Much is being asked of premium Chinese drama producers in chasing Korea’s Hallyu with a C-wave of their own. It’s a high-stakes story filled with soaring demand, powerful players, fierce rivals, seemingly insurmountable hurdles, critical turning points, ardent desires, moral choices and political considerations.

Chinese streamer iQiyi’s share price might be down by about 70% in the past year, but Chinese drama’s stock is rising fast, powered by demand from regional and global streamers and talk of a C-Wave with the potential to match Korea’s K-Wave. 

The billion-dollar questions are less about whether (or not) this is wishful thinking than about the political influences that could drive (or derail) the rise of Chinese drama to K-drama levels globally. 

And then there’s this: How much of this Chinese content will come from within mainland China in 2022? And how much of it will come from neighbouring Mandarin-speaking markets?  

China hands are keeping a close eye on the ideological tightening that has swept the mainland. This is the other C-wave – a dial-back to traditional Communist ideals and a fierce effort to protect the country’s cultural heart. The incoming tide is levelling celebrities, waging war on what Party bosses view as damaging hedonistic excesses, and, among other restrictions, squeezing men into a stereotypical macho male box, forcing them to lose the make-up, the hair and anything else associated with “sissy boys”. 

Given the immense power of China’s state media apparatus and a finely tuned censorship/approvals process already in place, it’s hardly difficult  to predict  the outcome: a boom in mainland Chinese content heavily aligned with strict government guidelines on socialist values and ethics.   

Much remains to-be-seen as the latest rules play out. For instance, who outside of China will watch the next generation of premium Chinese programming, produced under an even more watchful Party eye?  Who stands to gain the most if mainland Chinese stories fail to engage regional/international audiences? 

This second question is easier to answer than the first. 

Taiwan, which is enjoying a C-Wave of its own albeit with much lower production budgets, has international recognition in its cross-hairs. The creative industry, heavily backed by the region’s most progressive government, is focused on co-productions, and is already delivering on the promise of premium drama with the ability to travel. And it’s all playing out to the soundtrack of media authorities extolling the island’s freedoms and advantages.

With the world’s biggest population and hundreds of millions of TV homes, are mainland China's media authorities concerned about global TV pick ups and overseas video audiences? Our feeling: Not at all. 

So, while all that unfolds in 2022, Chinese drama is enjoying the same streaming-driven demand spike as drama from everywhere. This is fuelled by the premise that the next global blockbuster could come from anywhere, following in the footsteps of Korea’s Squid Game and Hellbound and Spain’s Money Heist. 

Mainland Chinese players are among those who have taken a storytelling cue from their competitors overseas. While Chinese TV has long had a reputation for prioritising quantity over quality, tastes have turned to creating punchy mini-series more likely to translate easily across cultures. Budgets have also soared. 

Among the new generation of Chinese originals is Light On, part of iQiyi’s suspense series slate. Dai Ying, iQiyi vice president and Light On’s lead producer, says the project’s success is the result of its commitment to quality, innovation, and exploring universal themes. He describes the show as “a eulogy for justice”, which, he adds, “makes it particularly touching”.

Two of the five nominations for this year’s ContentAsia Awards category for Best Asian Drama Series for a Regional/International Market were lavish mainland Chinese dramas – Chang Ge Xing (The Long Ballad) from China Huace Film & TV for Tencent Video and Shandong TV and Go Ahead from China Huace Film & TV for Hunan TV and Mango TV. 

The 49-episode period drama, Chang Ge Xing, is an epic story about the daughter of a former crown prince who escapes a military coup and, through war, conflict, political skullduggery and exile, is finally able to put aside her personal grievances and both protect the peace of the Tang Dynasty and find true love. The series, released on 31 Mar 2021, airs on Tencent Video in China, simulcast on multiple platforms in the region.       

Go Ahead is a modern drama about three unrelated children in China who develop a sibling-like bond after living under one roof. However, the damage caused by their original families remains, and old wounds resurface when blood relatives come crashing back into their lives. Go Ahead, released on 10 Aug 2020, has also aired across platforms in Asia and globally. 

The series, producers say, means “overseas audiences can have better understandings about real lives of ordinary Chinese families, and their understandings of love and family”.

The streaming platforms leading the current Chinese premium drama boom are Tencent Video/WeTV and iQiyi, both of which have strong pipelines from their mainland HQ to power international expansion. Both are ramping up production activities outside of China. 

2022 is likely to see PCCW-owned streamer Viu step up its Chinese drama originals under newly appointed head of originals, Felix To, who joined the company in September 2021 from Hong Kong's dominant broadcaster, Television Broadcasts Ltd (TVB). 

