The Rise and Fall of the China's Hong Kong Film Industry and Its Implications for China's Mainland

In this chapter, we choose the film industry in Hong Kong, a Chinese film production center with important influence in the world in 1990s, as an example. On the one hand, it empirically verifies the core viewpoints of cultural trade theory, on the other hand, it also hopes to explain the rise and fall of Hong Kong film industry by using the theoretical framework of cultural trade, so as to provide enlightenment for the development of Chinese mainland film industry. We believe that the glory of Hong Kong films in that years was due to the fact that its advantages in supply conditions and trade cost conditions offset its disadvantages in demand. When its advantages in supply conditions and trade cost weakened, its disadvantages in demand began to appear and eventually led to the decline of the industry. The case of Hong Kong film industry proves the importance of local market size and trade cost to a region’s film culture trade. Chinese mainland’s advantages in local market size provide flexible adjustment space for the cultivation of its supply conditions and the government’s industrial and trade policies.