China's micro-drama boom fuels ASEAN's push for local production

NANNING, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- As Southeast Asia emerges as a fast-growing market for micro-dramas, Chinese producers are increasingly partnering with local players to better cater to regional audiences.

The region accounted for 32 percent of global micro-drama app downloads in the first quarter of 2026, with users spending nearly 40 minutes a day on such apps, according to research firm Sensor Tower.

For Liao Jianfeng with Indonesia's Nanyang Bridge Media, one of the earliest companies involved in China-Indonesia film and television exchanges, subtitles are not enough if Chinese micro-dramas are to truly captivate Indonesian viewers.

Viewers increasingly expect human dubbing and stories rooted in their own society, he said, and some Chinese plots cannot simply be transplanted wholesale into an Indonesian setting.

The demand for locally relevant content is opening up new areas of cooperation. Beyond importing finished shows, Southeast Asian studios are seeking Chinese expertise to write, produce and distribute micro-dramas of their own.

Adapting the format across cultures took center stage at the China-ASEAN Audiovisual Week held last week in Beihai, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where 10 projects were signed, including agreements on joint micro-drama production.

The push to expand overseas builds on the rapid growth of China's domestic micro-drama industry. The user base there has reached 850 million, including more than 600 million monthly active users who spend over two hours a day on standalone micro-drama apps. Some 490,000 titles went online in the first nine months of 2026, more than 13 times the total released in all of 2025, according to the China-ASEAN Micro Short Drama International Communication Development Report.

As China's domestic output surges, overseas revenues are climbing rapidly. According to an industry report released at the event, the micro-drama market outside China is projected to surpass 6 billion U.S. dollars in 2026, up 67 percent from 2025.

Built around brief, briskly paced episodes, cliffhangers, family friction and sudden reversals of fortune, micro-dramas are tailored for smartphone viewing. For regional producers, mastering the micro-drama format means learning both how to hold an audience and how to reach them.

"Local companies increasingly want to produce their own slates rather than just buy finished products," said Zhu Xinmei, director of the international communication institute of the development research center under China's National Radio and Television Administration. They are looking to Chinese partners for story rights, production technology and training in script pacing and audience acquisition, she said.

One Malaysian studio has already put such expertise into practice. Jment Lim, founder and producer of Thousands of Years Media, told the Malaysian national news agency Bernama in February that the company had previously hired Chinese consultants to learn the format. Its Chinese New Year series, "When Luck Meets Love," was then scripted, filmed and edited entirely by a Malaysian team.

Adapting the storytelling can be harder than learning the production methods. Cayson Zhao, vice-president of Heard Island, the Chinese studio behind the micro-drama app FlickReels, said character types instantly recognizable to Chinese viewers can leave overseas audiences uncertain about the characters' motives.

In North America, he found it difficult to explain "shuanggan," the punchy, cathartic emotional payoff that Chinese micro-dramas seek to deliver through rapid plot developments.

"A script's intended effect can get lost in debates over why a character behaved a certain way or why a plot took a particular turn," Zhao said.

Generative AI can help a core creative team carry out its ideas more directly and test a wider range of genres at lower cost, he said, but people must still make the central decisions about a story's themes and emotions.

Regional institutions are helping creators get up to speed with the new tools. At the Beihai event, Dhanakorn Srisooksai, chief executive officer of the Thai Media Fund, outlined plans to work with Chinese specialists on AI production training, connect young creators from the two countries and help Thai projects reach wider audiences.

The commercial challenge extends beyond producing the shows. Producers also need to attract viewers in a competitive app market and find ways to monetize that attention.

Sensor Tower's 2025 study of DramaWave, a Chinese short-drama streaming platform, found that paid advertising accounted for more than 80 percent of its downloads between September and December 2024, highlighting the importance of promotion alongside content. Zhu also identified distribution and paid marketing as skills needed to sustain local production.

Advertising also offers an alternative to charging viewers directly. In Indonesia, Melolo, ByteDance's first attempt to carve out a niche in the global micro-drama market, has built a substantial audience through ad-supported viewing, according to Sensor Tower's 2026 report.

For tourism agencies, the potential return lies partly beyond the app itself. Chua Yee Ling, chief executive of Tourism Selangor, a state-backed tourism promotion agency in Malaysia, said China's use of micro-dramas to promote tourism and e-commerce provided lessons for Southeast Asian peers. Stories could introduce places and local products to prospective visitors and buyers.

Tourism Selangor co-produced "The 101st Qiaopi," an award-winning script at this week's China-ASEAN micro-drama competition in Beihai that connects ancestral ties in east China's Fujian Province with contemporary landmarks in the Malaysian state of Selangor. The story draws on Qiaopi, the letters and remittances that Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia sent home to their families, a subject revived earlier this year by the small-budget Chinese film "Dear You."

"Micro-dramas have a natural visual pull that bridges online traffic and offline travel," Chua said, adding that weaving shared heritage and local scenery into the plot can encourage viewers to visit filming locations.

The next wave of cross-border hits is likely to come from stories built around cultural encounters, said Liao, which call for local talent, settings and perspectives from the very first page.