8-10 page research paper

Marketization, Hollywood, Global China Author(s): Darrell William Davis Source: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 26, No. 1 (SPRING, 2014), pp. 191-241 Published by: Foreign Language Publications Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42940476 Accessed: 28-11-2018 19:19 UTC

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Marketization, Hollywood, Global China

Darrell William Davis

China's Film Marketization: Building Momentum

"Marketization," a concept often used to understand China's recent

economic and sociocultural transformations, indicates progress toward

some forms of marketplace, bringing about privatization, growth,

liberalization, and greater choice. All of these have been achieved in China,

while still retaining state involvement in the market. Marketization in China

needs state enterprises, proxies, and policies to manage market outcomes

and not leave them to chance or invisible hands; as such, there is a signal

difference between market and "marketization."

The first part of this essay tracks the paradoxes of marketization in

China's film industry, explaining both structural changes and adjustments

in film content. Rather than a midpoint en route to a capitalist destiny,

marketization is the strategic exercise of market incentives, as well as

managing externalities and risk. Later I present an account of the Chinese

film industry's engagements with the world, notably Hollywood, the

foremost purveyor of motion pictures. Is China in pursuit of Hollywood's

global market? Yes, but the aim is not to replace or become Hollywood;

instead, China's object may be a convergence of Hollywood and China's own

film industries, of global market and marketization. The soft power of the

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1 See Anon. 2012. The Chinese figures are slightly different; they list domestic box office as third, after the U.S. and

Japan. See Yin/Cheng 2012.

film marketplace might be turned to the needs of marketization, the better

to represent China to the world, in charismatic terms, on a global scale.

In 2011, China celebrated the ninetieth anniversary of the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP). As part of this celebration, the domestic film

industry trumpeted its production output and financial success, and the

improved quality of its films. China's film trade now ranks second in the

world. In 2011, as an article in The Economist puts it, "China's box-office

take rose by more than 30%, to over $2 billion, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The number of cinema screens in China has

doubled in five years, to nearly 11,000 - again, second only to America.

China's box-office revenues may overtake America's by 2020."1 In 2011,

total revenue roseto more than 13.1 billion RMB (Yin/Cheng 2012). Many

predict that China will surpass the United States within a decade to become

the world's number one box office resource.

Shortly after these sunny forecasts, the summer movie season arrived.

Instead of a typical blockbuster of comedy, action, or romance there

was Beginning of the Great Revival (Jian dang weiye), a state-produced

picture to commemorate the 1921 birth of the CCP. Great Revival , an

epic extolling China's modern history in the shadow of imperialism, was

released almost simultaneously with DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda 2. The

government encouraged, by any means necessary, record receipts for

Great Revival , as if the success of a state policy film would somehow ease

anxiety over Hollywood's usurping of the panda with all its cultural and

political meanings.

Why such confidence? Like the many CCP achievements, China's film

reform reached a climax in 201 1, with box office record-breakers, multiplex

booms, expanding markets, and visions of global impact. Film is no different

from other sectors of the contemporary China economy; with its 1 .3 billion

population, China is the world's largest market, but it is also the most

underserved. Before this market becomes seasoned and business-ready,

domestic products must have first crack at consumers. Film is especially

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attractive to investors because China, compared with most countries, is

underscreened. Despite thousands of new screens built in recent years,

the number of cinemas in China is still not adequate to meet demand.

Further, whereas most film industries in Asia have reached capacity and

show scant room for growth - for example, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan,

and even India - in China there is unbridled optimism toward cinema

expansion and revenue. In short, the growth of the Chinese film economy

is a drama still in its first act.

The key to faith in a growing film industry is marketization. It

is the course of moving toward an open marketplace and accepting

measurements of popular approval, yet in China this is at the same time

a state-guided process that continues to exhibit elements of the planned

economy. The planned economy of the 1 950s and 1 960s brought down the

national economy, but the reform and opening of the late 1970s and the

marketization of the 1980s and 1990s brought great rewards, including to

the state and the Party. In recent years, marketization has been intensifying;

the process involves both a growing market economy and more state

control and careful handling of market mechanisms. Marketization in

China is thus unique, different from a market economy in the Western neoliberal sense.

Dating to the Reagan-Thatcher era, roughly the same time that

Deng Xiaoping initiated reforms to stimulate the Chinese economy,

neoliberalism views the socialist planned economy as antithetical to free

markets; the state relinquishes controls and lets markets do their work to

bring competition, efficiency, and widespread consumption. Yet market

mechanisms work only under key conditions, such as the existence of

private property, legal frameworks based on private ownership, competitive

innovations driven by profit, and norms of civil society. A free market society

expects rising prosperity; more choice, competition, and accountability;

less corruption; and the unfettered exchange of ideas and the protection

of economic freedoms (Ravich 1997: 13). Jing Wang writes, "American

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neoliberalism cannot imagine any other relationship than an oppositional

one between the communist state and the 'free market'" (Wang 2008:

157). But in the People's Republic, marketization mediated between the

two poles of state and market; it was and is a state-crafted transition to

market reforms that brought economic/cultural rewards and benefited

the state and the Party. Marketization is a vital structuring operation that

enables the growth of Chinese film, and aligns policy, creative industry,

and foreign investment. These areas are coordinated to reach specific

outcomes: growth, productivity, profits, more diversity, and creativity. I

am also concerned with contradictions and tensions in marketization, and

the way both policy and the market adjust to these frictions. In the second

half of the essay, I argue that the dialectical relation between China's film

marketization and Hollywood helps explain China's ambitions, which are

to bolster marketization, sustain it using Hollywood scale and business

models, and even co-opt conceptions of globalization. "Although the PRC

aims for global influence," writes Michael Curtin (2009), "its policies are

resolutely nationalist in conception and execution" (119). Marketization

thus grafts market-based reforms to state-defined priorities and goals, and

grafts to national policies a range of international, neoliberal programs

that are meant to satisfy WTO obligations and domestic performance

targets. Marketization can be grasped as "market-as-engine," with the

state as designated driver.

Marketization and the Socialist State

China's film reform has been analyzed in many publications and studies

(Yeh/Davis 2008; Nakajima 2007; Zhu 2002, 2003; Lee 2003; Berry 2003;

Y. Zhao 1998), which draw a picture of a state-run propaganda factory

operating under the planned economy being gradually pushed toward

deregulation, privatization, and profit-generation. Film as a vehicle

for the propagation of ideology and political instruction was loosened

to encourage technological advancement, craft, innovation, and real

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entertainment values. More crucial, state-owned enterprises (SOE) were

restructured to minimize waste, compete for resources, and seek rewards in

the new marketplace. Like other industries in the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese

cinema suffered through wrenching structural reforms, moving painfully

from an ideological state apparatus to a market-oriented, profit-driven

enterprise. SOEs were allowed to convert into shareholding corporations

(Larus 2005: 2), which let state proxies gain an edge in the incipient market.

With labels such as "socialist market economy" and "market economy

with Chinese characteristics," these measures were meant to differentiate

Chinese film marketization from capitalist economies (Zhu 2002: 909). The

Chinese characteristics - state bodies overseeing industry privatization

and with privileged place in the new framework - suggest continuing

ideological safeguards and protectionism. With some misgivings, the Party

accepted the market economy as the right path to China's prosperity. The

switch to a quasi-capitalist system was by no means easy. Marketization was

introduced because of the media's vital role in maintaining the one-party

state. The media was crucial to designing and implementing marketization

so that cinema, television, and other key sectors remained in the right

hands, that is, the Party authorities.

Marketization means building up markets for film consumption

and restoring a once-troubled state industry; it realigns the industry to

raise capital, cultivate customers, and create wealth; it encourages the

production of supply by private companies; and it increases the market

share of domestic pictures. Marketization in China introduced stakeholders,

corporate management, privatization, and some easing of censorship

to promote voluntary spectatorship - this in a country, after all, where

viewers were once obligated to view films through their work units. In

China, marketization enables trade in the market "place" - an area to

buy, sell, exchange - but it also works as a bifocal, mediating process, not

just a temporary phase. Fusing market and state planning, marketization

promotes consumption, more flexibility, and more foreign imports

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2 See C Huang 2011 b. Criteria for China to achieve market economy status include full currency convertibility and

wage rates that are subject to bargain- ing between labor and management.

and raises productivity, and it enables corporatization, privatization,

and industrial advancement. These are consistent with assumptions of

market destination, with China moving from planned economy toward

institutional, legal, and social norms of the neoliberal market economy, if

not (yet) to political liberalization.

But there is a caveat. In films, "socialist characteristics" are stipulated,

with no place for themes, subjects, practices, talent, or critical discourses

that challenge, or in any way question, the authorities. Movies must sustain

Party legitimacy and its monopoly on power. Party-guided marketization

boosts production numbers, builds multiplexes, and raises quality to usher

China toward its place as the next superpower in film, media, information,

and technology. The policy aim is to recognize and position film as integral

to communication, information, and technology sectors (Y. Zhao 2007).

Market liberalization was a condition of China's accession to the World

Trade Organization in 2001 . China has been obliged to accept designation

as a "non-market economy country," bringing hundreds of antidumping

charges by the European Union, India, and the U.S.2 In the commentary

surrounding the tenth anniversary of China's accession to the WTO, many

analysts noted the continuing prominence of SOEs. Marketization took a

detour from the highway connecting (past) plan to (future) market. Market

opening and facilitation evolved into the hybrid "marketization" I have

been discussing here. As policy, it ushered in huge increases in productivity,

but it also helped to consolidate, even entrench, state authority, a result

the Western neoliberal model would not predict. In China, the state is

involved in market activities, not just as referee, but as a player; this can

be seen in its film industry, as well as in other cultural spheres. China Film

Group (CFG), for example, is an extensive conglomerate that produces,

distributes, and imports films; it is also government owned and operated.

