The exposition was brought to a conclusion that evening by the much-hyped Huabiao Film Awards, broadcast live on television.

The Expo was the first of its kind in China. It was jointly organized by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the China Media Group, the administration's corporate spin-off.

There were six major events: Beijing Screening, a film trade fair aimed at overseas buyers; the China TV and Film Forum; the Radio, Film and TV Equipment Exhibition; the Digital Film and Video Editing Competition; the China International Film and TV Program Fair; and the TV and Film Awards presentation ceremonies.

Li Baojiang, a senior editor and analyst with the magazine China Film Market, said: "As I see it, the Chinese broadcast media and film industry have displayed excellent strength in the face of mounting pressure from market competition.

"The Chinese TV and film industry did not collapse, as some experts predicted, after China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Instead, competition and the market mechanism have made it even stronger and more flexible."

TV shows dominant

At least 400 production companies and tens of thousands of visitors from China and abroad attended the Expo.

At the trade fair Beijing Screening, 37 Chinese mainland films were shown. The fair drew at least 70 film distributors and buyers from overseas, including a 20-member delegation of distributors from Taiwan.

More than 100 films were produced on the mainland every year during the 1990s, but the number produced over the past two years has only been about 50 a year.

Local film studios have adopted a more rational and cautious approach to how many films should be made every year, to ensure that their productions can stand up in the market, Li Baojiang said.

In contrast, Chinese TV productions are now playing a dominant role in current domestic market, reversing the trend of the past few years when imported TV programs - especially those from Singapore and the Republic of Korea - were among the best-loved programs for millions of Chinese viewers, Li said.

The TV programs at the fair were much more diverse in subject matter and genre than they used to be.

Many new programs were on sale, ranging from costume dramas, cartoon series, police shows and stories about the fight against corruption to TV dramas about legendary figures.

Li acknowledged that TV drama series such as "Jiqing Ranshao de Suiyue (Years of Passion)," "Chang Zheng (Long March)" and "Liu Laogen" have won the hearts of Chinese audiences as they vividly portray contemporary Chinese and reflect the reality of Chinese society. But he pointed out that such programs are far from being truly satisfying in terms of either quality or quantity.

Brand names

The most eyecatching programs at the trade fair were TV packages for niche markets such as the newly launched Chinese Business Network (CBN), backed by the colossal Shanghai Media and Entertainment Group, along with several entertainment news programs produced by such private companies as the Joyful Media Co and Enlight Media Co.

The Chinese Business Network is a nationwide news service consisting of a package of TV programs and a radio station of the same name. It will "soon" include a daily business and finance newspaper with the same title, said Gao Yunfei, executive director of the news service.

Its TV channel, based in Shanghai, now broadcasts self-made programs more than 14 hours every day. Eleven of those hours are taken up by live broadcasts for breaking news and trading news at such venues as stock exchanges and securities exchanges.

The news service has signed contracts with a dozen local TV stations in the Yangtze River Delta as well as TV operators in East China's Jiangxi Province and in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, according to Gao.

"Our ultimate goal is to build the CBN channel into a round-the-clock brand name, a leading provider of business and finance news like the Western channels CNN, Fox News or Bloomberg," Gao said.

In the field of sports and entertainment, two of the most active Chinese production companies are Joyful and Enlight. They made an impression during the TV programme trade fair with live performances and big-screen shows.

The Enlight Media Co was founded in 1998 and is known for its "Entertainment Live" news programme. It produces 12 TV specials covering entertainment, sports, fashion, healthcare and some TV drama series, with a total of five hours of airtime per day. The company claims that its programs are broadcast daily on at least 300 TV stations across the country.

The Joyful Media Co, founded in 1999, is best-known to Chinese TV viewers for its games shows, such as "Fun Fun Fun."

Two weeks ago, Joyful and the periodical 21st Century Career Post together launch the weekly magazine Joyful City. Enlight launched its Big Star weekly newspaper in conjunction with the Beijing Radio and TV Weekly News.

The peak of entertainment and sports programs has yet to come, experts predicted. More and more private TV production companies will mushroom as still more popular programs are needed to cater to the ever demanding appetites and tastes of Chinese audiences, who are now better off than they were 20 or even 10 years ago and have more leisure time to kill, said Wu Yong, a Beijing-based media researcher.

A highlight of the exposition was the active participation of Hong Kong film producers, distributors and equipment suppliers, who could be seen almost everywhere.

Yang Qianqi, a media researcher with Radio and TV Information magazine, said: "Industry professionals from both Hong Kong and the mainland are making efforts to forge closer ties to tap the huge Chinese market and, at the same time, to become sharper in the face of competition from foreign countries."

An increasing number of Hong Kong TV and film production professionals have been coming to make money in the mainland market.

Li Baojiang said: "They are generally better trained and really take their job seriously. Few of them ask for too much pay, unlike some mainland professionals. As a result, they are more competitive."

Although Hong Kong-based TV channels such as Sun TV and Phoenix TV have only limited access to the mainland TV market, Hong Kong producers are enthusiastic about selling their original programs to the bigger mainland market in the wake of the implementation of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement between the special administrative region and the mainland, Yang said.

At the TV program fair, one of the most prominent booths was occupied by the Hong Kong-based Celestial Pictures Co. The company owns the Shaw Brothers Film Library, the world's biggest Chinese-language Hong Kong film archive.

Earlier this year, the company reached an agreement with the Guangzhou-based firm Hongxiang Entertainment, licensing it to release Shaw Brothers DVDs and VCDs on the mainland. Titles will be available throughout the mainland starting this month, according to Jason Wang, general manager of Celestial Pictures' Beijing office.

Hongxiang is a subsidiary of Tom.com, a diverse Chinese-language media group.

Wang said: "In the years to come, we may seek more opportunities to co-operate with our mainland counterparts in film distribution and the remaking of some Shaw Brothers films."

To attract talented film and TV producers from the mainland, Celestial Pictures has set up a film scholarship in collaboration with the Department of Cinema and Television at Hong Kong Baptist University's School of Communication, Wang said.

The course will enrol 15 to 18 students each year, mainly from the mainland, and offer them a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Mainland film and TV production and distribution are, on the whole, still at an early stage in terms of business models and operating in a market economy.

"The training programme will enable the students to deal with TV and film-making from a business perspective," Wang said. 

(China Daily September 5, 2003)