Zhao's first directorial work So Young.

The year 1998 also saw the release in China of the Hollywood mega-hit Titanic. It grossed a staggering RMB 360 million, and introduced Chinese moviegoers to the blockbuster concept.

Before 1994, foreign films that entered the mainland market were flat-fee imports. That year, China began importing 10 revenue-sharing blockbusters annually, a figure that later increased to 20. Movie imports stimulated the Chinese film industry by attracting audiences away from their TVs back to movie theaters, spurring local production. It was then that China’s filmmakers experienced both the opportunities and disappointments of the market.

Cinema has existed for a century in China. During its golden age as the most popular form of entertainment, annual audiences reached 29.3 billion. This translates into 70 million movie theater tickets every day.

The industry reached its lowest ebb at the approach of the new millennium. It lost over one billion viewers every year, and film studios struggled to make ends meet. Survival hence became the main priority. It was against this backdrop that, in January 1993, the Chinese film authority issued the Several Opinions on Deepening Institutional Reform of the Film Industry. This marked Chinese cinema’s transition to a market-based approach to film making. A decade later when the document expired, reforms continued and the film industry became more sophisticated.

Film Industry Evolution

China can now easily afford to produce blockbusters like Titanic. Although big box office productions do not always live up to their advance publicity, and give rise to audience criticism, they nevertheless set box office records.

In 2002, Zhang Yimou astonished the world with his epic Hero, made with a massive investment of RMB 240 million – 54 times the average production cost of his earlier movies. The RMB 250 million it earned in domestic box office revenue was unheard of in Chinese cinema. It equaled that generated by 60 percent of all Chinese films released the same year. Until then, RMB 20 to 30 million in box office receipts was considered bountiful.

Ten years later, RMB 100 million in box office revenue is commonplace. There are 50 Chinese directors in the RMB 100 million club. Within just one decade, the national box office has grown 20-fold. China is the world’s third largest film producer and second largest film market. Insiders reckon that the Chinese film industry has entered a stage of explosive growth wherein it has advanced from an infant to a young adult.