The state, SOEs, and state-linked corporations promote marketization,

rather than the Western-style marketplace. When the market(place)

becomes China's distinct marketization process, then productivity, growth,

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and high returns are sure to follow. There's a hedge in marketization, in

that the market does not run autonomously, but is harnessed on behalf

of the state and the Party. This is "market-as-engine": how market forces

are stoked and used by companies to gain advantage in the market, at

competitors' expense. Much of the risk in the China market is reduced,

because the state is a key player and has a stake in the policy's success;

the state underwrites marketization programs and needs them to pay off

(Davis 2010).

Marketization's productive power boosts Party power and state

power, and in fact the Party seeks to both ride and guide the power

of the market. One former official from Shanghai Broadcasting Bureau

said, "to effectively run the broadcast media as an industry will not only

undermine their propaganda functions, it will even positively promote

their role as mouthpiece of the Party and the people" (Y. Zhao 1998:

163). Here propaganda is seen as blocking industrial efficiency and

modernization. Industrial efficiency lends credibility to the modern Party

and its standing, while "undermining" hard propaganda, which strains

that credibility. Modern industrial rationalization, including information

and entertainment, plays a big role in bolstering state authority.3

So although some might see marketization as a compromise, this view

doesn't work. Instead, marketization must serve state and Party, not just

corporations, industry, or the marketplace itself. It is a means, not an end, a

tool to grow the market and the economy and to lodge market power in a

few trustworthy hands. There is no market without social institutions such

as ownership, rules of exchange, governance structure, and "conception

of control" (Nakajima 2007). As the economy grows, so does state control,

whose claims to legitimacy are embedded in economic growth. In Dittmer and Gore's terms:

market and plan are no longer mutually exclusive. In the con- text of the relaxation of . . . constraints wrought by the Dengist reforms, cadres suddenly found it possible to orient production

3 But this comes at cost, as Prasenjit Duara (1995: 227) warns: "While the state has made effective use of the narrative

of modernity to expand its own powers, the Chinese intelligentsia has robbed itself of alternative sources of moral

authority which it might have found in history and popular culture."

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4 C Huang 2011a. Bo Xilai, Chongqing party boss and promoter of Red Cultural rituals, was publicly removed and criti- cized by the leadership. His trial finished at the time of writing.

toward either plan or market depending on the relative rewards available, positioning themselves as "insiders" in the politics of marketization. (Dittmer/Gore 2001: 13)

Despite the well-constructed aims of marketization, unexpected hazards

may appear; risks and externalities are inherent in the market and

marketplace behaviors and can be difficult to foresee, and to forestall.

In the revolutionary zeal on display around July 2011, the Party's

ninetieth anniversary, there was public backlash. Amusement and disgust

mounted at toadying to calls for conspicuous patriotism. People scoffed

at claims that singing red songs cured infertility and disease and at stories

of children who skipped a parent's funeral to attend a red-song event.

Chinese citizens saw this campaign as mass hysteria-entertainment, and

some wondered if the Party believed it was effectively brainwashing people.

As one reporter put it, "The party's 'red' anniversary celebrations ironically

expose the decline of ideals and free thinking that nurtured the party's

birth in the first place."4 In his critique of the propaganda film Beginning

of the Great Revival, one professor said that people are invited to sing red

songs, but not allowed to stage another revolution: "You are welcome to

watch the movie about how the Communist Party was formed in 1921.

But you're not welcome to try founding your own party" (Zhang 2011).

Anger online was unleashed against Great Revival when rumors flew that

it would block audience access to Kung Fu Panda 2 and the latest Pirates

of the Caribbean movie. Contradictions are evident on the mainland, and

within discourse about the Party.

Mobilizing Marketization

Marketization in the Chinese film industry started with imported

blockbusters. In 1994, Hollywood pictures were allowed into China; films

such as Speed, The Fugitive, True Lies, and The Lion King were well viewed

and stimulated consumer demand. The so-called "split revenue" plan let a

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few Hollywood films into China, at first just ten, then twenty, and in 2012

fourteen more in Imax and 3D formats. Large revenues were earned from

these imported dapian (big pictures) and then ploughed back into domestic

production and exhibition. In 1998# Titanic made a huge impression

on China's leaders, who urged Chinese people to see it for its gripping

humanism and fine spectacle. It was paraded for viewings by work units

to promote discussion and debate. With this official recommendation,

the chasm between Hollywood and China narrowed. Titanic represented

something to be learned from Western expertise, in ideology, not just

technology. A decade later, Avatar pulled in more than $200 million (1 .38

billion RMB), the top grossing film in China's history. China's box office

receipts for Avatar were second only to those in the U.S. Unlike Titanic,

Avatar brought controversy: viewers linked its plot with "nail house" and

citizens resisting property grabs by greedy officials. Also, the film's run

was truncated to open Confucius, a patriotic biopic marking the country's

fiftieth anniversary.

China joined the WTO in late 2001, hastening the country's market

reforms, opening to imports, and marketization. In 2004, CEPA (Closer

Economic Partnership Arrangement) was introduced, a trade policy that

allowed certain Hong Kong films to be counted in China as domestic

pictures, not imports. CEPA brought reclassification for some films, and

accounts for a 50% jump in the number of pictures produced, a growth

spurt in China's movie market. Now there is an established colony of Hong

Kong filmmakers in Beijing, who are absorbed in projects with commercial

power and who have added value to China's film industry. How do the

marketization policies work out overall for the industry? The outcomes have

been astonishing, looking at annual statistics released by the government.

On the market share of domestic pictures, see the table that follows, which

shows figures for the period from 1998 to 2012 (table 1). First, we see a

nearly tenfold rise in production and around a seventeen-fold increase in

total box office revenues. Until 2003, revenues are shown as a total figure,

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inclusive of all releases; only in 2004, because of marketization, was the

government able to publish more precise figures. Receipts for domestic

films remained respectable, around half (or slightly higher than) the total

box office. Clearly marketization is working in the whole market and for

the domestic sector.

I

CHINA'S ANNUAL FEATURE FILM PRODUCTION AND BOX OFFICE

(1998-2012)

v/ .. . , Domestic Box Off ice / v/ Year Number .. of Films Produced . , T . . D ......

1998 87 NA/1.45

1999 102 N A/0.85

2000 91 N A/0.96

2001 88 N A/0.8

2002 100 N A/0.9

2003 140 NA/1

2004 212 0.86/1.57

2005 260 1.10/2.0

2006 330 1.44/2.62

2007 402 1.81/3.33

2008 406 2.56/4.34

2009 456 3.54/6.21

2010 526 5.74/10

2011 558 7.11/13.1

2012 745 8.27/17.1

Sources: China Film News; Chinese Cinema Yearbook , 2004-2012

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The market for building screens and film circuits exploded too,

thanks to the marketization engine. Before 2008, exhibition grew at

around 20% annually, with 400 screens added per year; in 2008, there

were 570 new screens. More than 4000 operated nationwide at the end

of 2008 - 1.7 screens added per day. In 2009, there were 626 new screens

and 1533 in 2010, marking a 15.6% and 33% annual growth rate, respec-

tively. New screens are set to increase to 20,000 by 2015, and eventually

40,000 (2040), to reach par with theaters in North America (Anon. 201 1 b).

These results are striking, even allowing for an industry hobbled by plan,

to leap forward and make up for lost time. Just as Hollywood pictures

primed the pump in the 1990s, Hong Kong and Asian players stimulated

mainland exhibition markets a decade later, when their own growth pros-

pects were bleak (Yeh 2010).

Marketization in Movie Content

In addition to these reforms, what else transformed Chinese cinema?

What has marketization wrought in terms of the quality of contemporary

Chinese films? What links institutional conditions and commodity form?

What kind of domestic movies are instrumental in shaping the market? We

can identify at least the following three types: main melody, dapian, and

popular genre pictures. In the course of introducing these, we come to the

full scope of marketization and its problems and mutations.

Main Melody

Around 1987, state-backed movies were placed in the "main melody" or

"keynote" formula ( zhu xuanlü). This new phrase was coined to update

propaganda films in order to increase audience appeal while maintaining

socialist messages. "Promote main melody, persist with diversity" (hongyang

zhuxuanlü , jianchi duoyanghua) was the Party's motto, indicating its desire

to make propaganda more palatable and marketable. Regulations on

content remained, but were somewhat relaxed from the strict orthodoxy

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of the past, opening space for sentiment, humor, and wit as a tactic

for bringing audiences back to the cinema, during a period that was

experiencing one of the worst slumps in PRC movie history. The relaxation

ushered in more variety, choice, and excitement.

Main melody as a film industry phenomenon can thus be seen as proto-

market ready, poised to upgrade production value and accessibility, even

in state-backed films. Those films are numerous, with up to one third of

domestic films falling into the main melody mode, or variations thereof.

