Chinese television dramas (), sometimes colloquially known as C-dramas, are Chinese-language television drama series originating from China, sometimes including co-productions with the Greater China region. Popular drama series genres in China include fantasy romance, period costume, contemporary urban and thriller dramas. Chinese dramas are often subjected to stringent regulatory supervisions from China's National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA).
China produces the most television drama episodes per year and has the largest number of domestic television viewers in the world. It is also the second largest video streaming market in the world by revenue. Chinese television dramas are regularly broadcast and streamed throughout Asia; particularly in Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.
History
1958–1980: Early years The first China-produced television program, One Piece of Cake (), was aired in 1958, after the launch of China's first television station, Beijing TV Station (later rebranded as China Central Television, or CCTV).
Other provincial television channels were launched in the subsequent years, including Shanghai Television, Jiangsu Television, Guangdong Television and Hunan Television. From 1958 to 1966, 200 drama anthologies were broadcast, although ownership of television sets was not widespread. During the cultural revolution from 1967 to 1976, the only entertainment allowed on Chinese television was eight revolutionary operas, three war movies and some song renditions. Fictional dramas returned in 1978 with San Jia Qin, the first mainland drama filmed on location. Meanwhile, across the straits in Taiwan, the first long-form Mandarin television series Jing Jing was aired in 1969 on China Television, and the 1970s saw more familial dramas with heavy political tones produced by the three Taiwanese terrestrial channels, as martial law in Taiwan continued to be in enforcement.
1980s: Expansion of state-run television channels In 1980, the first drama series Eighteen Years in Enemy Camp was aired on state-run CCTV. Domestic demand for programming increased as television viewers increased from 80 million in 1978 to 1.1 billion by 1986. Besides importing foreign shows, China began to produce many costume drama series. Long-form TV adaptations of classic Chinese novels and folklore include Outlaws of the Marsh (1983), Ji Gong (1986), Dream of the Red Chamber (1987) and Journey to the West (1988).
In 1987, the Republic of China (ROC) government lifted the travel ban to mainland China, and in 1988, the People's Republic of China (PRC) government started courting ROC investments in the PRC with guarantees to safeguard their assets, visitation and legal rights. The Chinese state regulators introduced a permit system allowing for private and independent investors to co-produce television series with state-run media entities in the late 1980s as part of the reform and opening up. The thawing of cross-straits relations resulted in a series of co-productions between the two regions from the 1990s to the 2000s. Taiwanese romance novelist Chiung Yao and her team began working in mainland China on several television series, either based on her novels or original screenplays. Period drama My Fair Princess (1998), a collaboration between Chiung's production company and Hunan Broadcasting System, was a success in both regions and widely sold in other Asian markets.
1990s–2000s: Rise of satellite channels and rapid commercialization The 1990s also marked the start of satellite broadcast of Chinese television networks and the rapid commercialization of television programming in the form of advertising. China Central Television and other provincial channels like Zhejiang Television, Anhui Television, Jiangsu Television, Dragon TV and Hunan Television began expanding their satellite network coverage and diversifying programming offerings. Family drama Ke Wang (1990), immigrant story A Native of Beijing in New York (1993), and sitcom I Love My Family were some of the contemporary dramas aired on prime-time television. Fortress Besieged (1990), a period drama adapted from the satirical novel by Qian Zhongshu, was critically acclaimed. The first mainland-produced idol romance drama Cherish Our Love Forever was also aired in 1998.
Since the 1990s, historical serials have been the dominant genre on prime-time television. The trend peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with many palace (also known as "Qing") dramas shown on television. Fictionalized drama series based on well-known ancient figures like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (1994) and The Legend of Liu Yong (1996) continued to draw strong ratings. Producers like Zhang Jizhong and Wong Jing also started making the mainland television adaptations of classic wuxia novels, such as those written by household names Jin Yong and Gu Long. Critical reception to shows such as The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2003), The Proud Twins (2005) and Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (2003) was mixed and they are often compared to previous adaptations from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Investment groups like Hengdian Group expanded into movie and television production in the mid-1990s, building large filming sets for different dynastic (and Republic) periods. Hengdian's large film set in eastern Zhejiang was said to have accommodated at least 70% of China's films and TV shows at one point. Established Hong Kong television production companies like TVB also began producing dynastic period dramas such as A Step into the Past (2001) and War and Beauty (2004) in mainland China due to the availability of such sets.
