"Professor Curtin has woven solid research and interesting tales into a compelling analysis of cultural geography that will make an important contribution to the literature of international communication."—Chin-Chuan Lee, City University of Hong Kong

"In this timely and fascinating examination of the screen industries of 'Global China', Michael Curtin draws on in-depth interviews with key industry players to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the extraordinary rise of film and television industries across Chinese-speaking Asia. In so doing he provides a compelling account of how these media industries represent a powerful alternative path of media globalization to that of the West. This will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the dynamics and complexities of globalized media production. But more than this, his deployment of the concept of 'media capital' and his stress on the particularities of culture, creativity and location offer important political-economic and institutional underpinnings for a more rigorous approach to understanding wider patterns of cultural globalization."—John Tomlinson, author of Globalization and Culture

"This is one of the best books I've encountered. Curtin's scholarship is superior and his approach is highly innovative. Playing to World's Largest Audience is a pioneering work in understanding globalization and Chinese media. It will have major impact in numerous fields."—Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, author of Taiwan Film Directors and East Asian Screen Industries

Michael Curtin is Professor of Communication Arts and Director of Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is also the author of Media Capital: The Cultural Geography of Globalization and Redeeming the Wasteland: Television Documentary and Cold War Politics.

Playing to the World's Biggest Audience

The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV By Michael Curtin

University of California Press

Copyright © 2007 The Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-25134-2

Contents

Acknowledgments.................................................................................ixIntroduction: Media Capital in Chinese Film and Television......................................11. The Pan-Chinese Studio System and Capitalist Paternalism.....................................292. Independent Studios and the Golden Age of Hong Kong Cinema...................................473. Hyperproduction Erodes Overseas Circulation..................................................684. Hollywood Takes Charge in Taiwan.............................................................855. The Globalization of Hong Kong Television....................................................1096. Strange Bedfellows in Cross-Strait Drama Production..........................................1337. Market Niches and Expanding Aspirations in Taiwan............................................1518. Singapore: From State Paternalism to Regional Media Hub......................................1769. Reterritorializing Star TV in the PRC........................................................19210. Global Satellites Pursuing Local Audiences and Panregional Efficiencies.....................21111. The Promise of Broadband and the Problem of Content.........................................22912. From Movies to Multimedia: Connecting Infrastructure and Content............................245Conclusion: Structural Adjustment and the Future of Chinese Media...............................269Industry Interviews.............................................................................291Notes...........................................................................................295Bibliography....................................................................................313Index...........................................................................................325

Introduction

Media Capital in Chinese Film and Television

At the turn of the twenty-first century, feature films such as Crouching Tiger, Kung Fu Hustle, and Hero-each of them coproduced with major Hollywood studios-marched out of Asia to capture widespread acclaim from critics, audiences, and industry executives. Taken together they seemed to point to a new phase in Hollywood's ongoing exploitation of talent, labor, and locations around the globe, simply the latest turn in a strategy that has perpetuated American media dominance in global markets for almost a century and contributed to the homogenization of popular culture under the aegis of Western institutions. These movies seem to represent the expanding ambitions of the world's largest movie studios as they begin to refashion Chinese narratives for a Westernized global audience. Yet behind these marquee attractions lies a more elaborate endgame as Hollywood moguls reconsider prior assumptions regarding the dynamics of transnational media institutions and reassess the cultural geographies of media consumption. For increasingly they find themselves playing not only to the Westernized global audience but also to the world's biggest audience: the Chinese audience.

With more than a billion television viewers and a movie going public estimated at more than two hundred million, the People's Republic of China (PRC) figures prominently in such calculations. Just as compelling, however, are the sixty million "overseas Chinese" living in such places as Taiwan, Malaysia, and Vancouver. Their aggregate numbers and relative prosperity make them, in the eyes of media executives, a highly desirable audience, one comparable in scale to the audience in France or Great Britain. Taken together, Chinese audiences around the globe are growing daily in numbers, wealth, and sophistication. If the twentieth century was-as Time magazine founder Henry Luce put it-the American century, then the twenty-first surely belongs to the people that Luce grew up with, the Chinese. Although dispersed across vast stretches of Asia and around the world, this audience is now connected for the very first time via the intricate matrix of digital and satellite media.

Rupert Murdoch, the most ambitious global media baron of the past twenty years, enthusiastically embraced the commercial potential of Chinese film and television when in 1994 he launched a stunning billion-dollar takeover of Star TV, Asia's first pancontinental telecaster, founded only three years earlier by Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong's richest tycoon. Yet if Western executives are sharpening their focus on Chinese audiences, Asian entrepreneurs have been equally active, expanding and refiguring their media services to meet burgeoning demand, so that today, in addition to Star, hundreds of satellite channels target Chinese audiences in Asia, Europe, Australia, and North America, delivering an elaborate buffet of news, music, sports, and entertainment programming. Among Star's leading competitors is TVB, a Hong Kong-based media conglomerate built on the foundations of a transnational movie studio and now the most commercially successful television station in southern China. Its modern state-of-the-art production facilities and its far-reaching satellite and video distribution platforms position it as a significant cultural force in Europe, Australia, and North America. Equally impressive, Taiwanese and Singaporean media enterprises are extending their operations abroad in hopes of attracting new audiences and shoring up profitability in the face of escalating competition, both at home and abroad. Finally, PRC film and TV institutions, though still controlled by the state and therefore constrained by ideological and infrastructural limitations, are globalizing their strategies, if not yet their operations, regularly taking account of commercial competitors from abroad and aiming to extend their reach as conditions allow.

Based on in-depth interviews with a diverse array of media executives, this book peeks behind the screen to examine the operations of commercial film and television companies as they position themselves to meet the burgeoning demands of Chinese audiences. It includes stories of Hong Kong media moguls Run Run Shaw and Raymond Chow as well as their junior counterparts, Thomas Chung and Peter Chan; of Rupert Murdoch and his enigmatic mainland partner, Liu Changle; of Sony chair Nobuyuki Idei and his Connecticut whiz-kid, William Pfeiffer. It also includes tales of legendary Asian billionaires, such as Li Ka-shing, Koo Chen-fu, and Ananda Krishnan, lured by the scent of fresh new markets, as well as stories of aspiring billionaires Chiu Fu-sheng and Richard Li, each determined to find a seat at the table for what is becoming one of the most high-stakes media plays of the new millennium.

But this volume is more than a collection of colorful accounts of personal and corporate ambition; it is furthermore a reflection on the shifting dynamics of the film and television industries in an era of increasing global connectivity. For several centuries, the imperial powers of the West exercised sway over much of the world by virtue of their economic and military might. In time, cultural influence came to figure prominently in Western hegemony, as the production and distribution of silver screen fantasies helped to disseminate capitalist values, consumerist attitudes, and Anglo supremacy. Likewise, Western news...