Subjects include hagiography of China's leaders and commemoration

of Party history: Zhou Enlai (1992), Chongqing Negotiation (Chongqing

tan pan, 1993), The Long March (Jinsha shui pai, 1994), Roaring across

the Horizon (Heng kong chushi, 1999), Great Battle in Ning Hu Hang (Da

jinjun - dazhan Ning Hu Hang, 1999), National Anthem (Guoge, 1999),

and a long string of Mao films, including Mao Zedong and Edgar Snow

(Mao Zedong yu Sinuo, 2001). There was Zhang Side (2004), a model

soldier; and other, ambitious films. The Knot (Yunshui yao, 2006) was a

lavish coproduction tying together Taiwan and Tibet. Noteworthy is Fatal

Decision (Shengsi jueze, 2000; dir. Yu Benzheng), the first really popular

main melody film (returning more than 100 million RMB) with a theme

on corruption in the south. Other films were historical - for example, The

Soong Sisters (Song jia huangchao, 1 997), a Hong Kong coproduction about

the wives of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek. A main melody film for the

handover of Hong Kong was The Opium War (Yapian zhanzheng, 1997;

dir. Xie Jin), a lively, scathing review of Sino-British relations. Main melody

films sought to marry the appeal of attractive, compelling characters with

socialist ideology espoused by the Party. Yet these were mostly unable to

rouse popular interest, and voluntary ticket purchase. Compared to the

other types of films currently circulating on China's screens, main melody

films are more or less a socialist anachronism.

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High Concept Dapian and Its Vicissitudes

Whereas the main melody picture seldom makes an impact on box office,

dapian filled studio coffers in the post- Titanic era. Between 2002 and 2010,

dapian dominated China's box office. The term dapian was initially used

for "high concept" (more about this term in the next section) Hollywood

imports in 1994 intended to entice audiences to return to the cinema, at

a time when the major source of movie entertainment was pirated videos.

Dapian refers to big budget production with big stars, famous directors,

gripping stories, and big spectacle, all the elements lacking in domestic

films of the day. Dapian pictures were high concept, made to be flaunted,

marveled at, and consumed by millions. Most of the works of Zhang Yimou,

Chen Kaige, and Feng Xiaogang in the 2000s were in dapian mode; some

of these were coproductions employing international cast, crew, and

technicians. Although they have the trappings of Hollywood blockbusters,

such as CGI, musical hooks, and visual splendor, their subject matter tends

to toe the party line.

In 2002, the dapian blueprint appeared: impressive juggernauts

made to carry prosocialist themes. Zhang's stunning Hero (Yingxiong)

was the prototype, with a stern one-China message couched in splendid

iconography. With its firm backing by China Film Group (CFG) and the State

Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and in its market

control, Hero was no less main melody than any main melody picture. But

its story and sumptuous style were more like those of an art film, inspired

as it was by Ang Lee's global hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu

canglong, 2000)5 and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, which debuted on the

world stage in the early 1950s.

Hero was a breakthrough in several ways. With a pan-Chinese cast and

crew, the film employed ancillary marketing (cell phones, book, picture

album, stamps, videogame, and sponsors such as China Mobile and Toyota),

blackout of other theatrical releases, and strict control of pirated DVDs

(Y. Zhao 2010). It was a benchmark (Davis/Yeh 2008: 27-29), and a proven

5 For an in-depth comparison of Crouch- ing Tiger and Hero, see Davis/Yeh 2008: 25-29.

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template for other blockbusters to follow. Hero provided temporary relief

from the pressure the ten additional Hollywood split-revenue pictures

were exerting on the Chinese film market after China joined the WTO.

In this regard, Hero's domestic box office - 250 million RMB, one quarter

of the total box office receipt in 2002 - is crucial, because its success led

to domestic films' sufficient representation in annual box office revenue.

Later, its overseas performance ($170 million) also proved that China-made

pictures could compete globally. The Hero template was repeated with

House of Flying Daggers (Shimian maifu, 2004), followed by The Promise

(Wu ji, 2005), The Banquet (Ye yan, 2006), Curse of the Golden Flower (Man

cheng jin dai huangjin jia, 2006), A Battle of Wits (Mo gong, 2006), The

Warlords (Tou ming zhuang, 2007), Battle of Red Cliff (Chi bi, 2008-2009),

and others.

The dapian formula made for an imbalanced industry, with few

directors and pictures dominating Chinese screens. From 2004, Zhang

Yimou and Feng Xiaogang competed to break each other's box office

records. Because of cost and logistics, only a handful of companies could

afford to bankroll dapian ; even fewer had the political connections to get

approval. The formula made the Chinese production slate vulnerable and

high risk. This oligopoly made marketization a closed shop, enjoyed by a

precious few operators; but it also gave officials more gatekeeping power

to promote favored groups.

By 2008, costume dapian ran its course, recycled to near exhaustion,

partly because their historical material often did not resonate with ordinary

viewers. Feng Xiaogang, champion of traditional New Year pictures, was

quick to modify the dapian recipe to make it more relevant to contemporary

China. Assembly (Ji jie hao, 2009), for example, was an award-winning war

picture that raised questions about army cover-ups during the civil war

between the Communists and the Nationalists, without embarrassing the

military. Aftershock (Tangshan da dizhen, 2010) was a huge hit, re-creating

with heavy use of CGI the disastrous Tangshan earthquake of 1976. The

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film had it all: spectacle and sentiment, building sympathy for a family

torn apart by the earthquake; and heroism, not just of ordinary folks but

the courageous efforts of army rescuers.6 Workers and soldiers were the

principal subjects in many main melody films, but they rarely appeared in

costume dapian. Assembly and Aftershock inspired the remake of standard

main melody pictures commemorating the birth of the socialist nation,

which resulted in a subgenre called "commercial mainstream blockbuster"

(shangye zhuliu dapian).

In 2009, CFG produced Founding of the Republic (Jianguo daye),

directed by the group's CEO, Han Sanping. Earning 420 million RMB, it was

a main melody film in the guise of a dapian ; the first main melody to reach

blockbuster status, with stars in every scene, high production values, and

humanized portraits of leaders of the Guomingdang, the CCP's historical

enemy. The film boasted Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, Donnie Yen, Leon

Lai, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Daoming, Jiang Wen, Zhao Wei, Ge You, and dozens

of other stars. Because it was about the birth of the People's Republic and

was directed by the most powerful man in Chinese cinema, actors could

ill afford not to appear in this picture. With the long procession of stars,

the film ably integrated marketing with marketization, entertainment

with ideology. This was "enhanced main melody," Chinese high concept

made patriotic, socialist, and highly marketable. The film was an advance

from monumental costume dapian of 2002-2008 and exemplified the

new phrase "commercial mainstream blockbuster." The "commercial"

highlights the market appeal of star power, and "mainstream" is a retread

or euphemism of main melody, indicating Communist orthodoxy reinforced

by entertainment values. Whereas main melody were traditional state

policy films not meant to compete at the box office, this "commercial

mainstream" label suggested a new market function for main melodies.

More important, the "commercial mainstream blockbuster" found a way

to reconcile revolutionary propaganda and market-oriented movies and

to rejuvenate the worn-out dapian.

6 One of my MA students had relatives who were in the earthquake, and she was appalled by the manipulation of the public's emotions on behalf of the state.

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7 "Long tail" is a marketing term popu- larized by Chris Anderson (2006).

8 See Murdock/Wasko 2007, as well as Meehan 2007 and 2010. Wasko (2004)

assumes a Marxist suspicion of capitalist media trade, covering both entertain- ment and information.

Dapian as High Concept

The key to the success of Founding of the Republic clearly lies in its high-

concept mode of production and promotion, using stars as marketing

tools and boasting high production value. "High concept" refers to movies

that are totally integrated with - and subordinated to - their marketing.

Justin Wyatt describes high concept as marked by "industrial expressivity,"

as opposed to the "authorial expressivity" of earlier films (Wyatt 1994:

61). High concept works as a way of conceiving Chinese dapian because

it foregrounds the films' industry responsibilities: things that promote

marketability - or marketization - have prime importance, such as publicity

and product tie-ins. One catchy phrase can sell a film and feed copy to big

ad campaigns; in turn, the ad campaigns offer a signature image or tune

that instantly recalls the movie and pitches merchandising that generates

millions in extra exposure, fees, and sales. All these marketing hooks are

settled together with ad agencies, and the movie is made around them.

With high concept, marketing is the key, with film as the node in a "long

tail" of potent synergy.7 Codified in the 1980s and enabled by massive

conglomeration of media corporations, high concept is still very much

with us today in the West. China, without Hollywood's century of cinema

as commercial enterprise, now excels in the formation of supply chains of

film marketing, public relations, and saturation advertising. These activities

are now fully conglomerated, consolidated, and globally active. We can

draw a parallel between high concept and marketization: high concept is

to market-oriented blockbusters as dapian is to marketization.

What are the necessary conditions of high concept - a global mass

market that can sustain enormous production budgets? More crucial,

perhaps, is market control- the use of oligopoly, conglomeration, cross-

media promotion, careful timing, and platform coordination. High

concept must also involve some understanding between corporations and

regulatory agencies. Because of cross-platform marketing, scholars of media

industries warn of overconcentration of film, television, and media in giant

conglomerates such as News Corp, Disney, and Time Warner.8

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In China, marketization and state participation lead to concentration

on a scale Murdoch or Berlusconi cannot even imagine. PRC media industry

embodies such concentration, perhaps even more than European or

American conglomerates. When appropriate, the state lets the market

work autonomously, promoting efficiency, innovation, and profits; but

it also scales back in times of consolidation, and reregulation can easily

follow periods of deregulation and free trade. Such a tendency is at odds

with views of marketization as a transition toward the goal of the mature

capitalist markets of the West. Given today's media conglomeration,

commercialization, and the public interest, China's marketization is far

along in this trajectory, a retractable commercialization guided by state

bureaus, regulators, and corporate proxies. The system that exists in China

today emphasizes practical state policy rather than market fundamentalism.

