China makes awesome movies each year, but why aren't they popular outside China?  What can China do to make their movies go global?

中国每年都有一些很优秀的电影，但为什么在国外不受欢迎？如何让中国电影走向世界？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Brandon Ross

Not really.

In the '80s and early '90s, there were some good films that came out of China. If you could get your hands on them. And if you could get translations, even better.

Today? A whole lot Chinese films look the same. Feel the same. Telling a nearly identical hero's journey. It's like the same endless story over and over.

我觉得并非如此。

80年代和90年代初中国确实有一些好电影。如果你还能找到的话。如果能找到翻译版就更好了。

如今的中国电影？多数看起来都一个样。都是套路。这些电影讲述的都是几乎一模一样的英雄的故事。就像一个没完没了的故事被拍了一遍又一遍。

Lonely Cantonese Sith Lord

One of the biggest problems plaguing Chinese cinema is censorship. No, not the kind you’re thinking of.

When it comes to what kind of “international” films and dramas are chosen to be exposed to the western audience, the criteria are very clearly and unabashedly politically driven.

困扰中国电影的最大问题之一就是审查制度。但不是你想的那种审查。

对于要选择什么样的“国际”电影和电视剧展示给西方观众，西方的审查标准非常明确，那就是政治原因。

Take the 1999 Chinese movie Not One Less, for example. It is considered by many movie buffs to be one of Zhang Yimou’s greatest works, his magnum opus even. It currently enjoys a 96% “fresh”/positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 90% audience score.

And yet, this film, as well as another of Zhang’s movies named The Road Home, were snubbed by the Cannes Film Festival that year. The reason? The organisers found the movie to be too “pro-China”, one alleged example being the scene where the students raised the Chinese national flag and sang the national anthem.

以1999年的中国电影《一个都不能少》为例。这部电影受到许多电影迷的推崇，称其是张艺谋导演最伟大的作品之一，甚至可以算作他的代表作。目前，这部电影在烂番茄上的新鲜度/好评率为96%，观众评分为90%。

但这部电影，以及张的另一部电影《回家的路》，都在当年的戛纳电影节上遇冷。原因是组委会发现这部电影过于“亲华”，其中一个引发诟病的一幕就是学生们升起中国国旗并高唱国歌的场景。

The thing is, if you actually watched the movie, that flag-raising scene is literally little longer than a minute[1]. Any sensible viewer could see that a scene like that has nothing to do with spreading Chinese propaganda, but rather serves as a narrative tool in the movie, to showcase how clumsy and clueless a lot of the students were (they even forgot to hang the flag on the flag pole at first).

但问题是，如果你真的观看过这部电影，你就会发现升旗的场景其实还不到一分钟。明眼人都知道，这一幕和中国的宣传毫无关系，只是电影中的一种叙事工具，反映了许多学生是多么笨拙、多么无知(他们一开始甚至忘了把国旗挂在旗杆上)。

It is effective character building, and incredibly authentic, as anyone who has ever been to school in mainland China could relate to.

Zhang Yimou was famously annoyed by the Cannes Film Festival because of this, and withdrew both his movies from the festival in protest. He wrote an open letter to the festival’s officials (a letter which, unsurprisingly, has never been mentioned by any major news outlet in the west, or even Cannes), stating, and I quote:

这是一种有效的性格塑造，而且非常真实，只要在中国大陆上过学的人都能体会到这一点。

众所周知，张艺谋因为这一点对戛纳电影节非常不满，把两部电影撤出了戛纳电影节以示抗议。他给戛纳电影节的官员写了一封公开信(当然了，这封信从未被西方的主要新闻媒体甚至戛纳提及)，他在信中写道：

I cannot accept that when it comes to Chinese films, the West seems for a long time to have had just the one “political” reading: if it's not "against the government" then it's "for the government". The naïveté and lack of perspective of using so simple a concept to judge a film is obvious. With respect to the works of directors from America, France and Italy for example, I doubt you have the same point of view.

我无法接受，西方长期以来对中国电影似乎只有一种“政治”解读：如果电影没有“反对政府”，那就是“支持政府”。用这么简单的概念来评判一部电影，这太过天真，缺乏主见。我很怀疑你们对美国、法国、意大利导演的作品是否也采用了同样的标准。

And you know what? He’s absolutely right. If showing a country’s flag is so problematic, then half of all American cinema would be automatically excluded from these festivals, to say nothing of the Nazi German flags plastered all over the cookie-cutter WWII/Holocaust films that are churned out every year as so-called “Oscar-bait”[2].

