Welcome to Chollywoodindustry grew up with complicated flows of films within each area, but a clear dividing line
between the two.
In the PRC, private studios were nationalized, and imports from Hollywood and the rest of
the Western world came to a halt in the 1950s (Clark 1987, 24–40). But it would be a mistake
to think that the PRC was cut off from the world. Many films were imported from the Soviet
bloc prior to the split that followed Krushchev’s repudiation of Stalin in 1956 (Chen 2004).
Even after that and through the Cultural Revolution decade (1966–1976), the PRC continued
to receive foreign films from those countries it still considered “fraternal,” such as Romania,
Yugoslavia, North Korea, and Albania (Clark 2008, 150–151). Although Shanghai continued
to be one of the prime sites of production, the government established film studios in many
provincial capitals throughout the country. These studios were linked through the China Film
Corporation (Zhongguo Dianying Gongsi), which was a government-owned enterprise with a
monopoly over imports and exports as well as distribution and exhibition inside China. The
China Film Corporation bought prints from the government-owned film studios and distrib-
uted and exhibited them throughout the country, ensuring the costs of production were met
and funding its own activities through box office receipts. Decisions about which films to pro-
duce were made at annual meetings of studio heads with the government Film Bureau, which
set targets and quotas for the industry.
On the other side of the Cold War divide, another Chinese-language film market developed
for Chinese-speaking people living outside the PRC. Concentrated in Hong Kong, Taiwan,
and the diasporic populations of Southeast Asia, this market extended across the world via
movie theaters, mostly located in local Chinatowns. As in the PRC, production was multi-sited,
although Hong Kong and Taipei emerged as the two largest centers of production. Different
corporate distribution and exhibition companies circulated the films around the world. Further
complicating the situation was the existence of film industries specializing in different spoken
languages in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. In Hong Kong, there were both major Mandarin-
and Cantonese-language industries, as well as a smaller Amoy-language industry (Taylor 2011).
In Taiwan, there was an industry that produced Mandarin-language films, and another that spe-
cialized in films using the southern Hokkien dialect spoken on the island, Minnanhua, known
locally as Taiwanese (taiyu), which is closely related to Amoy (Hong 2011, 33–64). These dif-
ferent spoken language cinemas rose and fell in different periods according to various local
circumstances.
Until quite recently, there were few connections across the Cold War divide, even after that
divide began to fade. The relaxation of political hostilities in the 1980s, following the end of the
Chinese Cultural Revolution decade in 1976 and the start of the “opening up” policy pursued
by Deng Xiaoping, did not by itself generate the second great reconfiguration of Chinese-
language cinema, although it might have been a precondition for it. Rather, what spurred not
only connections but a complete reconfiguration of Chinese-language cinema was the transi-
tion to globalization in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China, as well as most
of the territories where significant Chinese diasporic populations are found. A key marker of
this transition was entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which occurred for Hong
Kong in 1995, followed by the PRC in 2001, and Taiwan in 2002 (WTO 2015). WTO mem-
bership entailed the removal or reduction of government support, protections, subsidies, trade
barriers, quotas, and so on.
Filmmakers in all three territories were anxious about WTO entry. But, while the number
of feature films in both Hong Kong and Taiwan has not shown much improvement, the PRC
industry has prospered. To be more specific, statistics released by the Taiwanese government
show only 18 domestic feature films passed by the censors for release in 1996, making up only