Why are Chinese micro-dramas so popular?

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1:21Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

1:41This is The Fifth Floor, at the heart of global storytelling, with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Farnak Amidi.

1:56Secret billionaire husbands, bloodthirsty vampire lovers, and being reborn as your great-grandmother. These are just some of the outrageous plotlines that can be found in Chinese micro-dramas, with episodes being delivered in digestible one-to-two-minute chunks that are designed to keep people glued to their phone screens. Paz's daughter Nancy's engagement party is tomorrow night. Are you really planning on going? Paz is one of the few human friends I've had in the last 400 years. But if you show up now, people might find out that you're a vampire. Microdramas are a Chinese short-form video trend that have expanded globally, racking up hundreds of millions of downloads in the US, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

2:48It's big business. In China alone last year, the micro drama industry grossed the equivalent of seven billion U.S. dollars, which exceeds the entire Chinese box office for 2024. And a number of these series are now also being filmed overseas for English speaking and global audiences, most of which are adapted from Chinese scripts. And now that Boris has gained the approval of the royal family and his career is booming, you, my dear, are nothing. Lunar is the perfect match. Why do you always favor her? Is it because I'm adopted? My colleague Mengchen Zhang from the BBC's Global China Unit went behind the scenes of one of those sets right here in London.

3:38And she joins me in the studio right now. Mengchen, welcome to the fifth floor. Hi, Veronique. Nice to be here. First, start by telling us a bit more about the format and how do people typically consume these videos? So they're usually one to two minutes and 50, 60 episodes per series. And usually the way people consume it is they're being targeted on their Instagram or TikTok. There was one to two episodes, teasers, and then maybe they will release one to 10 episodes for free. but if you wanted to watch the rest you have to download the apps and pay for a subscription fee or pay by episodes and that's how you finish the rest of the story you know when I was preparing for this interview I read one to two minute episodes I was thinking to myself how is that even possible but TikTok generation I guess it makes sense actually so I was looking at some of the videos and I have to admit there is a cringe factor there Well, you're not wrong.

4:43I mean, sometimes I feel so cringy, but it's so bad. People say it's good, so it's bad. It's so bad, it's good. I know. Yeah. But there is quite high production value in some of these videos, isn't it? How long does it take to film one of these micro dramas? Yeah, so the production values vary. Sometimes we see very high quality being produced in the US or UK. sometimes takes$200 ,000 to film a series. And it varies from different locations. So in China, the cost is significantly lower, between$20 ,000 to$30 ,000 US dollars. And now they're also trying to do this in other countries. For example, in Japan or South Korea, they can do it in probably$100 ,000 US dollars for a series.

5:30And in Southeast Asia, that can sometimes go even lower. So you went along to a location here in the UK, They were shooting a series called My Royal Secret Lover, produced by a Chinese producer, Leo Shanshan. What was happening? What was the plot all about? Yeah, so it was a very fun experience, definitely, to see some behind the scenes, how the magics are happening. And Leo Shanshan, she's a Chinese producer. She set up the company in the UK in early 2024, and they have produced more than a dozen series. and the story is about Mary who has a twin sister and I wouldn't spoil all the story but then like Mary's sister went missing so she had to assume her identity to protect the family asset while in the process she met with the secret royal lover one thing led to another, they fell in love they conquered the difficulties, they protect their companies and yeah, that's the gist of the story Quite chaotic plots, aren't they?

6:33Yeah, I talk to the main character and actress and I try to figure out what they are shooting. And yeah, so I think it takes them some time to give me one line to explain what the story is. Daniel Vanderwood, who is the Duke of Woodsbury. Daniel is trying to protect... It's a bit of a... It's very... It is all over the place, isn't it? It's all over the place. There's a lot of things that happen. It's very fast-paced though. It's very, very fast-paced. A two-minute episode? I know. So much is going on. Yeah. So how many episodes were they shooting when you went on that set? So, yeah, the day I went, I think they probably filmed several episodes.

7:18The entire series is like 60 episodes, and they take 7 to 10 days to film. So every day, averagely, they can make up to 10 episodes. Considering even every episode is one to two minutes, they still have to produce quite a lot of things in one day, and it's a very packed schedule and they start very early and they wrapped usually late in the night. A proper production, basically. As you mentioned, you got a chance to actually speak to some of the actors. What did they tell you and what is their background? Who are these actors? Were they Chinese? No, that's the interesting fact. When they filmed in US and UK, they tend to like to find local actors and actresses.

