A 58-year-old woman sits on a park bench, holding hands with the man beside her. Both are also clutching a red marriage certificate. “I never thought we’d get married so soon,” she says, smiling at him.
A segment from the first episode of My Sudden Marriage to a Rich Man. Source: Douyin
This romantic moment comes at the climax of My Sudden Marriage to a Rich Man, one of the myriad mini-dramas that have recently become one of the hottest trends on the Chinese internet. The format — with its exaggerated plots and multiple episodes lasting a few minutes at most — has captivated millions of Chinese viewers. The 69-episode My Sudden Marriage…, which premiered in September on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by ByteDance, has already garnered over 580 million views.
Such numbers are already generating high revenues, if not yet profits. The Chinese mini-drama market will reach some 50.44 billion renminbi ($28 billion USD) in 2024, a 34.9 percent year-on-year increase, according to the China Netcasting Services Association, and will likely surpass movie box office revenue for the first time. As of June 2024, the number of mini-drama users in China had reached 576 million, accounting for 52.4 percent of all those online — a higher proportion of those using the Internet for online takeaway, ride-hailing, and other services — making the industry a key part of China’s digital life.
“They are accessible, mobile, fast, addictive.” said Alicia García-Herrero, the chief economist for Asia at Natixis, a French investment bank, referring to mini-dramas. “This is a big game changer.”
The emergence of a new sector is causing a pile-on: More than 300,000 companies were involved in the mini-drama industry by the end of 2023, according to Qixinbao, an information service company.
Established tech giants are benefiting too. ByteDance’s mini-drama app Hongguo, which launched a year ago, has already become the fastest-growing app in China, with over 100 million monthly active users. Tencent’s third-quarter financial report meanwhile showed a 17 percent year-on-year increase in revenue from marketing services, partly driven by advertisers’ demand for mini-drama ads. Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Huawei have all announced investments in the sector.
Still, as is often the case when a new sector emerges in China, only a small number of mini-drama producing companies are generating profits: Industry insiders estimate that over 90 percent of mini-series projects are operating at a loss, despite the dramas’ relatively low production costs.
The poor profit levels are in part down to China’s overall weak domestic consumption. That has intensified the price war across the e-commerce sector, prompting companies in industries like beauty, catering, and online shopping to enter the mini-drama market. Such firms are not typically aiming to profit directly from selling dramas, however; instead, their goal is to attract audiences and embed ads linking to their other products and services. As a result, most e-commerce apps offer mini dramas for free — making it hard for more independent companies to compete.
Pinduoduo, JD, and Taobao all rely on short videos to keep users engaged on their apps… After all, the longer users stay on the platform, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
Liu Jinlong, CEO of Chinese mini drama platform ShortMax
“Pinduoduo, JD, and Taobao all rely on short videos to keep users engaged on their apps. They can’t afford to lose users to competitors,” says Liu Jinlong, CEO of mini drama platform ShortMax. “After all, the longer users stay on the platform, the more likely they are to make a purchase.”
Western companies are joining the mini-drama game: In 2024, Starbucks and McDonald’s launched their own series. A mini-drama launched by Chinese cosmetics brand Kans in March 2023 attracted millions of fans to its TikTok store, driving a 374.4 percent year-on-year increase in sales to 3.44 billion renminbi ($472 million).
The explosive growth of mini-dramas reflects not only the audience’s shrinking attention span but also the growing spending power of China’s aging population. More than half of China’s mini-series viewers are middle-aged and elderly, according to data from iResearch, a Chinese consulting firm. As a result, many storylines focus on love at first sight among characters of similar ages, as in My Sudden Marriage to a Rich Man.
Wang Bolan, a 55-year-old housewife living in Shenzhen, says that since discovering mini-dramas on her smartphone last year, she now spends nearly two hours a day watching various free series, while her TV at home is rarely turned on.
“For some reason, I became addicted to watching them, and sometimes my eyes hurt from staring at the screen,” Wang says. Recently, she has noticed that more and more apps, especially shopping platforms like Taobao and Pinduoduo, are releasing mini-dramas. “These short dramas contain ads, and sometimes I end up buying daily necessities through the ad links, which is quite convenient.”
ShortMax’s Liu believes that people like Wang illustrate the generation gap in wealth and spare time in China that is fueling interest in mini-dramas. “In China, people aged 40 to 55 are in a much stronger position than younger people when it comes to career development and disposable income,” he says.
“Young people in China are very stressed and busy, which makes it difficult for them to focus on mini-dramas,” says Natixis’s García-Herrero.
The mini-drama model is reminiscent of that pursued by the short-lived Quibi during the Covid pandemic. The streaming service also offered programmes designed for smartphones, with episodes lasting 5 to 10 minutes. But in late 2020, just six months after its launch and having burned through nearly $1.5 billion, Quibi announced its closure.
One key difference is cost. Chinese mini-drama budgets are small, with each episode costing just a few thousand U.S. dollars. Most use inexpensive actors and have production cycles that can be as short as two to three months. By contrast, Quibi spent $100,000 per minute on programming, its founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, was quoted as saying in an interview with Vulture several months before Quibi shut down. Industry insiders say most of the money spent on Chinese mini-dramas goes toward distribution and marketing — once a drama gains traction, it can attract tens of millions of views.
A segment from the first episode of The Fallen, released by China’s Ministry of State Security, December 9, 2024. Source: MSS
“In short, Chinese content producers create what users want to watch,” Liu says.
However, the boom has also led to an influx of vulgar and pornographic videos on mini-drama platforms, drawing the ire of Chinese authorities. In November 2022, the National Radio and Television Administration launched a crackdown on “illegal mini-dramas,” leading to the removal of more than 25,000 of them over the next three months.
The Chinese government’s stance on mini-dramas has since shifted, as it recognizes their huge potential. The Ministry of State Security, for instance, has released mini dramas centered on spy hunts, posting them on video apps. Local governments are also getting involved, with many hoping to attract tourists through mini-dramas.
“The government uses every format at its disposal for information dissemination, but this doesn’t mean it’s strongly endorsing vertical dramas as a format — it’s pretty neutral in itself,” says Rui Ma, Chief Business Officer of Speakly AI and founder of Tech Buzz China. “In the end, it is not government involvement but business economics that determines which approach thrives.”
Yi Liu is a New York-based staff writer at The Wire. She previously worked at The New York Times and Beijing News. Her work has also appeared in China Project, ChinaFile and Initium Media.