In other words, market control can issue from different sources - global

conglomerates or SOEs - but have similar effects on content, talent, and

audiences. This is why China Film Group and other state conglomerates

have structural affinities with Hollywood studios. Size is one way to get

market control; another is concentration of influence - narrowing down

market access, function, and labor relations to a few people sitting on a

committee. China's screen conglomerates enjoy both size and concentration

of influence, and as such, have ready access to government rules before

others. As I have described it elsewhere, "marketization is 'Chinawood'

aspiring to match Hollywood internationally, while continuing to serve

the Party at the national level" (Davis 2010: 124). Accordingly, exercising

control is typical of the marketization process, with release windows

for films opening or closing depending on the prevailing socioeconomic

climate. The open marketplace may become sheltered marketization at different times.

In 201 1 for Beginning of the Great Revival, a sequel to Founding of the

Republic, there were mandatory revenue targets. To overtake the earlier

installment, CFG wanted to take in 800 million RMB, but DreamWorks' Kung

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Fu Panda 2, which CFG had a contract to screen, was to be released at the

same time. Timing was a problem, and in multiplexes across the country,

an awkward situation unfolded: many viewers opted for DreamWorks over

CFG and Great Revival, the official Party film, was in the way of a Hollywood

animal animation. Multiplex managers improvised - they sold machine-

printed tickets to Great Revival , but hand-written over them was "Kung

Fu Panda"; viewers could see whichever film they preferred. Marketization

targets would thus be met - at least on paper - and patrons got to see

their chosen feature. And Great Revival was not the only main melody film

that was specially managed: local cinema operators were under pressure

to boost receipts of other domestic films, and state bodies use quotas and

blackout dates to block access to screens during important seasons. One tactic is to "bundle" tickets and attach a second ticket for a domestic film

to a purchase for a Hollywood blockbuster. According to Variety :

Some theatergoers in China who went to see Transformers: Dark of the Moon paid 80 yuan ($12.50) and received two tickets: one valued at 60 yuan ($9.40) for a small propaganda picture about a Communist Party figure called Yang Shanzhou, which was play- ing at the same time; the Hollywood blockbuster ticket cost just 20 yuan ($3.10). U.S. studios get roughly 15% of their films' box office receipts in China. (Coonan 2011a)

This practice should be flagged for what it is - fraud and blatant

manipulation of box office accounting. People in China were not amused.

On learning that authorities were to delay the release of Kung Fu Panda 2

and Pirates of the Caribbean until Great Revival had earned its 800 million,

many people boycotted the main melody film. Great Revival ended its run

with less than half the hoped-for result (table 2).

Divergent Marketization

Marketization is meant to stimulate consumer spending on entertainment,

but not provoke controversy. Although dapian began with a Hollywood

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Table 2: Changing Face of China's Film Marketization

mode of production, it remains grounded in a patriotic intent; nevertheless,

some films hit the box office but dodge patriotic, official mandates.

Marketization traffics in popular elements aimed at making profit, but

these popular elements sometimes conflict with authorities' preferred

outcomes. Marketization is a robust process, hard to control and slippery,

and its products may sometimes violate state prescriptions, surprising the

establishment; movies taking in millions at the box office may not be in

accord with Party interests or policies. Next I discuss a few examples of this

"divergent marketization."

Zhang Yimou's bloated Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai

huangjin jia, 2006) was officially criticized for decadence and eroticism.

More important, the film brought a public complaint from rival PolyBona,

which objected to the "domestic film protection" it enjoyed. PolyBona's

Hong Kong coproduction Confession of Pain (Shang cheng) was shut out

from lucrative dates in early 2007, and the company questioned Golden

Flower's advantage, publicly challenging the favoritism of marketization

policies. On the heels of his success in directing the ceremonies at the

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9 Distribution was compromised because the company chose Huaxia over CFG. Although Huaxia is a CFG subsidiary, the parent company handled Zhang's previous works. Choosing Huaxia was a taunt, related to Zhang Weiping's con- frontations with CFG, with the producer

aggravated over the split between distributors and powerful exhibition circuits.

10 The term "Oriental Western" is Variety

reviewer Derek Elley's.

Beijing Olympics, Zhang's next film, A Simple Noodle Story (Sanqiang pai'an

jingqi, 2009), was more modest; it had a tone of absurdist humor, but was

considered frivolous and arch, with venal characters. Although its being

a remake of the Coen brothers' Blood Simple did not help its reputation,9

Chinese viewers were intrigued, and the film did well financially. Some

conservative critics thought Noodle Story beneath Zhang Yimou, an artist

now expected to produce works of national cultural significance (Lam

2010). Yet with this film, Zhang proved himself more versatile than just a

conductor of spectacle, pomp, and Olympic ceremony.

Most viewers interpreted Let the Bullets Fly (Rang zidan fei, 2010; dir.

Jiang Wen), a black comic Oriental Western, as critical commentary on

China's current leaders.10 Audiences were excited by the film's exuberant,

politically edged satire. Not surprisingly, director Jiang Wen disavowed

any allegorical intent. Taking in 730 million RMB, it was China's biggest

domestic hit then, but nearly caused a riot in Sichuan when dubbed in the

local dialect; authorities promptly replaced it with the standard Mandarin

language version. Other ambitious commercial films spun off from the

Western genre: for example, Wind Blast (Xi feng lie, 2010; dir. Gao Qunshu),

a contemporary noodle Western set in the Gobi desert, with car chases,

explosions, and nonstop fight choreography.

Just Call Me Nobody (Da xiao jiang hu, 2010; dir. Zhu Yanping) is a

spoof that sends up conventions of martial arts. Zhu Yanping was a popular

director during the martial law period in Taiwan and made several local hits

in the 1 980s, but the Taiwanese critical establishment never recognized him.

His previous mainland picture, Treasure Hunter (Ci ling, 2009), a knockoff

of Indiana Jones, was a hit in China. Nobody was warmly embraced in

provincial towns and in the countryside, taking in a box office of 1 80 million

RMB, but it was disdained in the press and in Internet discussions; the film's

reception reveals a stark divide between urban tastes and those of the

provinces. Such disparity of opinion inspired Global Times (Huanqiu shibao)

in its discussion of "China-cization" (quanguo hua), which points to the

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huge logistical, capital, and manpower flows that are reconfiguring China.

Such gigantic scale is no less than the movement of globalization in the last

decades, and thus, the term "globalization" (global mobilization) is neatly

rephrased as "China-cization" (national mobilization). This transformation

includes dissemination of metropolitan culture from big cities to provincial

towns. At this pivotal moment, locally made entertainment such as A

Simple Noodle Story and Just Call Me Nobody served the needs of rural

viewers (Zhang 201 1). Patronizing attitudes about rural audiences indicate

an obsession with figures, another trait of marketization that ardently

pursues scale, money, and growth.

These films all did big business in China, garnering market recognition

and rewards, but they were also scorned by educated elites, authorities, and

critics. A debate ensued about the tone of the films: the old guard, seeing

marketization as select market concessions in domestic films, thought

they were bending tacit rules on theme and content and were tone-deaf,

indifferent to main melody refrains. Han Sanping, head of CFG, said all

along that China should be making "ethically inspiring" pictures (Frater

2007). Other writers praised both their market-oriented aims, saying results

spoke for themselves, and the fact that they promoted China's movie

infrastructure and diversity, whatever their style or ideology. The market

spoke through wide public embrace, which in turn led to opportunities for

China's filmmakers, distributors, and audiences. The evolving, sometimes

backsliding, process of marketization makes it edge closer to the open

market that is served and shaped by Hollywood. The worst to be said

was that the films were empty amusement, without regard for national

themes and enjoyed only by the "uneducated" masses (Editorial 2011).

But Party cadres suspected more: irreverence, insouciance, straying from

the Party line, selling drastic differentiation. The films were Trojan horses,

brazenly seducing customers. A potential rift opened between their true

market appeal, measured in box office results (good), and their unruly,

unwholesome aspects, with hints of absurdity, shoddiness, or subversion

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(bad): the good part meant tangible market performance, but the bad

concerned textual peccadilloes. Marketization entails a risk of unforeseen,

maybe unwanted consequences.

Popular Genres

The third type of film in China's marketization is popular genre film, usually

in the form of small- and medium-budget productions. These comedies,

romances, and thrillers are produced to seize capital in the finance market,

attract consumer spending, and stoke demand for more production.

Because some of these modest films have made a heavyweight financial

impact, a new trade label emerged, the "commercial model" (shangye

moshi), which avoids any reference to old "mainstream" or "main melody"

descriptors. This type of production began with Crazy Stone (Fengkuang

de shitou, 2006; dir. Ning Hao), a hit that started a cycle of what some call

shanzhai, or "knockoff pictures" (Berra/Liu 2012: 46). These genre films

mark a departure from the historical settings of the dapian and a turn to

contemporary subjects. Notable titles include Sophie's Revenge (Feichang

wanmei, 2009), Lost on Journey (Ren zai jiong tu, 2010), Go Lala Go (Du

Lala shengzhi ji, 2010), Love Is Not Blind (Shilian sanshisan tian, 2011, with

a 10-million RMB cost, earned 350 million), and Lost in Thailand (Ren zai

jiong tu zhi Tai jiong, 2012), a sequel (of sorts) to Lost on Journey. The

year 201 3 saw the appearance of So Young (Zhi women zhong jiang shiqu

de qingchun), a coming-of-age film directed by one of China's biggest

actresses, Zhao Wei, and Tiny Times 1.0 (Xiao shidai) and Tiny Times 2.0

(Xiao shidai 2), written and directed by celebrity writer Guo Jingming. These

were all extraordinary box office winners, and they added a new variety

to China's film genres and styles.