要我说，他说得完全没错。如果在电影中展示一个国家的国旗，问题如此严重，那么一半的美国电影都要被排除在这些电影节之外了，更不用说每年被炮制出来的所谓“奥斯卡专供”的千篇一律的二战/大屠杀电影上无处不在的纳粹德国的旗帜了。

The Cannes officials also found fault with Not One Less’s happy ending. In the movie, the impoverished rural school finally received the material aid it needed, thanks to an inexperienced young teacher going out of her way to find support, and generous donations from kindhearted city folks.

This wholesome depiction of common Chinese people was misconstrued, yet again, to be “pro-China propaganda”.

戛纳组委会还对《一个都不能少》的大团圆结局提出了质疑。在电影中，在初出茅庐的年轻教师努力寻求帮助，善良的城市居民的慷慨捐赠，最终让贫困的农村学校得到了所需的物质援助。

这种对普通中国人的正面描摹再一次被误解为“亲华宣传”。

This is yet another example of how the west not only propagates negative propaganda against China, but also actively suppresses any positive and authentic portrayals of the Chinese people and Chinese society.

The west remains to this day largely dominant in pop culture (and art in general), so is it any wonder why Chinese films are having such a trouble finding an audience in the global market?

这是西方不仅对中国进行负面宣传，而且积极打压任何对中国人民和中国社会的正面和真实反映的又一个例子。

直到今天，西方仍然在流行文化(以及艺术领域)中占据主导地位，所以中国电影在全球市场上很难找到观众，这也就不足为奇了吧?

I personally wouldn’t worry so much about this though. You know why? Because soft power is built upon hard power, the latter of which was what made western civilisation so hegemonic. To quote Samuel P. Huntington,

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.

不过我个人并不太担心这一点。你知道为什么吗？因为软实力是建立在硬实力之上的，正是硬实力让西方文明如此霸道。引用塞缪尔·P·亨廷顿的话，

西方赢得世界，靠的不是其思想、价值观或宗教的优越性，而是其运用有组织暴力的优越性。西方人常常忘记这个事实；但其他人从来不会忘记。

Right now western countries are quite visibly losing their traditional advantages in military and production, and losing their grip on the develo world in more ways than one.

As people around the world increasingly come to question and deconstruct the myth of western civilisation, their morals, and their neoliberalism being superior, it is not unreasonable to predict that the cinema scene in the future will only become more diverse and exciting.

现在，西方国家明显失去了他们在军事和生产方面的传统优势，也在很多方面失去了对发展中国家的控制力。

随着世界各地的人们越发质疑和颠覆西方文明的神话，西方的道德，西方的新自由主义优越，我们可以大胆预测，未来的电影场景只会变得越来越多样化、越来越令人兴奋。

I mean, Hollywood and western entertainment in general have been dying for years. God spare me from another superhero “multiverse” movie.

I for one wouldn’t mind seeing brand new ideas, and the works of previously snubbed/neglected artists from non-western countries getting their time of the day. Long live the multipolar world order.

我的意思是，好莱坞和西方娱乐圈都已经没落多年了。上帝啊，就别让我再看什么超级英雄“多元宇宙”的电影了。

我不介意全新的思想，以及曾被冷落/忽视的非西方国家艺术家的作品等到出头之日。多极世界秩序万万岁。

Lance Bird

The problem with China’s movies is that they’re movies made for Chinese consumption. The plots don’t come across as being any good, the acting is generally poor by western standards, and they’re typically filled with state propaganda.

For Chinese movies to really go global, China is going to have to start making better movies.

中国电影的问题在于，它们都是为中国消费者而制作的电影。故事情节不太吸引人，以西方的标准来看，演员的表演也很差，而且它们通常都充斥着政府的政治宣传。

中国电影要想真正走向世界，就必须开始制作更好的电影。

Jesuan Wu

Easy.

Drop the internal censorship.

You can check some 1980s Chinese movies, which were total gems despite the apparent lack of tech involved.

Present day movies are prohibited from being too cynical, too dark, if it’s a horror movie then it’s prohibited from any ghost or supernatural phenomenon. And they have to comply with the demands of committees made up with people having anything remote to do the contents of the movies.

