Putting the art into the heart

Changfeng Ocean World is a top draw in Shanghai. Provided to China Daily

Diversified entertainment products gaining traction with urbanites

Higher income levels and more leisure time among urban dwellers are spawning a growing demand for art and entertainment activities in China.

Although diversified art and entertainment products have long been an established industry in developed nations, it is the resurgent demand as a result of the rapid urbanization in China that is now proving to be an irresistible draw for Western companies.

"Urbanization is one of the key factors that is driving entertainment market growth in China," says Jackson Wong, senior manager of KPMG China's technology, media and telecommunications practice.

"There has been a lot of real estate growth in China, but many of these new developments lack content and theme. Building entertainment venues around these developments will automatically help attract more people."

In the live performance sector, many globally renowned companies have already staged shows in China.

They include the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which has been performed in London continuously since 1952.

In 2010, the play went to Shanghai for a two-week performance through a partnership between The Mousetrap Production Ltd and Shanghai Modern Theater Co.

It achieved immediate success and, since then, the Shanghai Modern Theater Co has produced the play in Chinese for a season each year, with its British partner's help.

"They knew of the popularity of Agatha Christie's work in China and believed, correctly, that it would be popular in China," says Stephen Waley-Cohen, who has been the show's producer since 1994.

Apart from The Mousetrap, Chinese urban residents have enjoyed many live performances from overseas, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra the London Symphony Orchestra and musicals including Mamma Mia, Cats and Notre Dame de Paris.

The value of China's performance market last year reached 60.3 billion yuan ($9.83 billion), a rise of 60 percent from 2011, the Ministry of Culture says.

Two other rapidly growing entertainment industries in China are film and TV. China's box office revenues reached $2.7 billion last year, a 36 percent year-on-year increase. This made China the world's second-largest film market just behind the United States and the world's third-largest filmmaker, the Motion Picture Association says.

Yang Shuting, a senior analyst at entertainment industry consultancy EntGroup Consulting in Beijing, says China's TV and film industries provide great opportunities for foreign companies whose creative content and production expertise are well liked by the Chinese audience.

"Chinese audiences' demand for imported TV series has become a consistent trend over the years, but recently the market for imported variety shows has rapidly expanded, reflecting domestic variety shows' inability to satisfy demand," Yang says.

"At the same time, China's protection of intellectual property rights for TV programs is strengthening, creating assurances for foreign TV companies in this trade. International TV programs are increasingly pursuing global expansion strategies now - and China is certainly a good market."

Yang says one popular model of cooperation in the film sector is co-production, where both parties contribute their expertise to the production process and share the risk of the investment.

Yang's comments are echoed by Meng Chao, 30, an independent film director, who says the production techniques and technologies of foreign companies are often appreciated by the Chinese film industry.

Meng says he believes a successful example is the California-headquartered Cameron Pace Group, which established a subsidiary in the port city of Tianjin to develop three-dimension film equipment and provide training for making 3D movies.

"One service the company's China subsidiary provides is a technology certificate system for 3D films that actually generates more market value for the company's existing technologies," Meng says.

In television, an increasingly popular method of cooperation is for Chinese companies to buy the Chinese production rights from a foreign reality show program, Yang says.

This cooperation model, Yang says, allows the Chinese partner to have the support from the foreign partner in the production process to keep quality consistent - and to learn from them.

One such example is The Voice of China, which is produced in the same format as The Voice of Holland, created by Talpa TV. Talpa TV subsequently sold the China production rights to Star Media and helped it produce a version for the Chinese audience in the same format and of the same quality as the original.

"The first series of The Voice of China was produced by Star in close cooperation with the Dutch executive producer Mark de Vink. For the second series our experts provided consultancy services," says Thomas Notermans, a spokesman for Talpa Holding.

"In our industry, know-how and quality of productions are much higher in Europe and the US than elsewhere. Since our market is small, we Dutch producers are very experienced in producing our formats abroad and keeping a good balance between the character of the original format and local (cultural) differences," Notermans says.

Another industry experiencing growing opportunities is publishing, because urbanization has increased people's average literacy levels and growing affluence has instilled in them a fascination for a wider range of topics, says Isa Wong, president of Pearson, Greater China.

"Urbanization is really drawing a lot more people into that reading population and creates a bigger size for the publishing industry to accommodate different interests in different areas," Wong says.

"With economic means improving, readers are exposed to a lot more things. International publishers can bring a different perspective, particularly for books such as travel, language learning, marketing, finance and management."