Lost in Thailand was the first domestic film to take in more than a

billion RMB at box office, rivaling Avatar. This and other low-budget

comedies are aimed at young people; in this regard, as well as in terms of

concept and execution, they mark an about-face from earlier dapian. Their

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emergence signals exhaustion of the dapian formula. Xu Zheng, the director

of Lost in Thailand, said the film's success is related to the aspirations and

anxieties of ordinary Chinese in a time of high growth and dislocation. Yet

Lost in Thailand is no knockoff (of either Lost on Journey or the Hangover

franchise it is sometimes said to resemble); it is a funny, heartfelt embrace

of human warmth in a context of cutthroat business schemes. Although it is

a sequel (contested by the makers of Lost on Journey), its Thailand settings

excited consumers and sparked a wave of Chinese visitors descending on

the Land of Smiles. Tiny Times is a "chick flick," but it has wit, style, and

a sharp narrative thrust. It boasts Shanghai glamour, and looks much like

contemporary Japanese manga, with its aesthetic of high-spirited camp.

The Internet played a central role in the Tiny Times series. Internet

chat forums not only allow viewers to share thoughts about films, but

also play a role in marketing, sometimes through voluntary responses by

viewers, sometimes manufactured by shuijun, "water-soldiers" who are

hired to churn out positive comments about films. The Tiny Times films

were also adapted from novels written by the director Guo Jingming and

originally published on the Internet. Financing for the films came from

an Internet media group, Le Vision Internet and Information-Technology

Corp (Le TV). The Internet is now the main channel for cultural creators to

connect with China's emerging consumers. Internet-related demographics

address the young, who have rejected the elitism of older generations who

came of age in the Cultural Revolution. Among Internet users there is no

discomfort whatever with popular culture and blatant commercial appeals.

Expectations of "film art" are replaced by assumptions that movies are no

more than disposable entertainment, though they may potentially provoke

thought. Another factor is the Internet itself, a relatively free, unrestricted

cultural space compared to multiplex cinemas and television broadcasts,

which are closely monitored by the authorities. Director of Tiny Times ,

Guo Jingming: "We are very different from people born in the 1960s or

70s - they were people who dressed the same and ate the same food in

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the same cafeteria, living the same kind of life," he said. "But for people

born in the 1980s, or even more so for those from the 1990s, it's about

trying to be different from everybody else. Whereas doing that in the past

would see you branded as an anomaly, these days it's all about looking

after myself - saying, 'I want to enjoy life the way I like it'" (Tsui 2013).

The commercial success of Lost in Thailand , So Young, and the Tiny

Times series clearly signals the evolving, protean nature of marketization.

With these films, marketization is taking a distinct turn toward a measure

of market dynamism. This unraveling in marketization brings a new focus

on genre cinema such as romance, youth pictures, and comedy. It also

raises questions about what role the market should play in terms of the

state-Party policies.

As mentioned, the main melody formula was designed not only

to popularize Party narratives, but to promote product diversity; this

surely happened in the drive to marketization, but not always in the way

expected. Marketization experiences convergence but also the occasional

divergence, as well as overlapping among entertainment, indoctrination,

and changing expectations. "Convergence" is related to communication

and information technologies, but pertains as well to political economy

and modes of production (Davis 2010: 123-125). China's film industry has

marketized - that is, produced film that must entertain consumers - but

at the same time it seeks to reassure the authorities. These objectives are

not necessarily incompatible. There is nothing really contradictory here,

unless one insists that Chinese viewers require the same choices available

on Western screens. At the same time, a tension arises when main melody

films arrive in the same marketplace as Hollywood movies, as we saw with

Beginning of the Great Revival. Main melody films are made to instruct

and furtively entertain, whereas Hollywood movies must entertain above

all else. Main melodies are charged with the need to both "serve the

people" and please them. Service, pleasure, and control - all required and

all mutually reinforcing in China's film market.

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As it embraces marketplace appeal (films offering excitement, humor,

instant gratification, wish fulfillment, etc.), marketization may give rise

to tensions or interactions between entertainment and sensation, on the

one hand, and authoritarian didacticism, on the other. Yuezhi Zhao (1998)

writes that in press coverage of crime, "authoritarianism and sensationalism

fuse effectively to increase the market appeal of these stories" (160). News

items about murder, rape, or corruption may glorify police work and the

detection of culprits, but they also emphasize the crime, the chase, and the

thrill. In movies, something similar holds, where disregard of socialist cant

enhanced their appeal and word of mouth with viewers. In such works,

market readiness was demonstrated, but not socialist marketization.

In all these films, main melodies are discreetly muted, unless as material

for jokes. There are no hints that these films are anything but popular

products from capitalist creative industries, true commodities, in spirit,

intent, and name. They represent contemporary entertainment media

in China as well as any keynote dapian, not because they are copies of

commodities produced elsewhere, but because they have established a firm

place, alongside official propaganda, political satire, broad comedies, and

international coproduction. The China market, as well as marketization

itself, is growing, changing, and splitting into sectors, which means

that cinema is proliferating, bringing with it a wider range of cultural

and entertainment offerings, very much like a marketplace. But once

the marketplace is established, it can be withdrawn, if necessary. The

marketplace in China is in an unstable situation.

Mirror Image or Impersonation? Chinese Marketization and Hollywood

It's hard enough to forecast the future of complex economies, which are based less and less on the production and sale of actual goods like cars. Instead, such economies are increasingly domi- nated by globally traded and barely measurable services like the

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writing of computer code and the creation of music and films, to say nothing of the trading of financial derivatives.

- Jeff Sommer (201 1)

Looking at the relationship between Hollywood and China's marketization

involves addressing two complex economies and confronting the fact

of global interrelation, entanglement, and what John Tomlinson (1999)

calls "complex connectivity." Over the past two decades or so, China has

become enmeshed in economic systems well beyond its borders. Those

relations are multilateral, reaching geographically remote areas, and

cultivating resources vital to China's development. Consider China's interests

in Brazil: as one journalist has put it, "China has become Brazil's biggest

trading partner, buying increasing volumes of soybeans and iron ore, while

investing billions in Brazil's energy sector. The demand has helped fuel an

economic boom here that has lifted more than 20 million Brazilians from

extreme poverty and brought economic stability to a country accustomed

to crises" (Barrionuevo 2011). China is active everywhere, in Africa, the

Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, and both Americas. Since the 201 1 debt

debacle in the U.S., China has become more aggressive, even strident, in

demanding proper fiscal stewardship from its largest debtor. Globalization

is the material stake that various and distant countries have in one another.

This stake is sharply marked, as Wen Jiabao signaled in 2009, by the direct

underwriting of the American economy by Asian investment. Trillions are

being moved into both public and private havens, with qualms (Smithfield

Meatpacking) or without (American Multiplex Cinemas), marking a process

of financial and, ultimately, material convergence.

Given China's official commitment to dialectical materialism as

foundational ideology, it is fitting to think dialectically about this multiple,

intensifying engagement. Dialectical thinking views economic and cultural

forces as in tension, unstable, shifting and pulling in various ways, and

sometimes even trading places from their accustomed roles. In the U.S.,

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China works as an imaginary other, with China in the first position of

the following dichotomies: communist/capitalist; collective/individual;

authoritarian/consumerist; closed/open societies; and hard propaganda

versus soft, popular media. "Soft power" models like that of Hollywood

and Japan combine easy consumption with formidable global reach and

impact (Nye 2004; Watanabe/McConnell 2008; Kurlantzick 2007; J. Wang

2011). There is déjà vu when we recall Japanese economic hubris in the

1980s and the anxiety it provoked in the U.S. China may appear as a target

to some Americans, especially libertarian patriots, but some commentators

use China as an example to goad American students into more discipline,

less pop culture, more music practice, straight A's, and cold-weather football

games. China becomes a sociopolitical object lesson, representing hard

work and determination, maybe success, but rarely inspiring imitation.

Chinese views on America, shaped by media flows, are also fraught,

incredulous, and often competitive. Jessica Teets and her colleagues

put it this way: "Information emanating from Western media sources is

viewed skeptically by well-educated, well-informed young Chinese, who

assume such reporting furthers a pro-Western agenda. . . . patriotic and

nationalistic urges will arise . . . when there is a perceived outside threat

or insult to China" (Teets et al. 2010: 9). China faced a century of foreign

arrogance, and the legacy of the Cold War persists among China's political

leadership, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens (H. Wang 2003; 2009). The

year 1989, which saw the beginnings of the collapse of the Soviet Union

and the Tiananmen crackdown, left the PRC as an "anomaly": a Communist

state with growing national and economic power. All this, in addition to

linguistic and cultural remoteness, encourages "othering" of China by the

West, and vice versa (Wang/Shoemaker 201 1).

How do dialectics play a role in juxtaposing Chinese cinema and

Hollywood, especially developments in the film industry? In assessing

China's cinema, parallels, similarities, realignments, and potential exchanges

provoke dialectical relations across Chinese and Hollywood industries.

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What links are there between Chinese and American cinemas, in terms

of competition, cooperation, and co-optation? Is the rhetoric inevitably

binary? Are the two industries antiphonal, like some echo or mirror image?

Given its turns to commercialization, is China's cinema becoming more like

Hollywood's, or less? Is it following its own inimitable path? Does it have

anything at all to do with Hollywood? These questions don't have just one

answer. Some developments in China indicate a film industry that mimics

Hollywood, intent on replicating its hegemony and clout - within limits.