7:58So the entire production, they speak English and identity. the characters are mostly based in the US or the UK. One of the actors I've spoken to, his name is Dick B. Ashley. He was a reality TV star. Yeah, and some of them are maybe recent graduate from film drama school. And so for this one, it's like easy money for them in a way. They can do it quickly and there are more opportunities. One big difference I noticed, they filmed in vertical. So that's definitely a new thing for me. That's very interesting. It's just aimed for your phone screen. Yeah, it was never meant for the big screen. And I reckon that there's a lot of AI being used in the production as well.

8:39Can you explain a little bit about that as well? Yeah, so there is a series called White Fox, was produced entirely by the AI. And the whole production team just consists only four people. Everything was down in two weeks and the cost is like only tens of thousands of yuan. So that's like really extreme case of the entire thing being produced by AI. But outside of that, I've talked to a lot of industry insiders where they started to experimenting with the AI, either in post-production, where they use it to generate a virtual background so they can save money for the complicated vampire set and sometimes using that for visual effects.

9:18And occasionally some of them did use that to generate the outline for their script too. In the intro, I mentioned, you know, vampire lovers, you have secret husbands, you can be reborn as your great-grandmother, all of these kinds of themes. But what other themes are reoccurring across these drama series? I think one of the common themes I've seen, especially in China, are the family feuds, especially the conflicts between A-Laws. Exactly. Yeah, so on the family dramas, the protagonist, usually a female married into a family or fell in love with a guy. But there usually is an evil mother-in-law who wants to break them up or trying to say they're gold diggers or trying to get the son to marry another richer family's daughter.

10:09So that's one recurring theme. And for example, there's other cases like stepsisters, like the real sister is the heir to the throne or the heir to a wealthy family. But the stepsister or the adopted sister want to take that away. Some of the episodes can be quite sexual and racy, but also violent. Is the Chinese government okay with this? Well, that's a very interesting question you asked. So we all know Chinese has a very strict reviewing or censorship about this content. But the thing is, they don't have the manpower to watch every single episode. So in China, a lot of content aren't spotted by the censor immediately.

10:49The same thing, I think, is not just in China. The racy content are also quite prevailing for the series that's made outside of China. So would you say that maybe some of the production has moved outside of China, actually to avoid state censorship? and would you expect more production to happen outside of the country? I think there are definitely the censorship in China has limited people's creativity because sometimes in China the censorship is more hard to define and the lines ambiguous. For example, we talked about the family feelers, sometimes those are fine, but in some other cases they got taken down because the government said it doesn't fit into the traditional family values.

11:32and on top of that the Chinese government want the storyline the plot to be positive, to fit into the social values, to meet the ideology standards and political direction has to be the right ones, so those are really hard to define and make whoever invest and make those series hard to know, because even though they are not a million dollar production you don't want any series you produce ended up in a black box, you still want them to go out, so in China to predict those lines and make the films can be a little bit more challenging. And I think there are more and more companies venturing out of China to produce in different countries like the US and UK.

12:12I think one of the reasons is they can have more freedom to create what they see fit for the story, for the plots. And the other reason is just to make it more localized so their local audience, they can expand more widely around the world. Who is the target audience? So yeah, that's also varied from different countries and regions. Some company told me in the US that more than 50 % of them are women aged between 18 to 45. But in other countries, for example, in Japan, in Indonesia, another company told me they actually have more male audiences there. and very fun thing in China nowadays it's not just for women, young middle-aged women but they're also targeting older generation a lot of older people are also growing on their phone so they're making a lot of serious targeting up to 50, 60 70 year old audience so they can watch a story portrayed by actor and actress of their age and the storylines also quite tailored for that age group Apart from having the cringe factor.

13:20What are some of the other criticisms that the genre gets? Yeah, like one of the things is the content is quite repetitive. And the second thing people are worried about is people's attention span, because many people used to go to film theatres to sit through two hours, three hours to watch a film. But with these one to two minute episodes, you can watch them anytime, anywhere. People are worried, are we having shorter and shorter attention span? Can we sit through another three-hour film? Can we read another book? And the other thing people are quite concerned about is the stereotypical characters in those series, like how women are portrayed.