这还不容易。

放弃内部审查吧。

你可以看看上世纪80年代的中国电影，尽管明显没什么技术含量，但它们都是瑰宝。

现在的电影不能太过愤世嫉俗，不能太过黑暗，如果是恐怖片，还不能出现任何鬼魂或超自然现象。所有电影都必须符合审查委员会的要求，而这些委员会的成员都是和电影内容无关的人等。

One case I personally know of is the movie Home Coming. It was a patriotic film than can't be more politically correct. It was an elaboration based on the real events of the past few years of China using its diplomats and local connections to pull Chinese citizens out of war zones.

Yet it almost didn't air.

我知道一部电影《万里归途》。这是一部爱国电影，在政治上是再正确不过的了。电影讲述的是过去几年中国通过外交官和当地关系将中国公民撤出战区的真实事件。

但它差点没能公映。

I know this from someone who worked on the movie. The Chinese Foreign Ministry wanted to kill the movie, or have it almost completely reshot, because when they vetted it, they complained that the movie had young actors as the protagonists making the right calls, not senior diplomats like the ambassadors in real life. And that a lot of the right decisions and outcomes came down to luck and circumstances (it's an action movie for christ sake)

Luckily, the movie still aired because the team got around the Fo ign ministry with some networking from above.

我是从一个参与电影制作的人那里听说的。中国想要封杀这部电影，或者重新拍摄，因为他们审查这部电影时，抱怨这部电影把年轻演员当做主角来做正确的决定，但现实生活中都是大使等高级外交官才能做决定。而且，很多正确的决定和结果都取决于运气和环境(看在上帝的份上，这是一部动作片)

幸运的是，这部电影最终得以公映，因为摄制组通过一些关系绕过去了

Kanthaswamy Balasubramaniam

At least two, if not three generations of Chinese people had to SLOG and SLOG to get China to the position in which it is today

They sacrificed a lot of their enjoyment

They didn't exactly form a huge growing market for entertainment such as movies

中国人必须付出艰苦卓绝的努力，花费两三代人的时间，才能使中国达到今天的地位

他们牺牲了许多乐趣

他们还没有形成一个庞大的娱乐市场，比如电影

As a result, movies remained largely State funded and weren't exactly shot to rake in millions of yuan

Consumerism was non exstent in China, a nation which from 1950–1990 was all along working 14 hours a day in fields or in a factory floor

Plus China had a huge demand for Performing Arts and Chinese Theatre

People like these more than films

因此，电影基本上还都是国家投资拍摄的，不是为了赚取数百万元人民币而拍摄

中国不存在消费主义，从1950年到1990年，这个国家的民众每天在田地里、工厂里工作14个小时

此外，中国对表演艺术和中国戏剧的需求更为巨大

比起电影，人们更喜欢这些曲艺

Only now, the latest generations of Chinese are enjoying themselves, having fun, gaming etc

They like spending money on movies

So for the first time, Capitalism has been introduced into Chinese Cinema

It will take time for the same to appeal to overseas Chinese first and then to other outsiders

Give it another decade.

直到现在，年轻一代的中国人才开始享受生活，娱乐游戏

年轻人喜欢花钱看电影

所以，资 本主义开始进入中国电影

首先要吸引海外华人，然后再吸引其他外国人，但这需要时间

再等十年吧。

iaolan Yang

Why is the Chinese cinema so bad? Is it going to change?

It will better day and day，we hope。

The development of the culture later than economic 。

now，there are many good movies are showing，such as 大圣回来，捉妖记，which I will see it today.

为什么中国电影这么差？它会改变吗？

我们希望情况会一天比一天好。

文化的发展晚于经济的发展。

现在，中国也拍出了许多好电影，如大圣回来，捉妖记，我今天就要去看了。

Noel Leong

Are Chinese TV series and movies losing their creativity, with only a few key themes being covered in recent years?

This happen with commercial TV series and movies in most countries including South Korea, USA and India. The themes of majority of commercial movies and TV series are always the same.

近年来，中国的电视剧和电影只涉及几个重点题材，是不是开始失去创造力了？

在包括韩国、美国和印度在内的大多数国家，商业电视剧和电影都是如此。大多数商业电影和电视剧的主题都很雷同。