Authoritative in scope, visibility, and resources, Hollywood is a powerful

industry benchmark, and Chinese authorities use it as both an object lesson

and cautionary tale. Hollywood is a creature of aggressive capitalism that

has always occupied the global market, even as its biggest hits trumpet

"Americanism." China in its turn seeks the power of marketization. Whereas

the West normally conceives market power as a hedge against the state, in China marketization is an instrument of the state. In marketization the

Chinese state continues to keep two cardinal goals: "making the industry

competitive in globalized markets while also maintaining the state's grip

on culture," as Ying Zhu (2003: 17) puts it.

Marketization is a compound, transitional concept, connecting market

and planned economy. As transition to a new system, marketization

signifies some decisive shifting toward market form as final destination.

China quickened reforms when joining the World Trade Organization in

late 2001. In September 2001, Long Yongtu, China's chief delegate to the

WTO, said: "China's economic reform towards market economy and its

policy of further opening-up will greatly accelerate China's modernization

drive and enhance its ability to participate into [sic] international economy"

(Long 2001). Long framed this statement in terms of an itinerary, in terms

of reforms that get China to the desired place: the market economy.

But I understand marketization in PRC film as alternative to market in

the Western sense. The term conveys the reality of a managed, controlled

market as a distinct goal, not merely a way station to a purer market

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economy. Marketization is a marketplace with key remnants of the planned

economy - that is, a market tailored for Chinese socialist needs, spanning

market and plan, and stipulating clear domestic goals, especially those of

the Party. Marketization is not just China's long march toward a full, open

market, but instead a market-as-engine for economic propulsion. At first

it was a strategy for the leadership to cope with economic recession in the

short term, and then it evolved as the key mechanism to sustain China's

growth over the long haul. Marketization is not the same as market

economy, which for capitalists is a "free" marketplace where parties enter

and compete ona "level playing field." It isa peculiar form and operational

principle in China's current economic system, driving China's socialist

economy and providing a focused source of growth. Marketization has

not just created exceptional harvest for China's film industry; it also parries

potential threats, from Hollywood and other outsiders. A genuine market

economy, it must be admitted, is not an unplanned economy, despite the

opposition normally assumed between market and plan.

In the next part of the essay, I unpack China's marketization, then

pursue it in practical manifestations of films and critical discourse, thinking

dialectically about contemporary film industries. Dialectically, Hollywood is

the antithesis to China, a nominal "market economy with Chinese socialist

characteristics." China is an antithesis to the market liberalism upheld by

Hollywood since the 1920s. Because Hollywood and China both envision a

market conducive and receptive to their own products, these two industries

have a parallel teleology with different, sometimes oppositional, or

dialectical lines. Accordingly, this discussion considers Chinese commentary

on globalization and assessments of China's experience of it. Instead of

viewing China en route to American-style market economy, with attendant

opening, liberalization, and pluralizaron, Western film industries may

occupy a continuum that China already spans.

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 219

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Marketization: Binary Opposition or Composite?

In "China Builds a Market Culture," Dittmer and Gore (2001) state the

basic antinomy or opposition between market economy and planned

economy. Market economy is supposed to be open, reliable, free, and fair,

with a marketplace that distributes resources efficiently; only in this way

can an economy work well, with capital, people, and benefits organized

for maximum use and functionality. Conversely, a planned or command

economy operates according to the design, or preferences, of ministers

who control allocation of materials, products, and services; it is organized

by a state authority, which dictates economic decisions by fiat. Dittmer

and Gore (2001: 11) argue: "as the market displaces command planning,

a marketing culture compatible with the efficient functioning of markets,

may be expected to undermine and displace the culture of hierarchical

authoritarianism. At this juncture this is still very much in process, hardly

a fait accompli."

With Dittmer and Gore, we are presented with a binary model of

market versus planned economy; they place logical priority on market as

the standard by which planned economy is measured and found wanting;

and there is the sociocultural corollary, following the installment of market

structure and function. Market is the default (thesis) and appears anterior

to planned (antithesis), with marketization as a process of mediation

between the two, leading to full opening and market access. Though there's

a hedge in their formulation ("in process, [not] a fait accompli"), these

social scientists assume incompatibility and disjunction between planned

OR market economy, with hierarchy-plan ultimately replaced by efficient,

egalitarian market. As I have discussed, Chinese policy does not really see

a disjunction between market and plan, and may accommodate both sides,

like a chord with combined, codependent notes. To the stark proposition of

market OR plan, Chinese marketization answers: both. Dialectical models

can seem rather pat, too tidy. Yuezhi Zhao's Media, Market and Democracy

in China has the subtitle Between the Party Line and the Bottom Line,

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and she follows this handy phrase with discussion of how Party logic and

market logic intersects (1998: 2). The book is soundly researched, complex

and nuanced, but like Dittmer and Gore she deploys a binary between the

party and the market. Dan Schiller, not a critic of Zhao's work, writes, "we

are ill served by a simple-minded conception of American market freedom

versus Chinese state authoritarianism" (Schiller 2011: 99).

As China globalized after ascension to the WTO, there arose

opposition from those losing out, such as migrant laborers, farmers, and

the dispossessed. Regarding popular dissent, political scientist Andrew

Mertha (2010: 81) summarizes the Chinese state's response in terms of

"protest, crackdown, possibly improv[ing] upon the status quo ante (but

really focus[ing] on ensuring that anger is nipped in the bud as opposed

to resolved)," and he calls this process "contentious dialectical." State and

society, party and market, command and efficiency models - such pairs

neatly frame China's industry policies along familiar, opposing categories,

even as those categories intertwine in many ways. This too is dialectical:

opposites facing off, colliding, interacting, and forming a commingled,

synthetic compound. This compound is China's response to the binary

assumption that allows it to enter the sphere of globalization and its

institutional agent, the WTO.

Yu Huang and Fanxu Zeng propose a narrative of media transformation

that they call "co-empowerment" (Huang/Zeng 2011). Chinese media

development is exceptional, they say, combining aspects that in the West

would be taken as antithetical: on the one hand, large-scale systemic

change, economic growth, material progress, and global recognition; on

the other hand, despite those rapid changes, the successful preservation

of the status quo, especially the continuing rule of the Communist

Party. This bifocal transition/preservation supports steps forward -

marketization, liberalization, enrichment - within the general framework

of the state's commitment to stability and control. Despite liberalization

and commercialization, the media in China still plays the role of Party

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mouthpiece, especially where politics are centralized, viz. Beijing. Still

there are fissures - places (especially in Guangdong), times, and certain

issues - through which media can respond freely to people's discontent,

and these fissures may be growing. Huang and Zeng's model is effectively

dialectical, because it accounts for both change and restraint, transition

and stability. Their claim is that co-empowerment oscillates between

media coverage and popular protest, with both sides moderated by state,

bureaucracy, and geography. But this model was devised for press and

electronic communication, not cinema, an area that may be less amenable

to daily, incremental diversification than print and electronic media.

Political economist Janet Wasko (2004) reminds us that films are

commodities produced and distributed within capitalist industries; further,

there are necessities in political economy analysis, including awareness

of historical change, social totality (film as part of communication and

media enterprise), moral grounding, intervention, and praxis. The political

economy of film needs all these dimensions, especially the notion that

movies are commodities circulated in capitalist industrial structure. Where

does this leave the political economy of Chinese film, as products generated

from a socialist, but marketizing system? If we simply see Chinese film as

state propaganda, it does unsettle notions of a political economy based

on commodity enterprise. In socialist planned economy, power relations

in financing, producing, and distributing movies are straightforward and

can be traced and classified. Western analysts are tempted to view China's

marketization as a definite step from socialism to capitalism, from a closed

system to an open, dynamic, and proto-democratic society. Again, we

should not necessarily see socialism and capitalism as stages, with one

inevitably displacing the other. In China, the deployment of marketization

and commodification policy brings greater efficiency, responsiveness, and

expectations of reward, not just from state authorities but from newly

enriched consumers. The state is instrumental in establishing film circuits

that allow people to choose films that suit them, as well as offering a

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broader range of domestic pictures. Although Chinese marketization

differs from abundant marketplaces typical of cities in the West, its highly

conglomerated, concentrated structure edges it closer to capitalist logic

than the label "socialist" permits. A "postsocialist" film or culture industry

is not necessarily isomorphic or parallel with a capitalist one either,

and on occasion it may effectively outplay capitalist practice. The West

tends to think of Chinese corporations, especially SOEs, as inadequately

market-oriented, when in fact they lead the way to "market-as-engine,"

marketization on behalf of specific targets.

Let us review the way marketization works in Chinese cinemas. In

August 2011, 90% of Beijing cineplex screenings were devoted to three

films: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Transformers: Dark of the

Moon, and The Smurfs. Most were being screened in 3D (with ticket prices

at 120-150 RMB, double the regular price). The point here is not just

programming distilled to a handful of summer blockbusters, nor even the

enhanced 3D formats, but ruthless commercialization, with business-class

VIP lounges, merchandise counters, giant electronic displays, and prominent

announcements of new model seating configuration, sound systems, and

food and beverage (figs 1 and 2). Then there are 4D arrangements, with

vibrating seats, glasses, and panels that waft moisture and air puffs to

viewers. These are the ways Beijing moviegoers are coaxed to enjoy and

embrace new, ultramodern experiences of movie marketization. It is service

provision Western companies would love to emulate. Now that Wanda

Corporation (Dalian) bought a majority stake in AMC (Kansas City), this is

sure to happen.

Conglomerate Marketization and Red Culture

As with the amenities and extras offered in Beijing multiplexes, the system

in China seeks the ideal balance between high growth and tight control. The

best instance of this Hollywood-Communist composite is CFG, the country's

biggest and most influential film conglomerate. CFG is a state-owned

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Figure 1: At a multiplex in Beijing, August 2011.

