China is considered to be a power house when it comes to foreign films making huge amounts of money overseas, however not many people would say China's film industry could be considered a rival to Hollywood. One person who believes this is famous Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, director of such famous films as House of Flying Daggers.
Zhang Yimou in a CNBC interview as saying China has a long road ahead to rival Hollywood, later in the same interview Yimou was quoted saying "Chinese audiences hotly follow U.S. actors and movies, but Americans "probably" don't care much about Chinese movies". Yimou is not completely wrong in his statements especially if you look at box office numbers.In China Hollywood films usually preform extremely well, even sometimes better than in the states, but if you look at the U.S. many times films that do very well in China do not do well in the states.
This can be attributed to a number of things but one of the most important reason is that the films that preform very well at the Chinese box office like Wolf Warrior II are promoting Chinese values and are films make specifically for a Chinese audiences, Jim Gianopulos, chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox, was quoted in a Variety interview saying "It's more difficult for the Chinese to create films that appeal globally".
Zhang Yimou was once quoted saying "Hollywood still needs the China market in hopes of making more money". The reverse is not really true, the U.S. or any other countries have never really be shown to be a big market for Chinese films in the same China is for Hollywood. This is not to say films from China have never been big success outside of China movies like Rumble in the Bronx and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon are big films in the US market. But on the whole this are exceptions to the rule most films perform like Wolf Warrior II making huge amounts of money in China but making no impact at the international box office.
This is not say that China is not trying to assimilate into the U.S. film market by trying to make Hollywood movies. In fact Zhang Yimou was the director of last year's The Great Wall which is the first ever Chinese/Hollywood joint project; The film was an attempt to take a story that would normally be told in a Chinese film but with elements of Hollywood blockbusters like the fact that famous actor Matt Damon is the lead of the film instead of a famous Chinese actor. In an interview with Screen Anarchy Yimou explained the reason Damon was cast was "...if we had an all-Chinese cast, they wouldn’t have that kind of change and growth and the differences that are between two cultures."
Yimou as well as the Chinese studio hoped this would be the first step in China becoming more of global player in the film market however film preformed very poorly at the box office and came under heavy criticism one of them being the casting of Damon which Yimou hoped would help.
However Yimou believes a possibly reason for the failure of Chinese films at the international box office is censorship. He told CNBC "Censorship has always been there". Many critics say that this censorship is restricting creativity because the government wants movies promoting the Chinese spirit and not films that could possibly go against this idea. It is very possible that censorship is restricting filmmakers in China from producing films that would appeal to global audiences, Yimou was quoted as saying "I hope this will change in the future". Many Chinese filmmakers are certain to feel the same way as Yimou wanting the freedom to create movies that everyone would want to see.