Considered one of China’s most pleasant living locations, Qingdao might in the near future be referred to as ‘Chinawood’. Wang Jianlin, the nation’s wealthiest man, has chosen the coastal city as the location for a new film studio complex, with a monstrous budget of 30 billion CNY. The project is officially going by the name of ‘Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis’ and is expected to open in 2017, covering a surface of no less than five hundred hectares (including hotel resorts, restaurants, and more) and with an expectation of producing at least a hundred films annually. Present at the announcement on 22 September were a bunch of Hollywood A-listers including Leonardo DiCaprio , Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and John Travolta, and Chinese top actors Zhang Ziyi, Jet Li, Tony Leung, and Donnie Yen. Big U.S. executives such as Harvey Weinstein (Weinstein Co.) and Rob Friedman (Lionsgate) also attended.

Wang Jianlin is known in China primarily as the chairman of property developer Dalian Wanda Group  – famous for the many Wanda Plaza shopping malls present in every Chinese urban area. At the announcement ceremony, China Film Association Chairman Li Qiankuan described the company as “a leading private enterprise and creator of China’s film history.” He went on to other grandiose statements saying that the Qingdao initiative is an “unprecedented project that will create history” and focused on the crucial ties with the U.S. industry by pointing out that “the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will support Wanda in hosting Qingdao International Film Festival.”

The Wanda Group has indicated that they have preliminary agreements to shoot around thirty foreign films in Qingdao each year. Locally they hope to work with over 50 Chinese production companies, which should result in an output of at least 100 domestic films and TV shows annually.

A project of this size evidently aims itself at international markets, which might mean that the largest challenge for Wang lies in the ability to get past China’s complex bureaucracy and strict censorship policies, which are continuing to restrain local creative minds. The impossibility to represent certain topics within the country may cause many potential international clients and co-operators to hold back. The government greatly subsidizes the domestic film industry , with new screens opening daily throughout the country, and with hopes that the international export will improve the nation’s image to the outside world; but it obviously poses the problem of authorities controlling the images’ content. Current topics prone to censorship range from sex, drugs, and religion, to science fiction and politics, all of which are abundant in Hollywood cinema.

Recent history has shown that most Chinese film productions and co-productions aimed at international audiences rarely succeed. Wang has defended himself stating that, considering China’s 1.3 billion people population, “the global film industry will recognise that the sooner you partner with China, the sooner you make more money.”However, as Variety recently analysed in an article on 30 August 2013, despite the high volume of Chinese film productions, few of them know any success outside of their home country and fail to gather both revenue and critical attention. Albert Lee, CEO of Emperor Motion Pictures in Hong Kong, is quoted as saying “China’s companies have no idea about international sales. That’s because they are so strongly focused on their home market.” The article follows this statement by noting that currently, Chinese filmmakers do not seem preoccupied with expanding their knowledge outside of the domestic territory, as it does not offer much profit. Apart from overcoming the issues mentioned earlier, it therefore seems like Wang’s project also needs the right teams on board to rise above this and gain more insight into international movie marketing, if it really wants to profile itself as a global player from the outset.

In the grandiosity of Wang’s plans, we also should not forget that China is hardly lacking film studios  – many studios remain unused due to their oversupply – and that the Qingdao project, although likely to be profitable, might not have the creative success it is hoping for. Wang will need the firm agreements he’s alluded to in order to ensure that the project will attract the necessary partners.

China vs. Hollywood today

Much is happening in today’s Chinese film market. It is second in the world only to the U.S., and box office receipts last year made for a total of 17 billion CNY. Considering the 30 percent increase compared to the year before, it seems unlikely that the market will lose momentum any time soon.

March 2014 will see the first US China Film & TV Industry (UCFTI) Expo in Los Angeles , indicating once more that Hollywood has caught on to the new global player’s importance and that both parties are keen on increasing the strength of the relations between their respective film industries. UCFTI CEO Bianca Chen has illustrated their mutual benefit in saying that China needs Hollywood’s experience and technologies, while Hollywood looks for insight into marketing to Chinese audiences.

Add to this the strong China – U.S. ties of the Qingdao project, and last year’s announcement of a film-making centre near Tianjin focused on co-productions between both countries (an initiative of studio boss Bruno Wu with help from the Binhai New Area government), and it becomes apparent that the world’s two biggest cinema industries are making an effort to reach out to one another.

The U.S. film industry has, however, had plenty of difficulties dealing with China in the past. Chinese domestic box office sales are skyrocketing, yet foreign films are stumped by the many restraints, policies, and lack of knowledge about the market. China additionally limits the number of foreign film releases and schedules blackout periods in which new Hollywood productions cannot be released. Not too long ago, China decided to levy a 2 percent value-added tax on U.S. films, causing a row between the two countries’ film industries. China Film Group ended up stopping payment to the American studios. The spat was eventually resolved and the Chinese authorities agreed to pay the full box-office revenues, which made up for several millions of dollars.

According to Variety, China is also beating Hollywood at its own game: offering increasingly more nicely polished genre films and expanding cinema’s popularity to the many smaller cities in the country, now good for 34 percent of national ticket sales.

Additionally, despite the many restricting policies, things are looking up. More contemporary, suburban themes and an increase of production have ensured that young Chinese filmmakers today can take a few more liberties and are able to get more flexible regulations for their work, leading to an expansion in genres and a slight easing in censorship. Currently there’s a surprising boom in the romcom genre, and a high number of female Chinese film directors, especially compared to other countries.

To evaluate the future relevance of the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis, we should therefore consider interests and agendas of both major players – the U.S. and China. In the Guardian’s news article on the new project (23/09/2013), correspondent Jonathan Kaiman notes: “It’s a uniquely Chinese equation: take a government that’s increasingly obsessed with its image abroad, add a wildly ambitious property tycoon, and you get a business announcement so elaborate that Leonardo DiCaprio will fly halfway across the world to bear witness to it.”