Figure 2: Movie tie-ins for sale, Beijing 2011.

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enterprise but a hugely successful one. Corporatization of SOEs let state

proxies gain a necessary foothold in the nascent market.11 CFG has tried to

transnationale and thus renationalize Chinese cinema (Yeh/Davis 2008).

It shaped and co-opted pan-Asian production (e.g., Hong Kong director

Peter Chan Ho-sun) and through CEPA# the Closer Economic Partnership

Arrangement brought Hong Kong's industry expertise into the mainland

fold. CFG represents marketization as liberalization and corporate agility,

but it is also part of a scheme to utilize the market to consolidate and

enhance state power. Han Sanping, CEO of CFG, is skilled at announcing

slogans and branding as part of a campaign to promote the continuing

rise of Chinese cinema. He even appropriates Joseph Nye, and makes an

implicit analogy between the role of the Hollywood film industry and that

of China, when he says that movies are "part of a country's soft power"

(in Pierson 201 1). But how soft is China's soft power?

The CCP celebrated its ninetieth anniversary in July 2011; all over

China, public events, pageants, press coverage, television broadcasts, and

blockbuster films commemorated the anniversary. One such blockbuster

was Beginning of the Great Revival (codirected by Han Sanping and

Huang Jianxin) The film narrative moves swiftly and covers not only

political intrigues and war, but also Mao's early romance, with a dash of

humor here and there.12 This film played the main melody of patriotism,

loyalty, and Party glorification. For the Party anniversary, all media events

were coordinated, and as millions saw, "the country has been swept

up in a wave of orchestrated revolutionary nostalgia unseen since the

Cultural Revolution" (C. Huang 2011a). Revolutionary "red songs" were

rehabilitated and urged on the masses, on television, in stadiums, and

online (Anon. 201 1c). In the CCTV series 90 Years of Red Songs, celebrities

sang classic revolutionary songs, such as "The East Is Red" and "Without

the CCP There Is No New China." The rousing socialist anthems made for

colorful, fantastic television - part nostalgia, part agitprop. The Party

oversaw celebration galas and ensured ample space in the media and on

11 See Dittmer and Gore (2001) statement

cited on p. 199.

12 A scene showing Mao romancing an early girlfriend was dropped in the final cut, at the request of Mao's survivors. The actress was played by Tang Wei, a star still unwelcome in the highest circles because of her controversial role in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. See Coonan 201 1b

and Xiyun Yang 2011.

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every kind of screen to project and propagate these all-important rituals.

This media barrage flooded outlets with patriotic messages and images,

blocking other types of entertainment and information in the process.

During times of national commemoration, the authorities are especially

vigilant in managing public sentiment through the media. As Gordon

Mathews and his colleagues write, although their motivations may be

different, the market and the state can and must align closely, not only

in China, but across the border in Hong Kong as well: "It is expensive and

foolhardy to defy the Chinese state, since this will lead to one's company

being blocked: thus the Hong Kong discourse of the market and the Chinese

discourse of the state are rendered congruent, albeit for different reasons"

(Mathews et al. 2008: 60).

In the U.S., the opening of markets is thought to lead inexorably to

liberalization in society. This idea emerges from a dichotomous view of the

market-plan relationship: market and plan locked in a clash of civilization

and ideology. When skepticism appears in China about Red Culture, it

is hard to resist seeing it as incipient dissidence or hunger for liberty.

But skepticism is not necessarily subversion; it might not even constitute

rejection. Could this skepticism be dialectical, an interval injected by social

actors in China to disturb and respond to state-sponsored spectacles - but as

a hedge, not a refusal? It is useful to keep an open mind, and not impose on

China's dynamics familiar oppositions, models, and expectations; otherwise

we reduce complex and interesting developments on the ground in China

to neoliberal clichés.

From Globalization to China-cization?

As already mentioned, Global Times, a Party-sponsored international

newspaper, published a series of articles in January-February 2011 that

introduced the term "China-cization" ( quanguohua ), a play on the term

"globalization" ( quanqiu hua). The articles promoted China's key role in the

next stage of globalization, a phase to be dominated by China's domestic

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surge, that is, China-cization. It is a controversial concept, unwieldy and

complex; it also suffers from triumphalism, exaggerating the scope and

impact of Chinese economic developments. One of the Global Times

editorials compares China's economic reform with the domestication of the

American West in the nineteenth century: "America's westbound movement

enabled the leaping advancement of American civilization and its national

power. This should not been seen as 'the making of the west' but 'a whole

country's big development'" (Editorial 201 1). 13 Opening up China's markets

to robust trade amounts to opening the nation to development.

Globalization as a "one-world" axiom driven by Euro-American

economic superpowers suggests the assimilation of differences, shrinking

cultural and ideological barriers, and the disappearance of national borders,

especially those hindering trade; this projection can be viewed as isomorphic

with the fast-paced urbanization and economic rise China is experiencing.

Commentators make grand claims about rapidly narrowing gaps in income,

lifestyle, education, and cultural access between metropolitan China and

the newly developing countryside. China-cization is about not just the

deluge of global commodities, but also the extension and embedding of

new resources across the whole country ( quanguo ). So many are getting

rich, with the material evidence mounting: luxury goods, private cars,

highways, shopping malls, media, and entertainment systems sprouting

everywhere. Marketization is the means to this enrichment, with the state

and Party standing by to ensure that it lasts and extends to the edges of

the nation. In cinema, multiplexes proliferate, with more films, amenities,

enhancements, and choices coming on line. It is only a matter of time, say

boosters, until China eclipses the film market in the U.S. (Zhao Jun 201 1).

At the same time, China has been investing in American multiplexes,

with the Wanda group's stake in AMC the most visible example (Vanderhoel

2012). At $2.6 billion, this was then the biggest Chinese purchase of a U.S.

corporation, and seemed to mark a reversal of Hollywood's "eastward

push." It also makes Wanda the second largest cinema circuit in the

13 The analogy with Manifest Destiny is also made in Matuszak 2009.

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world. It is a step toward the convergence and interdependency of China

and Hollywood, as Stephen Cremin (2013) writes: "While the U.S. studios

become more dependent on the China market - which is on track to become

the world's largest by the end of the decade - the China film market is also

dependent on Hollywood films to maintain its extraordinary growth."

Many critics and academics in China dismiss China-cization as nationalist

hubris that flogs marketization, centralization, and consolidation. Reducing

globalization to Chinese domestication ignores worsening inequalities,

limited accessio basic needs, repression, and growing poverty. The concept

of China-cization arose, significantly, just before the 201 1 Lunar New Year,

when the biggest mass migration on the planet occurs annually on China's

clogged railways. The people going home are mostly migrant workers -

some 130 million people - who stoke the economic engines of Chinese

cities the remaining fifty weeks of the year. Without migrant workers, the

economies of Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and many other

cities would collapse. While acknowledging China's continuing economic

rise and noting weakness in both the U.S. and the EU, commentators on

China-cization express some caution, not just lust for power, wealth, and

aggrandizement.

China-cization includes Hollywood players courting the China film

market. For some years now, Hollywood studios have expanded into

local language production (India, Spain, France, China, etc.), with mixed

results. Stan Lee, creator of Spiderman, is reportedly drafting a superhero

franchise with mainland partners that will resonate with Chinese audiences.

Twentieth Century Fox has been active, promoting the Chinese Film

Development award, which has contributed to the production and sale of

commercial Chinese movies such as Hot Summer Days (Chuancheng relian

re la la, 2009) and The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman (Dao jian xiao,

2010). This appears to be a push into local language production, followed by

lobbying for awards; both steps are taken to lodge Hollywood securely into

China's film establishment. According to the president of Fox International

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Productions, there is no fear of state interference in creative decisions: "Our

tastes and instincts of what we want to achieve matched that of SARFT"

(State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, now SAPPRFT, State

Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) (Tsui 201 1).

Production house Legendary Entertainment, affiliated with Warner Bros.,

has a deal with Huayi Brothers Media (Beijing) to make English-language

films and television shows that can screen around the world (Anon. 201 1 b).

Said Kelvin Wu, head of Legendary East:

We will produce tentpole, event-style movies, with superheroes and appeal to fanboys. We think the China market is wide open to this kind of thing. Sometimes it is quite hard for Hollywood companies to lock into this kind of environment. We are not ask- ing for more Hollywood movies to be imported into China. We are here to make coproductions with our Chinese partner [Huayi Media] and make Chinese movies. We will be making films based on Chinese culture, mythology, but ones that can draw the atten- tion of a global audience, (in Frater 201 1)

DreamWorks is opening a studio in Shanghai to make animated

coproductions, among them Kung Fu Panda 3. Oriental DreamWorks, as it

is called, will capitalize on China's opening market (in creative production

and consumption) and ride the vagaries of marketization. Kung Fu Panda

3 as an official coproduction is not likely to be handled like Panda 2, which

had to share earnings with state policy pictures. Jeffrey Katzenberg uses

the discourse of courtship when he says, "China ismy lover!" He compares

his passion for China now with his ardent African feelings when Disney, the

studio he oversaw at the time, was making The Lion King (Du Simeng 201 3).

Hollywood and American interest in China is piqued, and will continue to

intensify, to China's benefit and perhaps America's too.

Conclusion

Contradictions and opportunities persist in China's integration with global

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media. "Global media," however, is an abstraction bound to change as

Chinese players increasingly join the game. Various parties - corporations,

government, investors, craftsmen, packagers, publicists - are intent on

reaping the rewards of marketization, efficiency, and privatization, while

acknowledging the fact of state control, both structural and cultural.

