How micro drama is reviving China economy

Without red carpets or A-list stars, a quiet revolution has reshaped Chinese entertainment: the rise of the "micro drama." These low-budget, high-drama stories, made for the small screen, have exploded into a formidable cultural and economic phenomenon.

Since 2022, growth has accelerated sharply. According to a Peking University report titled "2025 Report on the Development Pattern of China's Micro-Drama Industry and Its Employment Stimulus Effect," the sector expanded from less than RMB 1 billion in 2020 to nearly RMB 100 billion in 2025.

Designed entirely for mobile viewing, with fast-paced plots and frequent twists to capture attention, micro dramas reflect China's unique digital ecosystem and evolving user behaviour.

Shifts in user behaviour

Smartphones have become indispensable, reshaping how people consume information, socialise, and seek entertainment. The traditional landscape (16:9) television format has gradually given way to the vertical (9:16) screen, making micro drama a natural fit for digital audiences.

Between January and August 2025, average daily time spent on micro drama apps rose from 95.7 to 120.5 minutes, stabilising at around 1.5 to 2 hours. Notably, engagement did not decline after the initial surge but continued to grow gently, signaling that micro drama has become an entrenched, enduring part of daily entertainment routines.

This trend aligns with increasingly fragmented lifestyles in China. Long work hours, commutes, and the rise of gig work have reduced time for cinema visits or long series, driving demand for quick, emotionally satisfying content during short breaks.

At the same time, a major shift in content production is underway. While traditional film and television have emphasised artistic expression and narrative depth, today's platform-driven era places greater influence in the hands of the audience. User preferences, viewing habits, and real-time feedback now play a decisive role in shaping content.

Micro dramas' growing economic impact

Amid a challenging employment landscape, micro drama has emerged not only as a content trend but also as a meaningful source of jobs. It is fast becoming a new type of cultural industry with notable employment-generation capacity and broader industrial spillover effects.

Unlike the traditional film and TV model, characterised by high cost, long cycles, and reliance on star power, micro drama operates on mobile distribution, algorithm-driven recommendations, and real-time data. This enables a "low-cost, high-frequency, rapid-turnover" mechanism, shifting production from single-project drives to large-scale parallel operations.

This transformation has reshaped content supply and altered employment structures across the film and television industry.

In 2025, micro drama directly created jobs for approximately 690,000 people. Factoring in multiplier effects across the industrial chain, it indirectly supported another 1.34 million roles. Direct labour input reached 36.85 million workdays, while the total across the entire chain exceeded approximately 100 million workdays.

The report categorises micro-drama-related employment into three types:

• Direct employment: On- and off-screen roles such as production crews, actors, scriptwriters, and post-production specialists.
• Indirect employment: Supporting sectors such as local services, equipment rental, tourism, and eCommerce, driven by production clustering and project mobility.
• New forms of employment: Emerging roles such as ad traffic operators, content editors, AI-generated comic adaptors, virtual production specialists, and localisation experts for overseas expansion.

Micro drama is also creating fresh industrial opportunities for many mid-tier cities, acting as a lever for local economic transformation. With relatively lower dependence on resources concentrated in megacities, cities that offer basic filming facilities, affordable living costs, and underutilised cultural or tourism resources are able to form industry clusters.

This allows regions facing industrial restructuring to stimulate local economies through production and related services, boosting cultural tourism and fostering new service sectors.

Furthermore, through upstream and downstream linkages, micro drama generates ripple effects across labor-intensive and service-oriented industries. Job creation extends far beyond the set, driving sustained demand in hospitality, catering, transportation, equipment rental, eCommerce, cultural tourism, platform operations, and content globalisation.

Through production hubs in places such as Hengdian, Zhengzhou, and Xi'an, micro drama continues to generate spillover benefits for hospitality, tourism, eCommerce, and cross-border services.

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