TVB, once seen as the worlds foremost Chinese drama producer, retains an 85% audience share of young/wealthy audiences in Hong Kong, and this year has stepped up variety and live-streaming e-commerce efforts, including shows such as singing contest, Stars Academy, and variety series, Dub-of-War. TVB also operates streaming platform, myTV Super, which had  9.5 million registered users in mid-2021 and continues to invest in its own slate of original first-window content. The company, which saw revenue from mainland China drop from HK$356 million/US$45.7 million to HK$298 million/US$38.2 million in the first half of 2021, said it expects co-production initiatives in China to ramp up again in 2022 as travel restrictions ease.   

To, who was TVB’s deputy general manager of drama production and programming when he left, has been linked with a long string of TVB’s successes, including 30-episode police drama The Defected (2019), starring Wai-Ho Yung and Kara Wai, and new horror series, Barrack O’Karma 2, as well as the Hong Kong broadcaster’s closer alliance with mainland platform Youku. His new slate for Viu had not been disclosed at presstime. 

No stranger to Chinese content, the Hong Kong-based Viu has been strategically broadening its streaming playbook beyond its beginnings as the home of Korean drama; the platform launched six years ago with exclusive streaming deals with all of Korea’s major studios. 

In July this year, Viu announced a 2,000-hour deal for 67 Chinese dramas from mainland China’s Huace Film and TV and Huace Croton Media. 

The Chinese titles, designed to cement Viu’s branding as the streaming home of Asian drama across seven markets in the region, include Eternal Love, The Princess Wei Young, Love O2O and Love and Destiny. These follow series such as Eternal Love of Dream, A Love So Beautiful, My Amazing Boyfriend 2 and The Brightest Star in the Sky. Many, including Beijing Television/Tencent Video's Novoland: Pearl Eclipse, air on Viu at the same time as in China. 

At home in Hong Kong, free-TV domestic channel ViuTV is also enjoying ratings highs with shows like Ossan’s Love, a 15-episode 2021 adaptation of Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi’s 2018 Boys Love (BL) love-triangle comedy about an office worker whose failed love life seems to be turning around when both his married boss and his roommate confess their romantic feelings for him. The show, starring Edan Lui, made headlines for its gay theme. 

While all this could change in the wake of China’s tighter content policies, significant effort is going into building on the strength of current mainland content and expanding opportunities abroad.   

In December 2020, iQiyi set up an international office in Singapore, to drive regional and international growth. Part of the plan is to leverage its slate of Chinese-language content across the region. In a bid to drive its own expansion, Tencent/WeTV acquired the best bits of failed regional streamer iflix, including some of Indonesia’s best dramas.  

The potential rewards are huge. The global streaming market is predicted to be worth nearly US$150 billion by 2026, according to U.S. research firm, Allied Market Research. The Asia-Pacific market is set to grow 24.7% a year over the next five years. 

Kuek Yu-Chuang, iQiyi's vice president of international business, is adamant that Chinese content is more than ready for global audiences outside of the Mandarin-speaking diaspora. 

A survey iQiyi commissioned in 26 countries earlier this year found that 75% of the 5,200 respondents had sampled Chinese entertainment during the past two years. “More than half of them had done so in the past six months, showing that C-content is a fairly recent trend,” Kuek says, adding: “The global appetite for C-content is encouraging. One in three respondents actively seek out and watch C-content, and 50% would recommend this content to others.”

Chinese streamers’ international growth plans are not without incident though. Popular period dramas, Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace, have been yanked off air in a mainland Chinese action against period dramas that portrayed palace life in ways that clashed with official accounts. 

Blockbuster variety show, Youth With You, also fell foul of regulators in May 2021 in the midst of a raging scandal, accompanied by social media outrage, over milk wastage. iQiyi was quick to respond. “We sincerely apologise for our missteps and promise to continue to do better for our users,” iQiyi said on its social media feeds confirming the cancellation of the show and thanking fans for their support for the latest season.

The root of the milk-wastage scandal was that viewers were buying sponsor Mengniu’s milk just to get the QR code in the cap of the bottle so that they could vote for their favourite trainees – and then pouring the milk into sewers. Production was suspended soon after it became clear that the unintended results of the show’s competition element was inconsistent with mainland China’s government-backed campaign and new laws against food wastage. 

Such incidents make it harder for Chinese streaming platforms to win over audiences overseas, as viewers are less willing to commit to shows that may disappear at short notice. It also erodes buyer confidence. 

This is where Taiwan could win. Although the country’s drama has not yet hit the scale of mainland China, Taiwanese authorities have rolled out an unprecedented charm offensive to raise the island’s creative profile and attract co-production partners. 

