ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the dynamic relations between the American and the Chinese film industries by examining the evolution of China’s distribution system in the 1920s and 1930s. The Chinese cinema of these two decades has attracted intense attention from scholars, especially the cinema of the 1930s, the period regarded as “the Golden Age of the Chinese film.” However, to date, there has been no serious study of distribution systems. The literature has only focussed on some aspects and details of the distribution of Hollywood and Chinese films. This chapter will examine China’s distribution system in the 1920s and 1930s. Employing various primary sources, including studio archives and newspaper commercials, this chapter will explore relations between the American and the Chinese film industries in the distribution domain. This chapter will examine the influence of those relations on China’s response, within its own distribution system, to the American film industry. The argument of this chapter is that the analysis of power relations is a key to understanding this response.
