The evolution of Chinese film policy: how to adapt an instrument for hegemonic rule to commercialisation

Since the 1990s, the Chinese political leadership has gradually embraced the commercialisation of the film sector and has turned the liberalisation of entertainment content production into a strategy for generating legitimacy. This article traces the evolution of Chinese film policy from its Communist origins to the present day, and reveals that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), at the same time, has never desisted from using film production to establish hegemony in a Gramscian sense, and that these efforts have even been intensified over the last decade. The second part of the article scrutinises how the CCP’s mechanisms of control and ideological guidance have been adapted to commercialisation and, based on personal interviews with Beijing film producers in 2006 and 2007, investigates the extent to which the intensified efforts of adaptation since 2003 have been able to persuade the private sector of film production to participate in maintaining CCP hegemony.