The arrival of U.S.-based global streamers and their upsized competition-driven initiatives has only upped the ante. 

When it unveiled its new Asia slate in October, Disney+ included three Chinese shows – period rom-com, Delicacies Destiny, from veteran producer Yu Zheng (Story of Yanxi Palace); family drama Min's Family; and Sun Hao’s Joy of Life 2, produced by New Classic Media.

Netflix has released its own slate of Chinese-language acquisitions,  including More than Blue: The Series, Zero to Hero, Upcoming Summer, and Mom, Don’t Do That!.

The platform has also commissioned a big-budget adaptation of Chinese sci-fi novel, The Three-Body Problem. The series, currently shooting in the United Kingdom, will feature several episodes directed by Derek Tsang, the Hong Kong filmmaker whose feature, Better Days, won an Oscar nomination this year.

Meanwhile, the first two episodes of Netflix’s latest Chinese-language release, Light the Night, screened at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival in November, followed with the global streaming premiere on 26 November. The 24-episode series, directed by Yichi Lien and written by Cheng Che Tu, is about the hostesses of a popular nightclub in Taipei in 1988. Netflix described Light the Night, starring Ruby Lin, as “a genre mash up of a murder mystery thriller and an emotionally intense drama”. 

The flow is running in the other direction as well as Chinese streamers compete with regional and global platforms.  

iQiyi's international outreach involves adapting its mainland Chinese IP for audiences in the rest of the region, as well as backing large-scale productions out of Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Taiwan.

New iQiyi shows this year have included The Ferryman: Legends of Nanyang, a 36-episode Chinese supernatural series, adapted from iQiyi’s 2014 classic Mandarin-language series Soul Ferry. The series stars Singapore-based mainland Chinese actor Qi Yuwu (The Little Nyonya) and Lawrence Wong (Story of Yanxi Palace) as partners on a mission to guide wandering spirits with unfinished business on earth. Another original, Sisterhood, is in the works.  

Boosting its Korean drama slate following Backstreet Rookie and Bad Kids, iQiyi also stumped up a rumoured US$21.5 million (approx US$1.35 million per episode) for tvN's drama, Jirisan, which gave it exclusive streaming rights ex-Korea and the right to call the show an iQiyi original.

In the Philippines, iQiyi has partnered with programming giant ABS-CBN on a slate of co-productions, including romantic musical drama, Lyric and Beat, which will be released worldwide in 2022. Lyric and Beat follows young adult series Saying Goodbye and romantic comedy Hello, Heart. 

Chinese drama continues to contribute to the new breed of Asian drama: fusion productions, based on Chinese IP, targetting regional audiences. A byproduct of the region’s fast-developing streaming environment, stories such as Yam Cultural’s Put Your Head On My Shoulder, are forging new paths for premium Asian scripted series. 

The 2021 Thai version of China’s 2019 drama, Put Your Head On My Shoulder, is an evolution of the young, sweet coming-of-age romance trend that has given rise to shows such as A Love So Beautiful, The Love Equation and A Little Thing Called First Love.  Filmed in Thailand and Beijing, Put Your Head On My Shoulder stars Thitipoom (New) Techaapaikhun and Nilawan (Kaimuk) Iamchuasawad in the story of an accounting major who ends up living with a genius physics student. The 20-episode WeTV original romantic drama premiered on 26 Sept 2021 and ran to end Oct. 

The show primarily targets the Thai market, with additional exposure on WeTV in the rest of the world – including China. And it looks like the plan is working; the series’ official site on Chinese platform Weibo had 60 million views as of October this year. 

“There has been a tremendous response to this fusion dish,” says Ben Lai, the founder of Hong Kong-based production house, Yam Cultural.

The Thai version is the second production from Yam Cultural Ltd, set up in Hong Kong and Shanghai two years ago. Put Your Head On My Shoulder will be followed by When A Snail Falls In Love, adapted from Chinese writer Ding Mo’s novel. A third Thai-Chinese fusion series, based on the Chinese drama Scarlet Heart, is in the works.  

Lai, a veteran distributor who hung up his first production shingle just before Covid-19 hit, talks about the challenges of creating a whole new kind of content. “We wanted a Thai-Chinese fusion drama, something that is not Thai and not Chinese, but has its own recognisable style, its own look and feel,” he says. This includes everything from colours, clothing and kissing scenes to a different take on beauty and how wealth is portrayed. 

The end goal is better drama all round. “Thai production is becoming very strong,” Lai says. “We want to add our expertise, to make better drama in total”. In the end though, Lai says his productions are not bound by geography but by ideas. “We’re doing cultural export and following good ideas,” he says.  
 

Published in ContentAsia December 2021 magazine