Have young Chinese stopped going to the cinema?

China's once-booming movie box office has begun to crumble. Total revenue from movie ticket sales in the country this year is down a whopping 22% compared to last year. The results represent a dramatic decline from the strong post-COVID recovery that China's film market achieved in 2023, when revenues rose 83% to end the year at $7.73 billion. This year is off to a great start for the Chinese industry, with grosses during the Lunar New Year holiday week topping $1.1 billion, led by local blockbusters Yolo ($479.6 million) and Pegasus 2 ($468.9 million). But a prolonged period of inactivity throughout the summer has left Beijing's film industry wringing its hands, wondering whether a lasting shift in the market may be afoot. Filmmakers and analysts suggest that a number of overlapping factors are behind the earnings collapse, but the truth is that no one fully knows what went wrong.

“I recently read a local research report that the average age of Chinese moviegoers has decreased
from 22 to 26,” says Chinese author Jia Zhangke, whose latest feature film Caught by the Tides premiered to critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in May. “Our younger generations
I just don't go to the cinema anymore. We have to ask ourselves: what happened and where?
Are these people gone?'”

Throughout the West, the movie business has traditionally been considered recession-proof. Even during economic downturns, people need entertainment, and the cost of a movie ticket is a small enough discretionary item that most consumers can always afford it. There are worrying signs that this logic does not apply in China, according to industry insiders. For at least the past year, China's economy has been stuck in its most significant recession in more than a decade, while a slumping housing market and pessimistic consumer sentiment curb growth. The crisis has been particularly hard for young people. China's National Bureau of Statistics stopped reporting youth unemployment data in June 2023 after the rate hit a record high of 21.3%. Earlier this year the country began issuing a new, more favorable tool for measuring unemployment, but even with this parameter, the unemployment rate among young people – aged 16 to 24 – rose to over 17% in July.

“There is widespread sentiment on social media about job insecurity, particularly among
recent graduates and mid-career audiences,” says James Li, co-founder of the Beijing-based film
market research company Fanink. “As a result of all this, people are holding onto their wallets.”

Li continues: “In our recent qualitative research among the Gen Z population in China,
younger people have shown a clear tendency to aspire to stability in life, as demonstrated by the record number of applicants for public jobs in 2024 [over 3 million]. They don't seem to be that ambitious
or adventurous like previous generations. When it comes to movies, they report that they don't want to take the risk of spending time and money to see a movie that doesn't meet their expectations. In fact, many
complain that online marketing of films is becoming more widespread
misleading.”

Rance Pow, president of Asian box office consultancy Artisan Gateway, says his company expects
China's box office downturn will worsen before the end of the year. The company forecasts the box office
ending the year at $5.69 billion, down from $7.81 billion – a 27% decline for the year
and a 38% decline from the pre-pandemic peak of $9.2 billion in 2019. Pow adds that the popularity of mobile video and gaming – “the continued rise of short-form video platforms like Douyin, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu ” – contributed to detracting from the market. charm of cinema. According to Pow, the Paris Summer Olympic Games, hugely popular in China, also forced local audiences to watch TV during what is usually a peak window.

Overall, Hollywood appears to have completely abandoned its once bullish stance on China. And not without reason: in the first 11 months of this year, US film earnings totaled $797.3 million – still a significant sum, but down 68% from $2.5 billion sales in the same period in 2019. During the pandemic, Chinese film regulators have dramatically reduced the number of U.S. releases in the country (the number of imported American films recovered in 2023, but so far this year they have been only 29 US titles distributed compared to 35 in the same period last year). The worsening geopolitical relations between Washington and Beijing have also weighed on popular perceptions of US entertainment products.

Disappointment at the Chinese box office

The production values ​​of Chinese films, meanwhile, have risen to a level almost on par with Hollywood, giving consumers the easy option to enjoy cinematic entertainment in their own language and culture rather than a foreign one. The only US blockbusters to do well in China this year, not surprisingly, were creature feature films – Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ($132.2 million), Romulus alien ($110.2 million) and Venom: The Last Dance ($72 million and counting) — one of the few genres the Beijing industry has yet to master, largely due to censorship constraints.

Overall, however, Beijing regulators' successful efforts to subtly suppress American film product have added to the overall market crisis, while harming Chinese exhibitors.

“If China had opened up a little more to imported production, this would at least give more vitality and abundance to the supply side,” explains Jia. “But unfortunately this is not happening. China is a country with 80,000 screens – we need more titles from around the world to fill them. Chinese films must improve through more exchanges with the outside world, and viewers deserve more choices.”

Leave a Comment

url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url url