Judging by the half a billion dollars hoovered up by Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid over Chinese new year, the country’s film industry doesn’t look much in need of a helping hand. Unrulier, fishier-tailed and more original than is the average for mainstream Chinese fare, it has been rewarded by becoming the country’s most successful film, in yet another significant notch towards the biggest growth spurt cinema has ever seen. But even though Chinese films took a mighty 62% of the market in 2015, the government just wants to be sure: last week, it announced a new tax rebate to cinemas that ensure that homegrown films take more than two-thirds of total box office.
This new layer of protectionism surely makes Chinese cinema the most ringfenced in the world, short of complete embargos on western films like in Iran. The 62% figure may sound impressive – and it has not dipped below 50% since 2012. But foreign competition is restricted to 34 imports a year under a strictly policed quota, and the pond is made roomier for big indigenous fish such as The Mermaid by handily timed blackouts on Hollywood releases over the summer and during the new year (though Chow’s film mauled the market so resoundingly it was probably a rare success-on-merit). The previous box-office champ – last year’s striking, Men In Black-influenced wuxia Monster Hunt – only claimed the title under artificially favourable circumstances: it was given a generous 60-day runout with no Hollywood rivals in sight.
The Communist government’s latest piece of helicopter-parenting for the film industry should be cautiously welcomed. To qualify for the rebate, cinemas must have a clean regulatory bill of health, with no record of box office fraud. Padding figures with complimentary tickets, or made up schedules of supposedly chock-a-block 2am screenings as Monster Hunt and Ip Man 3 are alleged to have done, probably isn’t what the government had in mind when it said support local films. Except for the fact that the government was caught doing something very similar last August to boost takings for Communist puff piece Hundred Regiments Offensive. This kind of hustle has become an embarrassment for an industry intent on seeking global validation – and the new measure is a step in the right direction.
Fundamentally, the rebate – 50% off on a 5% tax levied on ticket sales – is rethinking and further incentivising a screen quota that, on paper, already existed. In 2008, SARFT, the state film administrator, demanded that two-thirds of movies shown in the country be domestic. This measure was never enforced, and was soon superceded by the import quota. The new announcement focuses on box office rather than screen time. But it’s good to see a return to a more positive approach; one that, unlike the import “great wall” and the blackouts, doesn’t actively exclude the competition so much as seek to provide a nurturing space for local talent. The fact that Hollywood interlopers, with their megabudget swagger and marketing muscle, still achieve nearly 40% of the market despite the hurdles they have to jump shows that the stripling Chinese industry needs protecting. Plenty of countries – France, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, Spain – practice screen quotas in various forms for the same reason.
But once such a quota has been put into place, the spotlight quickly falls on the films it’s trying to help. Russia has recently been debating how to safeguard its national cinema, but there’s a reason its stuttering industry has struggled to a hold market share at 15%. CGI-heavy Hollywood knockoffs and the occasional historic epic with a heavy state-approved aftertaste, such as 2013’s Stalingrad, isn’t a strong enough roster in the long-term. There needs to be something substantial for a quota to protect, or a viable plan to start producing such films. That’s the predicament that Britain – the first country, in 1927, to shield its film-makers – found itself in a decade later, when it was flooded in the “quota quickies” and many stiff stage-to-screen transfers pumped out to fill the gap. Thatcher finally scrapped the restrictions in 1983, allowing Hollywood a free hand again. A revived quota might seem like a tempting pick-me-up for the modern-day British industry, but you’ve got to wonder what there’d be left to safeguard once you removed the likes of Harry Potter, James Bond and other transatlantic squatters masquerading as homegrown. (Such co-productions are, incidentally, counted by the BFI when they calculate domestic film share – 27% in 2014.)
The Chinese industry is probably just at the point where getting serious about a screen quota is worthwhile. From Monster Hunt to buddy-comedy sequel, Lost in Hong Kong and meta-superhero spoof Jian Bing Man, there was enough inventiveness and local chutzpah to suggest that homegrown film-makers were moving out from both Hollywood’s shadow and that of the dreadedly dull Chinese-heritage blockbuster. But this surge is probably still delicate enough to still warrant an umbrella – the kind of thing South Korea employed in the early noughties to become the Asian powerhouse it remains today.
Shooting for a consistent 66% local share, though, does strike me as possibly over-reaching (and totally unrealistic were it not helped by the import restrictions). Possibly China has a serious case of India envy, the country that still rides high with a 90% hold on its own box office with no kind of formal state help whatsover. One wiggle of Shah Rukh Khan’s hips will tell the Chinese all they to know about an eternal love affair with an unshakeably rooted film culture.