Changes and breaking developments are happening all the time: in August

2013, for example, payment to MPAA members for Hollywood blockbusters

screened in China was delayed because of a trade dispute over a new

luxury tax of 2%; CFG was intent on subtracting this from Hollywood's

newly signed split of 25%, a figure Xi Jinping and Joe Biden agreed on in

February 2012; before this, Hollywood's share hovered around 15%.

Michael Dunne, a writer on China's auto industry, writes that China

is "the house at this casino. You may enter and stay on our terms. If you

choose to leave then you bear the consequences" (Dunne 201 1). He recalls

the early stages of China's market reforms. Before viable partnerships were

set up, Chinese officials saw foreign companies as mere tools to shore up

domestic industry. Over the last two decades, however, this disdainful

attitude shifted. Shanghai GM forged a new, lucrative market for Buicks

by catering to the newly rich and state officials, who like plush, spacious

interiors and round shapes in their cars - an apt description, perhaps,

for their movie tastes as well. What we might dub "Buick blockbusters"

describes films such as Transformers, Zhang Yimou's Flowers of War (starring

Christian Bale), and perhaps Jiang Wen's satire Let the Bullets Fly. Plush,

spacious, and rounded also describes Tiny Times and even Lost in Thailand.

China's new transnational cinema entails seizing commercial incentives

with little risk of the market getting out of control. It may also mean the

^nationalization, China-cization, and even "hypernationalization" of

Chinese cinema, not the weakening of national formations and policies

that one might expect in the age of global markets and trends.

In theory, marketization of cultural industries promotes the wider

exchange of ideas, giving rise to expectations for economic, social, and

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cultural freedom. Marketization may foster internationalization, which

ushers into China new ways to identify and serve people's needs. At

its best, it lets commerce thrive and flow unhindered and assists in the

establishment of international standards and best practices. Global

networks and international service provision might make the world smaller,

but it also introduces more products, innovation, and ideas (Ravich 1997).

Marketization already has brought economic prosperity to China, as well

as new modes of production and consumption. Marketization in China has

also attracted Hollywood studios, talent, and technology (Brodesser-Akner

2012; Kung 2012), and it promises a lot for a socialist, one-party system:

a spectacular economic rise, growing incomes, new opportunities and

lifestyles, and a wider range of consumer choice, as well as diversifying

the way cultural products, including information and entertainment, are

marketed and delivered. Meanwhile, China's distribution system remains

tightly regulated and controlled: film censorship is strict, and guidelines for

compliance are still vague. Officials continue to have a critical presence in

marketization. There is a sense that the market is not only monitored by,

but belongs to the Party and the state. The role of the state is the West's

stumbling block, with its default neoliberalist setting, seeking marketplace

answers to questions of responsibility, accountability, and public interest.

When China's marketization works, it works on behalf of the Party and

the state; it redefines and reinforces the authority of the Party, through

information, entertainment, and technology. The state is not always an

overbearing Big Brother looking down in judgment. With marketization,

the market says "serve the people," but "the people" are circumscribed

by an elite political class. Like Murdoch, Iger, and Katzenberg, these

elites are motivated by profit and market control - ever vigilant, savvy to

contemporary information and communication.

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Glossary

Chen Daoming Chen Kaige léflffiC Cheng Long (Jackie Chan) dapian Feng Xiaogang /SS/JXH|J Ge You

guo ® GuoJingming Han Sanping hongyang zhuxuanlü, 3A1§±ÍÈÍ$ ,

jianchi duoyanghua Huanqiu shibao Jiang Wen Li Lianjie (Jet Li) Li Ming (Leon Lai) Liu Dehua (Andy Lau) WiBM qiu $ quanguohua ^läHit quanqiuhua it shangye moshi Ä shangye zhuliu dapian ffiHÍ xiejin mm Xu Zheng Yu Benzheng Ť^IE Zhang Yimou 5R8IS Zhang Ziyi Zhao Wei 3838 Zhen Zidan (Donnie Yen) SiŤfl- zhu xuanlü Î.W.W

Filmography

Avatar (2009).

Chi bi ^8 (Battle of Red Cliff, 2008-2009). Dir. John Woo ^ Jp

Chongqing tanpan ÄffiMWI (Chongqing negotiation, 1993). Dir. Li Qiankuan Xiao Guiyun Nifi®, and Zhang Yifei 5IIŠ3É

Ci ling $!lřS (Treasure hunters, 2009). Dir. Zhu Yanping 7^ii¥

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Da jinjun-dazhan Ning Hu Hang (Great battle in Ning Hu Hang, 1999). Dir. He Xiaojiang ÍP'MI and Shi Wei

Da xiao jiang hu (Just call me nobody, 2010). Dir. Zhu Yanping

Dao jianxiao (The butcher, the chef and the swordsman, 2010). Dir. Wuershan ,^/F#

Du Lala shengzhi ji (Go Lala go, 2010). Dir. Xu Jinglei í&iS©

Feichang wanmei (Sophie's revenge, 2009). Dir. Jin Yimeng áifiScfll

Fengkuang de shitou îïffiftfJïîâl (Crazy stone, 2006). Dir. Ning Hao pSfê

Guoge IH®: (National anthem, 1999). Dir. Wu Ziniu

The Fugitive (1993)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (201 1)

Heng kong chushi (Roaring across the horizon, 1999). Dir. Chen Guoxing RUSU

Ji jie hao (Assembly, 2009). Dir. Feng Xiaogang ),f

Jian dang weiye lÈMfêM (Beginning of the great revival, 2011). Dir. Han Sanping and Huang Jianxin îtît S/í

Jianguo daye (Founding of the republic, 2009). Dir. Han Sanping and Huang Jianxin H®Slf

Jinling shisan chai árPS+.=.fK (Flowers of war, 2012). Dir. Zhang Yimou 3S mm

Jinsha shui pai átŽ^TKJá (The long march, 1994). Dir. Zhai Junjie SUS#*

Kongzi: Juezhan chunqiu ?Lť : ¿WBclfík (Confucius, 2010). Dir. Hu Mei

Kung Fu Panda 2 (201 1)

The Lion King (1994)

Man cheng jin dai huangjin jia /TSMSftSftái? (Curse of the golden flower, 2006). Dir. Zhang Yimou 3SSIS

Modern Chinese Literature and Culture • 233

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Mao Zedong yu Sinuo (Mao Zedong and Edgar Snow, 2001). Dir. Song Jiangbo 7fc/I/Ā and Wang Xuexin jE^PIIr

Mo gong Sl£ (A battle of wits, 2006). Dir. Jacob Cheung SRŽtc

Pirates of the Caribbean (2003-201 1). Dir. Gore Verbinksi and Rob Marshall

Quancheng relian re la la (Hot summer days, 2009). Dir. Xia Yongkang Ä&JR and Chen Guohui SHiW

Rang zidan fei HŤSiflš (Let the bullets fly, 2010). Dir. Jiang Wen üÄ

Ren zai jiong tu ÀÍElâiâ (Lost on journey, 2010). Dir. Ye Waiming

Ren zai jiong tu zhi Tai jiong ÀH0iÉá:^0 (Lost in Thailand, 2012). Dir. Xu Zheng í^dlí

Sanqiang pai'an jingqi zzttftjŘSffř (A simple noodle story, 2009). Dir. Zhang Yimou 5RŠISÍ

Se y/e ÊãK (Lust, caution, 2007). Dir. Ang Lee

Shang cheng (Confession of pain, 2006). Dir. Andrew Lau and Alan Mak

Shengsi jueze (Fatal decision, 2000). Dir. Yu Benzheng ť^IE

Shilian sanshisan tian ^8133^ (Love is not blind, 2011). Dir. Teng Huatao mmm

Shimian maifu (House of flying daggers, 2004). Dir. Zhang Yimou mmm

Song jia huangchao 5^11 SI (The Soong sisters, 1997). Dir. Mabel Cheung SR ĪSI#

Tangshan da dizhen filili ^iĚJÍt (Aftershock, 2010). Dir. Feng Xiaogang M /jxHij

The Smurfs (2011)

Speed (1994)

Titanic (1997)

Tou ming zhuang (The warlords, 2007). Dir. Peter Chan

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon (201 1)

True Lies (1994)

Wohu canglong B&jËSctl (Crouching tiger, hidden dragon, 2000). Dir. Ang Lee $£

Wu ji MS (The promise, 2005). Dir. Chen Kaige

Xi feng lie H®?!! (Wind blast, 2010). Dir. Gao Qunshu

Xiao shidai 'MS ft (Tiny times 1.0, 2013). Dir. Guo Jingming

Xiaoshidai 2: Qing mu shidai 'MNfft2: ItTfcENfft (Tiny times 2.0, 2013). Dir. Guo Jingming fPÏ&Wl

Yang Shanzhou 1IHÍŽHI (Yang Shanzhou, 2011). Dir. Dong Ling

Yapian zhanzheng (The Opium War, 1997). Dir. Xie Jin I

Yeyan (The banquet, 2006). Dir. Feng Xiaogang S'hH'J

Yingxiong 3?S| (Hero, 2002). Dir. Zhang Yimou 3SSÍS

Yunshui yao StKíS (The knot, 2006). Dir. Yin Li Ftl

Zhang Side 5R® ÍÜ (Zhang Side, 2004). Dir. Yin Li FtJ

Zhi women zhong jiang shiqu de qingchun ïfcîfcffl&Ufëiffi (ft ft# (So young, 2013). Dir. Zhao Weittft

Zhou Enlai J3iS5fE (Zhou Enlai, 1992). Dir. Ding Yinnan TRÍĚ

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