China and Bollywood: The Potential for Building the World’s Largest Film Market

Abstract

In 2018, China briefly became the world’s largest box office, beating Hollywood’s global take in the first quarter of the year. The country also witnessed a major expansion in the number of movie screens available for domestic exhibition as developers built multiplex theaters in new shopping malls catering to the rapidly rising Chinese middle class. Parallel with these developments, however, has been the reported growth in popularity of Bollywood films in the middle kingdom. After ratifying a co-production treaty with India in 2014, Chinese audiences reportedly began to flock to the newly available Bollywood blockbusters at their local multiplexes, cultivating large fan bases for Indian stars like Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, and others. In this chapter, we analyze publicly available box office data focusing on the expanding market of Indian films in China, then review the explanations often given for the rise of Chinese interest in Indian cinema. Given that China reportedly has relatively few Indian residents compared to diasporic locations like North America, Europe, southeast Asian, and the like, we suggest that the high Chinese box office returns reported in the media potentially challenges previous findings linking diasporic enclaves and potential overseas profits. We conclude by reflecting upon how these trends may impact the development of a “Chindian” film market.