13:58They are usually vulnerable, needs to be rescued, and there's always a powerful vampire, alpha male secret billionaire that will come out and rescue the women. And that's something a lot of audience actually don't like. So now I need to know, you know, to be honest with you, Meng Chen, I was worried that if I start watching these, I might get into the black hole and not come out and get addicted. But I know you've been watching a lot of these videos. Have you got addicted yet? Well, that's a good question, Verna. Yes and no. So the yes part is when I first knew about these series, I was one of their targeted audience.

14:40And so I'm definitely one of the demographic that are hitting a millennial who are glued to a phone on social media. So what made me so interesting in those one thing is definitely the plot is like so cringy, so bad, so good. And the other thing is I noticed that there's a very strong Chinese element in that. So like for me, a Chinese journalist who covering China and China in the world, that's one thing that made me to watch and to research. but yeah just for bad or for worse I ended up watching so many of them but I had to stop because sometimes they are expensive to finish a series not everyone's available on YouTube you have to download the app you have to pay either the subscription or pay by episode it's a smart business model I know and they usually cut off at the most cliffhanger like plot you just want to know what's happening next but good for me after watching so many I kind of can't guess I would just fill the blank afterwards so I can control myself and not pay the money to watch the rest.

15:40Thank you, Meng Chen Zhang from the BBC's Global China Unit. Thank you for having me. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

15:56Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.

16:29So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

16:39This is The Fifth Floor and I'm Farun Akamidi. Now, we have a story of two language services coming together to tackle disinformation. The relationship between neighbours India and Pakistan is well known around the world for going through periods of extreme hostility and even aggression. A deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in April led to the two countries exchanging missiles and drone attacks in one of the biggest escalations for about 50 years. And in times of tension, disinformation is rife. That is why journalists reporting for BBC Urdu and BBC Hindi decided to do a joint broadcast.

17:24Sano Gulzar of BBC Urdu and Jugal Purohit, who reports for BBC Hindi, join me to tell me more about this. Hello to both of you. It's great to have you on the fifth floor. Can you just tell us, is it common for Indian and Pakistani journalists to be seen on the screen together? Not particularly common. India has a very vibrant sort of local media. So sometimes, occasionally, you would see journalists from India or from Pakistan invited to these talk shows across the border. But usually, these conversations are an attempt to cause almost like a debate or more than a debate to almost cause an argument.

18:04More confrontational. Very confrontational and almost in a way they're trying to create that for maybe interesting television. But you wouldn't see a more nuanced discussion. And I haven't seen that in a very long time. Even on a digital space, there are a lot of Indian media organizations, websites that are not accessible in Pakistan. If I were to type in the name of the leading newspaper in India on my browser right now, I would not be able to access it in Pakistan. And that's exactly the case. And Jogal can correct me in India as well. And during this conflict, what happened was that even social media accounts and briefly BBC Urdu's X account was also blocked in India.

18:49So you can imagine the kind of barriers that they are for sort of like a fair and open flow of communication between the two countries. Jukal, when you did this joint broadcast, what was your priority? We did this broadcast about a month after the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan. So that period had provided us enough room to look back, see how people had reacted, because in the moment, there were just too many, I would say, instances of disinformation that were floating around. So we started by discussing how disinformation was seen and how it was reacted to in India. I think we also had a perspective from Sana's end as well about the situation in Pakistan.

19:36We then had invited fact checkers from India as well as Pakistan providing their perspectives, not just about what had happened, but also a historical trend of what has been happening in the last few years. And I think lastly, what we tried to address with our joint show was to give our audience a sense of just how it is to report at a time like this. One may argue that the reporting felt slow, but we were able to give our audience a sense of just how meticulously a global organization like the BBC leveraged its presence on both sides, but also made sure that whatever was put out was irrefutable.

20:17Where does this disinformation come from? Primarily, when we say disinformation in its most problematic sense, which is that absolute lies were being peddled and being shared on both sides of the border. But we also had the challenge where both the countries had its own version of the story, which is arguably that is how it is usually in war-like situations, in conflicts. But in that situation, it was very important for us to be able to fairly represent both sides and try to corroborate that information that was coming to us from both sides of the border from official sources. As far as disinformation is concerned, obviously, social media was the biggest sort of like the culprit in all of that.

