BBC Journalists SHOCKED By ADDICTIVE And SEXY Chinese TikTok Dramas
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Hello, I'm Hannah Gelbart and welcome back to What's in the World from the BBC World Service. Today we're talking microdramas, a video trend from China. They're really short films, so they're only two or three minutes long and they're made for watching on your phone. So they're pacey, they're often racy and they can also be pretty cringe. Think about secret billionaire husbands, vampire lovers or there's one called Falling for My Ex's Mafia Dad.

They first popped up in China in 2018 and they are bringing in billions. Last year, the industry was worth 7 billion US dollars and this trend is going global. So what do microdramas mean for the evolving movie industry and our ever-shortening attention spans?

Here with me in the studio is Meng Tianzhan from the BBC's Global China Unit. Hello, welcome to the show. Hi Hannah, nice to be here. Grab some popcorn. Yeah, love that. What are we watching? Royal Billionaire Secret Heiress Love Story. Okay. It's a pretty dramatic title. I know. Oh, Luna and I have been together for ages. I was never going to marry you.

You're my sister. How could you do this to me? Everything that's yours has always been mine for the taking. I mean, come on, this isn't the first time, so why don't you just pipe down like you always do? Here comes slapping. It's not only are you two having an affair, but you try to set me up. And this is one of the big ones, right? Yeah, this one has millions of views just on their trailer they posted on YouTube. So imagine how many people have watched the actual entire episodes.

I love the drama. Like, I like the plot lines. I like how fast it is. Acting was not the best, not going to lie. But they're taking a lot. They've got like an adopted daughter. You've got rich family. You've got poor. You've got bride abandoned on wedding day. Where does their popularity come from? Yeah, so as we've seen, the dramatic plot is definitely one of the big drives for people. And I would say like with all the text on screen, it

make the transition faster, easy to consume. And instead of spending hours to build up the characters, you can just take one minute and know everything that's going on. So the fast accessibility makes it so easy to spread. And the other thing is definitely the crazy plots, ups and downs, twists and turns, and in such a short time, it's so handy. So I guess that's some of the secret why it's so successful. Who's making them?

Most of the platform has a route in China and the production company, though we have actors, actresses from the US, from UK or from China, but most of the crew members are from China. And the script, like most of the time, is written by a Chinese script writer and then translated to different languages. So these like

family themes and dramatic. You're not going to marry him. I'm going to marry him. But sister, how could you take him away from me? Is this like these kind of Chinese plot lines that you see, you know, in books and stuff? Are these kind of the common themes of Chinese TV dramas as well and soaps?

Yeah, the TV dramas, the soap opera in China, definitely big on these emotions and relationships and the family feel it. And I don't think that's just Chinese. I think we see similar plots in telenovelas and even like in some Shakespeare's, we see the family feel it and the fights between family members and the love story. So there's a common scene like among that can transcend the nationalities and culture. People can relate to the dramas, but definitely growing up like in China, watching a lot of

Chinese drama shows, that's an element I'm not unfamiliar with. And these are bringing in a lot of money. Yeah, so in China last year, the box office is over 50 billion yuan. That's nearly 7 billion US dollars. And that's exceeding China's box office offer.

of entire 2024. What feature length? Yes. So the short ones are doing better than the long ones? Definitely. And that's the first time we actually seen the trend surpassing the actual box office. It's not just in China. Around the world, they've been downloaded over 950 million times collectively. And as of March 2025, they're bringing 2 billion in-app purchases outside of China across different countries.

So as you say, they started off in China, they build on these kind of Chinese themes and plot lines. But now the trend has gone global and they're really popular elsewhere, too.

Yeah, so it's definitely been a global trend. So firstly, it's in China and quickly has been popular in the US. But since 2024, we've seen the trend even growing further in Latin American countries, in Southeast Asian countries. So we've definitely seen a lot of them. And we look at the download data across different languages and regions, and we see there are over 100 countries where the top downloaded entertainment chart has at least one of these Chinese microdrama apps. So

if we're seeing on a map, it's like basically half of the world, they are consuming this type of content. Are they just consuming them like on TikTok? You're scrolling through TikTok and there's a micro drama or they're dedicated apps that people download and do you have to pay for subscriptions? Yeah, yeah. So that's how I first saw these episodes actually as on my Instagram and TikTok.

But after you saw several episodes, they will leave you a cliffhanger there. If you want to finish the rest, you have to download their dedicated app, like Real Short, Drama Box, Drama Wave, Short Max, Flex TV, you name it. There are so many of them. So they will have some episode teasers on YouTube, Instagram, and you can watch them. But if you want to finish the full story, usually you have to download the app. So they're from China, like you said, but they have also faced some controversy. What has the government there said about them? Yeah, well, you know, China is a

big country and they're like a huge audiences and not surprisingly, a lot of his people are now getting hooked on these type of dramas and it definitely catch the attention from the authorities. So in traditional sense, China have a very strict

rules to review all the films and TVs, which usually take longer times to make and gives them enough time to review its content. But in the micro drama scope, because it's so fast and so many things coming out all at once, the censors actually kind of lagging behind. They're trying to play this catch up games. And there are several things they say about this shows. Like, first of all, they want it to have the correct political directions and right values.

And they're also saying we should promote the right social standards, social values. For example, if you are like a fight between a mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, that's not good because we don't want that much drama. We want the family to be harmonious. So if there are too much fighting between in-laws, that's not...

