Marketization, Hollywood, Global China

By Darrell William Davis


Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 26, no. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 193-241


This work analyzes progress and paradoxes of China’s transition from socialist propaganda to commercial forms of film enterprise and marketing. Maintaining a signal difference between market and “marketization,” the essay probes China’s aim to boost growth, diversity and state cultural consolidation. Market mechanisms unleashed in China’s cinema bring fantastic revenues, rewards and industry expansion, yet remain subject to rules that “serve the people,” stipulated by officials, party, and domestic industry. Marketization is not a mid-point enroute to a capitalist destiny, but strategic exercise of market incentives, while managing risk. China does not wish to replace Hollywood, but adapt and converge its system with Hollywood’s global reach..