2025-07-16
9 分钟NPR. This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Adrian Ma.
Americans love their movies.
Historically, no country can even approach the amount Americans spend at the box office each year.
That is until China came along.
The U.S. and Chinese film industries actually have a long, intertwined history.
Today on the show,
we continue our week-long look at the movie biz with a tale that melds art,
commerce, and geopolitics.
A three-act saga about the symbiotic and,
at times, tumultuous relationship between Hollywood and China.
Act one, China goes to the movies.
The romance between Hollywood and China begins way back in the early 1900s, the silent movie era.
The foundation of early Chinese film industry was actually beautified,
emulating the American-style studio model.
That's Ying Zhu, a professor at Columbia University and author of the book Hollywood in China.
Although movies were being made in Shanghai,
Ying says audiences were most drawn to the American imports,
which tended to be flashier and more sophisticated.
But this early romance with Hollywood came to an abrupt end in 1950.