21:04We saw accounts and posts and videos and pictures and AI generated pictures from both sides of the border being shared. And for example, images from Gaza were being used to represent the conflict or represent the fact that some missile strike by India or by Pakistan has caused that kind of damage. There were doctored audios. For example, there was a doctored audio of the military spokesperson that went around on X, which caused a lot of confusion. The news channels, television news, immediately jumped on to a certain kind of almost like a hyper-nationalistic narrative in which verification of facts seemed to become secondary.

21:53For example, a story was broken on Indian news that Indian troops have actually landed in Islamabad. And it was so repetitive and it was so assertive that even people who would know better would be calling me, asking me, that is something happening in Islamabad. And I would be also a little surprised that maybe I am missing something while sitting in Islamabad. On the Pakistani side, again, it was entirely the state narrative that was being represented in the news channels. And there was no way to actually question that what the military is telling us or what the government is telling us. Is there any other way to verify it or if there are any questions around it?

22:40And that is precisely why BBC Urdu and BBC Indian Languages, both of us saw huge audiences coming to us from across the border. So I can speak about BBC Urdu that during those days, 50 % of our audience was coming from India. People actually wanted to hear what the other side or what was happening in Pakistan. And people actually wanted to break through that noise of disinformation. But the fact remains that both the countries made it very hard for their respective audiences to actually access that kind of information. Perhaps we were the only ones in the market who had boots on ground on both sides.

23:22And we were able to just tell the story as it was coming to us without any sort of any propaganda or anything attached to it. The broadcast, the program itself. What was the structure like, Jhagal? The thought behind having a program like this also makes so much more sense because there is an inherent similarity between words, languages, pronunciation between these two languages that someone speaking in Urdu will mostly be followed by somebody who doesn't understand Urdu particularly, but knows Hindi. and I think vice versa as well. The structure of the show, it began with a perspective from either sides.

24:02Sana and I spoke about what we saw as journalists. And I think ultimately the discussion did wear around to the aspect of just how it is for an organization like the BBC to report, but also in a very candid way, admitting to areas that there was just no way to overcome, which of course included the fact that the governments themselves were not available in India, the first briefing that happened on this operation on the 7th of May, that briefing did not include any questions from journalists. It was in the subsequent briefings that the government even started to address limited number of questions.

24:41While there was so much being talked about, the only authority that can actually clarify was silent on so many occasions. So that really made our task very difficult. And it, of course, I fully agree with Sanaa. I think some of my reports were seen less in India and they were seen more in Pakistan. So it just told you of how much, how curious the audiences were to get a sense of just what is verified, what is reliable. And they came to us. There have been just so many discussions in India that I've had with people who've told us how valuable they found what the BBC did and just how indifferent they've become to what they see and hear on several mainstream media outlets because of just how easily they could say something, even outlandish, on a topic as sensitive as conflict.

25:30Some of these pieces of disinformation that we speak about were very basic. An incorrect picture, a picture from Gaza, a picture from Sudan, a picture from some other conflict, just that was posted with an incorrect caption to it. And by the time somebody got around to fact checking it, it had gone around the globe already. As I mentioned that there was a lot of conversation that maybe the port in Karachi has been attacked. So we actually had to send a reporter next day to Karachi port to actually share with the audience in Pakistan and across the border that what the situation is like there. But you can imagine that while you are trying to cover the actual conflict and the lives of those who are being impacted and their houses were being bombed, we also had to then deploy a resource to go and find out if the port in Karachi has been destroyed or not.

26:31And do you think that this is something both of you would do again in the future? I really hope that, sorry, I really hope that we don't have a story of this scale. Maybe for something else. We have been doing that because India and Pakistan especially have had such a complicated history. There are human stories. I remember that on the 70th anniversary of the independence of the two countries, we had almost a month long coverage. And most of the stories were how families were divided and families from India had originally come from Pakistan, now Pakistan. I think what it does provide is that absolutely necessary perspective that sometimes, you know, when Jugal and I or anyone from within the BBC, obviously, we constantly have conversations with each other on all sorts of stories.

27:28The sharing of that perspective also informs our journalism, even if we are not on air publicly sharing the screen. I think the attempt that the BBC manages so well is that it humanizes people on both sides, across both sides of the border. And at this point, it's worth also flagging that it isn't very normal to see that because in the media sphere, at least I can talk about India, there is a certain stereotyping of how a Pakistani or a Pakistani situation is viewed in India. And I think the BBC does bring in that level of humanisation, that level of nuance to the story that I think is something that the audience recognises and appreciates.