What about all of the sex and relationships?

I know. We've seen some of the episodes that borderline soft porn even. And the pornographic content is definitely a big no. But because the censor, they don't have that many people to watch every single episode. Sometimes they do have a little bit things leaking through. They pack so much into that.

and they turn them around so fast. There are so many of these. How heavily do they use AI for their production, but also for the script writing? And can you tell that things have been written by AI? I would not be surprised if they've used AI in all aspects of the production. So I've talked to some industry insiders, like RealShore, for example, the platform they told me they've used AI in their post-production for VFX, visual effects.

And another company, Shortmax, its CEO Liu Jinglong, he told me they are trying to experiment with AI to write a script outline so they have a skeleton and they can fill in the content afterwards. And it's been employed in many other aspects, for example, like a vampire story. Sometimes you need a very fancy, complicated settings, but with the AI, they can generate a virtual background so they don't have to spend all those money to build up the scene.

I think recently there's one called White Fox in China. It was produced entirely by AI.

Is it labeled? Does it say this is an AI generated? Yeah, it is. And they are actually branding themselves as this innovative method to quickly generate outputs. And so the whole team only has like four people. They are using this chatbot to generate the AI script and they have like virtual characters to create like audio, visual, all through AI. So the entire production is taking like less than 10,000 yuan with four people in two weeks.

imagine how fast they can make if everything's in that speed. And that churn is feeding this growing trend, as you say, more and more people around the world. And a lot of it must be to do with the fact that they're on our phones. So I am pretty guilty of staying up late and scrolling on my phone late into the night. I think I use my phone for like four or five hours a day. In fact, there's a study that says that a lot of over 18s use their phones for around five hours a day. And

We're getting more and more used to short form content. Our attention spans are getting shorter. Do you think that's why these micro dramas are so popular? I definitely agree with you and just...

Personally, I'm not going to tell you how many hours I spent on my phone. Thanks to TikTok, we are getting so used to vertical dramas under one minute, one after another, just like doom scrolling, no end. But is it doom if it's entertainment? I would say this is entertainment scrolling. Well, it's up for debate. In this doomed world, we need some entertainment to de-stress, detox, relax.

So yeah, I definitely think these trends are a byproduct of how people's attention span has been shortened over the years. Like we used to sit through hours of films, but now we can just sit through like

one, two, three minutes without like getting distracted. So that's definitely one thing we saw not just among our generation actually like in China people over 60 are also becoming a huge population who get hooked on this type of drama. They use their phones constantly like every other young people and yeah these are just what they need and the more they watch the more

they are getting used to watching shorter things. So I would say, yeah, there's no stop for the scrolling. What does this mean for TV and film producers around the world?

Definitely TV and film industry are facing big challenges from the shorter dramas. We've seen in China that the box office is being surpassed by the micro dramas, incomes. So I would say it's going to be challenging for people in traditional film and TV industry how to play catch-ups and how to gain the attention. We've also seen people like actors, producers, directors behind the scenes, people they used to making a lot of big projects.

screen movies and sometimes when there are not enough big screen opportunities they would take the smaller gigs to be on these shows we've just watched. There are still cinephiles out there who likes to enjoy uninterrupted time watching films, TV, binge watching White Lotus, but there are also a group of people who doesn't have the luxury, doesn't have the spend of attention, who just wanted to have one minute of free moment, to have the dopamine dose

So that's what we're seeing now. Critics might say that this is kind of a dumbing down of film and TV, right? Because you've got these average plot lines and average acting.

Yeah, so we are seeing a lot of people feeling very judgmental about this plot and things. So some of the people I've talked to are definitely saying they're so bad. But they're so bad, they're good because you don't have to use your brain. If you're watching those things in the long term, would that mean you are less likely to be able to see through longer films, documentaries? We are getting very repetitive content like a lot of vampires, a lot of werewolves, a lot of secret billionaire husbands.

Is that going to be making our minds also just simplified because after watching so many similar content with similar plots? But yeah, it's controversial, but people still love it. It's not exactly a reflection of real life, is it? No. But you know what? They're a snack. They are a delicious, tasty little treat.

So do you think micro dramas are here to stay? Yeah, definitely think there are a lot of potential for this industry. Like we've seen it growing in China and just in the last few years has expanded globally. So one thing they've been keep expanding is geographically. I think the next step they want some industry insider saying they are looking at African countries and looking at even Middle Eastern countries. So it's basically all over the world now. And so one woman in Cameroon,

And she talked to me, she said she lived in Cameroon and she lived in Nigeria and she loved microdrama. So she set up a WhatsApp group. I'm in that group. Like they've been discussing all the Chinese drama, microdramas every day, nonstop. So I think there's definitely a big potential for them to grow globally. And also they are not just targeting young girl or women.

Demography has also been growing in some places like Japan, Indonesia. There are actually more men watching than women. And in China, there are more older people start watching. And there are also different genres coming out every day, not just love story between a man and woman. There are also like

love story between two men different type of stories are getting more and more diversified at the end of the day people are like we said they are so short on their attention span and this is not going away and this type of content will just getting more popular thank you so much yeah thank you had such a good time just sharing this with you that is it for today thank you for joining us i'm hannah galbart and this is what's in the world from the bbc world service