As it has done for years, the content industry treads cautiously around China, fully aware that antagonising authorities never ends well and ever-cognisant of the significant upside in keeping within the guardrails in the largest market on earth. For those who could (and with the stamina for the strict screening process), the 2025 wins were significant as China’s giant streaming/digital platforms cast their nets wide for content. A winner too is Hong Kong’s top platform, Television Broadcasts Ltd (TVB), whose China partnerships on high-value titles such as “Queen of News 2” are being credited with the revival of Hong Kong’s once-vaunted original drama industry. Not so much for the U.K., where content sales to China fell another 44% in 2024/5, although the final value – £10 million/US$13 million – still puts China in the global top 20, according to U.K. association PACT. Thailand is among 2025’s China winners, hosting 42 mainland film crews that spent THB 311.57 million/US$10 million; this was second only to the THB 1,667.35 million/US$51.5 million spent by U.S. productions (Source: Thai Film Office). As 2025 closes, Japan has overtaken Korea in China’s political penalty box, with the expected fallout on cultural/content flow between the two countries. Korean rights holders, meanwhile, live in hope of picking up their China business from the crater it fell into in 2016 over Korea’s adoption of the U.S. THAAD missile defence system; indications earlier this year of a possible thaw haven’t quite turned out as expected – YET. But it might, especially after the APEC Summit at the end of October. And then there’s microdrama…

And with that, welcome to the latest release of ContentAsia’s The Big List directory, which focuses on China.