BBC’s Katie Hunt has posted a comment titled ‘China’s untapped potential attracts global film makers’. (BBC news, Hong Kong, 25th March 2011). It pointed out that China has potentially the biggest film market in the world with over 200 million ‘middle-class’ moviegoers. However, due to Chinese government protection on imported films and piracy, this untapped gold mine has remained havens for chinese film companies.
It seems to me that such issue raised against Chinese government and its policy is ridiculed by the contradictory approach when assessing the same situation in the west. None of the European countries will find it hard to understand why a rigorous protection over their domestic film market is absolutely necessary. In fact, since world war 2, after witnessing Hollywood film industry penetrating into the European market and killing indigenous film making with its ‘sausage factory’ style production of films, the European Union has adopted strict quota to imported films in order to protect its domestic market. What the Chinese government is trying to do is exactly that.
Chinese film industry is relatively young and immature comparing to those in North America and Europe. This is true both in terms of the content production and distribution. Chinese film makers adopted the Hollywood production model in the 80s but most of the film companies during those early years were still state owned whose production was under state censorship in terms of number of films to be produced per year and the content of the film. This has changed in the past 5-8 years with the privatisation of the film sector in China, more and more private film companies have appeared making films both for the domestic market and international audiences. Zhang Yi Mou – one of the most renowned chinese film maker to the west, is among a handful of chinese film makers who have turned the westerns attention to chinese films. But chinese films’ success is incomparable with that achieved by western directors. The battlefield for chinese film makers lies still in the domestic market. Fierce domestic competition, lack of state support, and difficulty in getting a loan from the bank are the top three problems that chinese film makers have to face. To make the point, chinese film industry is still quite immature comparing with the American film industry for example if we measure its content production, its internationalisation, its distribution and so on. Government regulations on imported films have given the domestic industry much more space and time to develop and mature. If China has opened up its domestic market completely to foreign films, it’s highly likely that the chinese films industry will be squeezed into a corner if not killed.
The western media has long taken on a critical view about China’s internal policy – mostly negative. The lack of neutrality in their analysis has painted a rather grim picture of what the country really is like. This analysis of China’s film market is so Eurocentric with a view that any chinese policy is about censorship and control. To protecting local culture and domestic film industry seems to be something with too many positive credits for a country many in the west believe is barbaric. Otherwise, they won’t have presumed that China would allow unconditionally the west film veteran companies’ effort to make the money out of 200 million chinese people. It’s also because the scale of the market that has driven western companies red eyed who always turn to political warfare against the country. Well luckily, the chinese are now familiar with those …
Katie reproted that WTO has somehow got involved in this case and tried to allege China to open its domestic film market. Again, if WTO is promoting equal trading rights among its members, why would a country exports less than 2 films a year to international market shall be forced to import more than 40 films a year from other countries (majority are American blockbuster films)? – Just because we have 200 million middle class filmgoers???