2025-12-09
9 分钟The Economist.
Hi, I'm Sarah Wu, co-host of Drum Tower, our podcast about China.
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Artsy film critics are unlikely to be impressed by China's micro-dramas.
Even so,
the roughly two-minute episodes which cram soap opera plots into a short video format are wildly popular.
Watched almost exclusively on mobile devices,
viewers can scroll mindlessly through episodes as they would clips on TikTok.
Revenue in China from micro-dramas is projected to nearly double this year to 90 billion yuan,
$12.7 billion, exceeding sales of cinema tickets.
Chinese studios shot 40,000 of them in the first eight months of the year.
A typical series has 90 episodes.
The micro-drama craze is but one example of the creative surge underway in China.
Earlier this year, Nu Jia Tu, produced by Chinese Studio,
became the best performing animated film of all time at the worldwide box office.
Black Myth Wu Kong, a video game, similarly captivated players when it was released a year ago.
This presents a quandary for the Communist Party,
which is waking up to the value of exporting Chinese culture abroad but wary of unshackling artistic types from tight censorship.