How Chinese moviegoers created a booming box office
REPORT
4 Jun 2024
How Chinese moviegoers created a booming box office

While fewer people around the world are going to cinemas to catch the latest film releases, moviegoing is booming in China. This shift comes with higher box office numbers, growing appreciation for local cinema, and a decline in Hollywood’s decades-long foothold in the international market.

Katherine Song

Katherine Song, a Chinese film curator and critic, has been leading the Film Club of the Royal Asiatic Society in China (RAS) since 2019. During her tenure, she has curated more than fifty award-winning and independent features for the Shanghai international community, covering topics such as historical background, regional dynamics, economic shifts, and social challenges. Renowned as an authoritative film critic, she systematically introduces auteurs, actors, and cinematographers to her audiences. Her article commemorating the prominent Chinese Director Chen Jialin was published in RAS China Journal 2023.

Yaling Jiang

Yaling Jiang is the founder of research and strategy consultancy ApertureChina and the consumer newsletter Following the Yuan. A part-time reporter, Jiang specialises in providing qualitative research, insights, and strategy services for premium overseas brands and financial institutions in the Chinese consumer market. She has also collaborated with various research firms.

Grace Mou

Grace Mou (Yu Mou) is a highly creative marketing evangelist with more than 15 years of professional experience in China and Asia, serving international brands worldwide. At present, she is a trendspotter, forecaster, and brand strategist focusing on premium and luxury brands for lifestyle, culture, technology, sustainability, etc.

She started as an English teacher but has moved on to interdisciplinary areas, editing and translating architecture monographs and serving patrons in a vegetarian bistro while working in international marketing agencies, serving local and international brands on insights, design, and strategy. She is now based in Shanghai, China.

In her words, “My past years of ‘mass’ mutation have empowered me to see clarity in complexity with a savvy sense of culture and trends, expanding my horizon and deepening my thinking to help brands defy the odds in this ever-changing business world.”