Chinese online movies eye higher quality: newspaper

Over 2,000 online movies were registered with authorities in 2018, and the industry should focus on higher quality and more competitive products, China Youth Daily reported Tuesday.

In recent years, the number of registered online movies in China was on the decline, and many shoddy works have been driven out of the market due to industry standards and related policies, said the newspaper, citing an official at National Radio and Television Administration.

Yang Xianghua, a senior executive of iQiyi, China's leading online entertainment platform, said the platform will pay more attention to improve the quality instead of the number of online movies.

It was unsustainable to produce online movies on subsidies, and it was necessary to improve the quality to attract more viewers to pay for online movies, said Chang Bin, vice president of Tencent Penguin Pictures.

Progress has been made in the development of online movies, said the newspaper, adding that "Han Dynasty Thirteen General," which tells the story of warriors in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) guarding the country, was highly valued by filmmakers.