As the fanfares and fireworks of the Centennial celebrations of Chinese cinema are behind us, it becomes increasingly clear that reflections on the state of Chinese cinema in an increasingly globalized context and the re/writing of the histories of Chinese cinema will be the most important legacies left over by the centenaries.
There is nothing new about Chinese cinema being somewhat “shaped” or “altered” by the force of globalization. After all, despite the fact that some film historians in China can trace the “origin” of Chinese cinema to the Han dynasty (221B.C.-220A.D.) when the use of the trotting horse lamp and paper shadow play was documented, modern cinema as a Western invention came to China almost 10 years before the first Chinese film, Dingjun Mountain (1905), was made, and the first group of Western flickers were shown in Shanghai, the most globalized metropolis in China. Since the first days of cinema’s “birth” at the Grand Café in Paris, globalization has always been one of the major forces that drive the development of cinema. In the heyday of Chinese cinema’s first golden era from the early 1920s to the later 1930s, almost all major Hollywood studios, Warner’s, MGM, Universal, Paramount, and Twentieth Century Fox, had their regional offices in Shanghai. To Hollywood, the China market was an integral part of its global mapping. It was commonly accepted that 1933 was the “Year of Chinese Cinema,” since that year saw the release of 92 feature-length Chinese films. Considering the fact that a total of 431 foreign films were imported to China (out of which 353 were from Hollywood) in the same year, however, one might be not so easily settled with such a claim.
What sets the current wave of globalization apart for Chinese cinema is manifold. First and foremost, China’s enthusiasm for being a “normal” member of the world community and its successful entry into the WTO at the turn of the century seems to suggest that globalization is something welcomed and celebrated wholeheartedly in China. But on the other hand, there is also a growing anxiety within the Chinese bureaucracy, especially within the cultural sector, that the Chinese market needs to be protected in order not to be overwhelmed by the sudden influx of multinational corporations. This conflicting attitude toward globalization is well reflected in the film industry of China. Facing the challenge of dwindling government subsidies and lackluster box office for domestic films, the state-owned film studios across the nation are eager to draw foreign capital and talents, hoping to use outside forces to reinvigorate the ailing system and attract the Chinese audience to the cinema again. However, the Chinese film authority is well aware that globalization functions very much like a double-edged sword that will likely threaten the very existence of the state-controlled film system.
