The State Film Administration ("SFA") has recently issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Building of Cinemas to Promote the Prosperous Development of the Film Market (the "Opinions"), immediately effective from the date of issuance.
The Opinions put forward goals in four aspects, one of which is to increase the total number of cinema screens covered by the city cinema chains to over 80,000 across the whole country by 2020 and make the distribution of cinemas and screens more reasonable and aligned with the urbanization level and population distribution, and also outline several tasks including "speeding up the building and development of cinemas" and "deepening the cinema chain system reform". Additionally, the Opinions state that, cinemas are encouraged to actively employ advanced technologies to upgrade the film projection environment and projection equipment and facilities. Financial aids will be offered from the national special fund established for the film industry development, to support the installation of equipment using advanced technologies, such as the image maximum (IMAX) system and the laser projector, in cinemas. The amount of financial aids granted will be capped at 20 percent of the costs of buying equipment, and each cinema may receive a financial aid of up to CNY500,000. Furthermore, the Opinions expressly state that, the annual inspection system will be operated for cinema chains, and the reward and punishment mechanism and the exit mechanism applicable to cinemas will also be optimized.