Prelude: Xu Jinglei and the “Single Feature Permit” Policy

In March 2002, Xu Jinglei, a 1997 graduate from the Acting Department of the Beijing Film Academy and best known in the film circle for her consecutive roles of the city girl trapped in triangle love affairs in Dazzling (d. Li Xin, 2001), Spring Subway (d. Zhang Yibai, 2001), and I Love You (d. Zhang Yuan, 2003), went to the National Film Bureau to register her directorial debut Me and My Dad. To her great surprise, Xu learned that she no longer needed to secure a banner from one of the 42 state-owned studios to get her film made or released. Instead, as the legal representative of her own business, Beijing Yinian Cultural Development Company, she could apply to obtain a “Single Feature Permit,” which would grant her the right to make and release the film on her own. According to the newly revised “Regulatory Rules of Film,” which was issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) , China’s top body overseeing all media industries, and signed by the then Premiere Zhu Rongji, any private or state-owned enterprise, as long as it meets certain requirement, is allowed to make and release films on its own. In other words, the revised regulation has significantly lowered the access barriers to filmmaking, making it no longer a privilege to state-owned studios. “Me and My Dad is the first [approved] independent film in China,” recalls Xu Jinglei in her interview with the author, “I had no idea at all about independent filmmaking in China. When I went to see the Film Bureau with the screenplay, I was told that, according to the regulation just issued on the first day of February, my company itself is qualified to make films… To a large extent, I feel I should thank the Film Bureau…I didn’t know the regulation until they advised me.”

Toward a Marketplace Model in Film Policymaking

The “Single Feature Permit” policy was not the only film-related reform that was implemented in the past several years. As China officially became a member of the World Trade Organization on the first day of 2002, the pressure to reform the moribund state-owned studio system and to fundamentally change the old model of film production, distribution and exhibition has dramatically increased. Warned by the sharp decline of theater attendance and the annual output of film in the late 1990s and sensing the imminent “threat” from Hollywood, Chinese film authorities and industry insiders came to realize that marketization or “liberalization” might be the only antidote against the grave situation of Chinese cinema.  To build a market-driven film industry and de-politicize the role of film in society has been the guiding principle behind the execution of a series of reform policies introduced since 2002, among which the “Single Feature Permit” plays only a minor role.  

From a broader point of view, prior to China’s entry into the WTO, in face of the challenge posed by the global trend of media consolidations that have concentrated power in a handful of transnational corporations, the Chinese media industry re-consolidated its otherwise disintegrated media entities and formed six large film groups or conglomerates that resemble the GE-owned NBC Universal or Viacom-owned Paramount. SARFT explicitly sanctioned the move to conglomeration by publishing “Basic Opinions on Encouraging the Establishment of Film Groups” in early 2001. The “Basic Opinions” stated that the film industry would form the system of six film groups in China including the “big three” of Beijing, Shanghai, Changchun, as well as Zhujiang, Xian, and E’mei. The main objective of these merges, of course, was to get China ready to compete with multinational corporations once its film and media market opens wider to the outside world (China will allow 40-50 foreign films to be theatrically released yearly starting 2006).