The Emergence of China-India Film Co-production: policy and practice

This paper examines the recent trend of co-production between China and India since the signing of the Co-production Agreement in 2014 to map out the feature of co-production beyond the West. Drawing on an analysis of the Agreement and policies that were designed to facilitate co-production, interviews with film practitioners, and evaluations of the existing three China-India films Xuan Zang, Kong Fu Yoga and Buddies in India, this paper not only examines the misuse of the term ‘co-production’ but also indicates the politically driven feature of China-India collaboration in practice. This paper argues that co-production has been part of bilateral diplomatic strategy aligning the film industry with China’s statecraft, which provides an alternative perspective beyond the culturally driven and financially driven dimensions of co-production. By mapping out this newly emerging terrain of China-India collaboration, this paper contributes to prevent the vagueness and conflation that the use of the term and practice appears to invite in the discourse of co-production. It also contributes to the current scholarly debates on de-westernization in transnational cinema and Chinese and Indian films and their associated soft power.