From USA Today:
China's richest man plans to spend 50 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) to build the country's version of Hollywood in the northeastern city of Qingdao.
In a glitzy, star-studded red carpet event on Sunday, Wang Jianlin said his company, Dalian Wanda Group, will build a state of the art film studio complex in a bid to dominate China's rapidly growing movie market.
The Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis's 20 studios will include a permanent underwater studio and a 10,000 square-meter (108,000 square-feet) stage that Wang said would be the world's biggest. The facility will also include an Imax research and development center, cinemas and China's biggest film and celebrity wax museums. The first phase is planned to open in June 2016 and it will be fully operational by June 2017.
Trade discussions relating to movies have mostly involved the U.S. industry complaining about copyright and market access issues in China. Is this about to change? Will we begin to see a more traditional type of trade battle here, along the lines of Airbus and Boeing? My guess is there will be plenty of subsidies to complain about on each side.