After the turn of the millennium, Chinese historical fantasy romance dramas started gaining popularity, eventually overtaking the market share of adaptations of wuxia novels that were popular in the previous decades. Seasoned Hong Kong director Lee Kwok-lap produced the hugely popular Chinese Paladin (2005), the television adaption of the first installment of the Sword and Fairy video game series, contributing to the popularity of xianxia and xuanhuan (fantasy) genres in the mainland entertainment landscape. As these fantasy shows are often not tied to a specific dynasty or era, scriptwriters and designers had more creative leeway in their production, often mixing elements of Chinese mythology with modern humor and romance elements that are noticeably different from the stoic, honorable themes in wuxia genres.
2010s: Regulatory changes and emergence of streaming television Historical period dramas continued to be popular in the early 2010s. Imperial power struggle drama series with female leads set in the Qing dynasty such as Empresses in the Palace (2011), Scarlet Heart (2011) and Story of Yanxi Palace (2018) became an important side genre in mainland China, although the genre has since come under regulatory criticism for its "extravagance and negative influence on society".
A series of escalating protectionist measures were issued by the regulatory body in the mid-2010s. In 2014, the Chinese government announced that imported foreign films and TV series required publication licenses in order to be aired within China. Korean dramas, then one of the most popular drama genres in China, as well as Korean-Chinese co-productions, were banned from both broadcast and streaming services in 2016, following the THAAD missile deployment disagreement between China and South Korea. Regulators also banned the broadcast of foreign television shows during prime-time slots and issued quotas on the number of imported content on streaming video platforms in 2018. At the same time, streaming television took off in China as technology giants Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba invested more in their own Chinese productions under their respective streaming business units iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku. Traditional terrestrial broadcasters also started partnering with streamers to deal with declining TV viewership. Since the mid-2010s, intellectual property (IP) adaptation rights of popular online novels, video games and comics were in huge demand as television adaptations of such works started becoming common, examples of which include the adventure series The Lost Tomb (2015), danmei novel adaptation The Untamed (2019), as well as historical political dramas Nirvana in Fire (2015) and Joy of Life (2019). Between 2018 and 2019, 42 out of 100 of the top television series were adapted from web fiction.
Since the 2000s, celebrity-driven television dramas have allocated a significant portion of their production budgets to actor salaries in order to attract viewership. Hong Kong television producer Gary Yeung Siu-hung noted in a 2006 interview that mainland actors may command salaries 2 to 5 times higher than their Hong Kong or Taiwanese counterparts with comparable popularity. In 2016, Shanghai Media Group executive Wang Leiqing acknowledged that up to 76% of production costs could be attributed to actor pay. For example, the two lead actors of the 2018 series Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace reportedly received a combined total of over 150 million yuan for the 87-episode series. In 2020, the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) issued a notice stipulating that television actors' salaries must not surpass 40% of the total production cost. Furthermore, the pay for lead actor cannot exceed 70% of the total actors' salaries.
2020s–present: Streaming dominance and rise of micro-dramas During the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, all television productions were halted in February 2020, and filming resumed 1 to 2 months later. The number of application for distribution licenses of television drama in 2020 decreased by around 26% compared to 2019.
By the early 2020s, streaming television services like iQiyi and Tencent Video had reached more than 100 million monthly paying subscribers respectively, with the market reaching saturation and fragmentation. Monetization and profitability became paramount for the major tech-backed streamers as long-form videos is increasingly considered as part of their more mature business units. In early 2024, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng expressed the corporation's focus on premium flagship dramas, which he identified as The Long Season, Three-Body and Blossoms Shanghai, in order to build brand reputation and draw user subscriptions, instead of having many smaller productions which provided little commercial and brand value. After the massive success of its 2023 criminal drama series The Knockout, iQiyi leaders also stated their focus on quality content instead of celebrity star power in their drama series, with a focus on genre series and high investment epic drama series.
Television productions also had to compete with short video and live-streaming social media like Bytedance's Douyin and Kuaishou for user screen time. Duanjus, also known as mini-dramas or micro-dramas (), became increasingly popular on Douyin, WeChat and Kuaishou. According to iiMedia Research, revenue of Chinese mini dramas reached 37.39 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 267.65% from the previous year. Each episode of a mini series lasts from seconds to several minutes and are also subject to regulatory scrutiny of the NRTA.
Characteristics Other Chinese-language dramas such as Taiwanese dramas, Hong Kong dramas, and Singaporean dramas may sometimes be attributed as Chinese dramas, although each region has a distinctly different filming style, editing format and colloquial terms.
Long-form Chinese television series vary in quality, although since the mid to late 2010s, observers have noted an increase in production values and script quality in some series.