen last week sparked a good deal of debate about the China’s influence on global web governance. In its second year, the conference received a major boost in its significance when President Xi Jinping appeared in person to give a speech on the subject (Last year, he only sent a congratulatory message to mark the event’s opening)
Chinese Stars Promise to Behave, Or Else
The latest twist in Xi Jinping’s vision of wholesome Chinese culture involves Chinese celebrities pledging their adherence to morally upstanding conduct. It would be difficult to imagine a similar scene in Hollywood, with, say, Jennifer Lawrence and Warner Brothers CEO Kenji Tsujihara proclaiming their intention to behave according to government directives. Yet that is exactly Read More
Wang Jianlin’s Open Lecture at Harvard Gets Partial Shutdown at Home
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
China’s Filmmakers Directed to Heed Socialism—Will Hollywood Follow?
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
China’s Film Industry Online, Part 4. It’s About Copyrights.
This is the final post in a series looking at developments in China’s digital ancillaries market. In this series we’ve seen that China’s ancillaries are still comparatively small despite explosive box office growth. In part 1, I looked at how China leads the world in online consumption and how China’s consumers prefer to use mobile Read More