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The story of China and Hollywood's big-screen romance

By Adrian Ma,
Angel Carreras, Kate Concannon
Published July 16, 2025 at 10:02 AM EDT
AFP via Getty Images

No country can come close to the amount of money Americans spend at the box office each year ... that is, until China came along. The US and Chinese film industries have a long intertwined history, with shifting power dynamics.

Today on the show, we continue our week-long look at the movie business as we explore the on-and-off romance between Hollywood and China's film industries.

Related episodes:
Why aren't filmmakers shooting in LA? (Apple / Spotify)
Before La La Land there was Fort Lee, New Jersey (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Copyright 2025 NPR

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Adrian Ma
Adrian Ma covers work, money and other "business-ish" for NPR's daily economics podcast The Indicator from Planet Money.
Angel Carreras
Angel Carreras is an assistant producer for The Indicator from Planet Money. He is a Bakersfield-raised, Cal State Long Beach graduate. He previously worked at KCRW, the NPR member station in Los Angeles. He has produced award-winning and character-driven work, with subjects that have included masked puppeteers, mutual aid groups, and community activists.
Kate Concannon
Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.