How Far Can French Films Travel in China? An Empirical Analysis from The Cultural Discount Perspective

Abstract

As the second largest film exporter except the United States, France is not only one of the important export countries of European Union, but also a major exporter in China and North America. Cultural discount has generally been a problem in the cultural trade export. This article analyzes box office figures from 2009 to 2018 to examine whether French films of different genres and copyrights are more or less subject to cultural discount when they travel to mainland China. The results show that science fiction, adventure and thriller are apparently the most universal and that genre of drama and copyrights of ordinary and buy-out are highly particularistic, whereas co-productions are relatively universal due to non-significant test results. As the results, development status and trend analysis of Sino-French co-production cases are typically discussed.