The local film and TV industry will receive a boost of HK$5 billion ($638.4 million) over the next five years for development under the Hong Kong Cultural and Art Industry Revitalization Program, thanks to the Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group (ADME), which has also committed to establish Hong Kong as its secondary operational hub.

This is a win-win for Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. Collaboration with local movie and TV producers such as TVB and the Empire Group will allow Hong Kong to tap into the vast mainland market faster, and the mainland to enter the global market more easily.

Moreover, the closer collaboration between the movie industries of the two sides will strengthen the city’s role as a superconnector between China and the rest of the world.

This is an important mission assigned to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the national 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), to use its soft power in arts and culture to tell the stories of Hong Kong and the mainland to the world.

Two veterans in the field believe that the investment will certainly help the development of the local entertainment industry. But they urged stakeholders to do more to rejuvenate the industry and strengthen Hong Kong’s status as an international hub for arts and cultural exchanges.

If the task of increasing the city’s international influence in arts and cultural exchanges is to be fulfilled, a much broader and higher vision has to be developed to win the hearts of the international community, said Yim Ho, a movie director based in the city. It was good to have large mainland investment for better production of movies and TV series so that the unique Hong Kong flavor could be better conveyed in the productions, but cooperation should go far beyond that, he added.

Hong Kong’s role as the East-meets-West hub for international cultural exchange should serve two purposes — linking the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and gaining recognition from the international community. If the cross-boundary collaboration is limited to producing market-oriented films such as the triad and action movies that Hong Kong is good at, that would be a cause for regret, he said.

With closer collaboration between industry players on the mainland and in Hong Kong, the local entertainment industry has entered a new era. I am confident that local industry players will find their unique strengths and transform the industry into a greater and stronger icon again

The GBA is a vast market for the entertainment industry. Given Hong Kong’s cultural similarity to other GBA cities, there are many Hong Kong stories that would strike a chord with residents across the region. This is one of the areas that cross-boundary collaboration should focus on from the viewpoint of marketing and integration. For instance, the stories about the East River Column’s (Dongjiang Column’s) resistance against Japanese invaders during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) are good movie themes that GBA residents and Westerners would find interesting, Yim added.

The East River Column, an anti-Japanese guerrilla unit led by the Communist Party of China, played a significant role in the resistance against Japanese invaders in South China. What made this piece of history interesting to the international community was the unit’s dedicated and unwavering efforts in rescuing many Allied prisoners of war and soldiers as well as international businessmen.

The East River Column’s brave deeds make a good patriotic lesson for Hong Kong’s younger generation, and are an accurate depiction of the peace-loving nature and righteousness of Chinese people that Westerners should know more about, said Yim.

Lai Man-cheuk, a multimedia producer, said instead of working solely with the leading local film and TV entities, the ADME Group should also help small movie production firms and promising young professionals with more resources. It’s good for the group to invest in Hong Kong’s entertainment industry, but it should focus more on small but creative movie production companies and young professionals if it wants to reinvigorate the local entertainment industry.

He said that leading film and TV entities had sufficient financing and if the entire investment was spent on them, it would serve as additional “icing on the cake”. So why not specifically help small firms whose productions are creative and unique but lack the resources to excel?

Lai described the local entertainment industry as a “sleeping lion”, saying that it will certainly make a strong comeback, but the government should do more to help the industry. For example, it should work with cinema operators to give discounted vouchers to students to encourage them to watch movies.

Hong Kong, though a tiny city in Asia, was dubbed the “Hollywood of the East” in the 1980s and 1990s, having the third-largest film industry in the world after India and the United States. Alongside its booming television and music industry, Hong Kong has produced numerous entertainment celebrities, and their popularity has spread to the Chinese mainland, Southeast Asia and other parts of the world.

In fact, Hong Kong’s Cantopop, action and ghost movies and TV series have been very popular in Asia and among overseas Chinese communities, serving as good media for cultural exchanges. Many top kung fu actors, stuntpeople and fight choreographers, including Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung Kam-po and Yuen Woo-ping, were sought after by Hollywood productions. They are excellent cultural-exchange ambassadors who have enhanced Hollywood’s action movies with their unique skills.

Nevertheless, the local entertainment industry has shrunk in the past three decades because of a lack of creativity, a brain drain and the rapid progress made by the mainland and South Korean entertainment industries.  

With closer collaboration between industry players on the mainland and in Hong Kong, the local entertainment industry has entered a new era. I am confident that local industry players will find their unique strengths and transform the industry into a greater and stronger icon again.

The author, a Hong Kong-based freelance writer, is an adviser to the Hong Kong Association of Media Veterans.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.