China’s box office revenue for the 2025 Spring Festival holiday has reached a record-breaking 8.1 billion yuan (around 1.13 billion U.S. dollars), including pre-sales, pushing the country’s total box office earnings for the year to 10 billion yuan as of Monday, according to film data platform Beacon.
The figure marks the highest-grossing Spring Festival period in the nation's cinema history and has solidified China's position as a global leader in box office revenue for 2025, surpassing North America.
The week-long holiday, which runs from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, is traditionally the most lucrative period for China’s film industry, with audiences flocking to theaters to watch new releases.
A total of six new films hit the cinema screens during this year’s Spring Festival holiday.
This year’s strong performance was driven by several high-budget blockbusters, including the animated fantasy Ne Zha 2, detective thriller Detective Chinatown 1900, and historical epic Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force.
Ne Zha 2 leads with 3.88 billion yuan (around 538.98 million U.S. dollars), followed by Detective Chinatown 1900 at two billion yuan (around 277.82 million U.S. dollars). Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force has grossed 940 million yuan (around 130.58 million U.S. dollars), while The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Great Hero has earned 572 million yuan (around 79.46 million U.S. dollars). Boonie Bears: Future Reborn brought in 464 million yuan (around 64.46 million U.S. dollars), and Operation Leviathan earned 261 million yuan (around 36.26 million U.S. dollars).
2025 Chinese box office surpasses 10 billion yuan, ranking first globally
China's trade in services maintained a positive trend in the first quarter of 2026, with the total trade achieving a year-on-year increase of 2.3 percent, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce on Friday.
In the first quarter of 2026, China's total service trade volume reached over 1.8 trillion yuan (about 267.9 billion U.S. dollars). Exports of services totaled 704.52 billion yuan, up 11.2 percent, while services imports totaled 1.1 trillion yuan, down 2.6 percent.
China's trade in services during the period mainly exhibited two characteristics, said the ministry.
First, the exports of knowledge-intensive services maintained rapid growth.
Trade in knowledge-intensive services expanded by 1.6 percent year on year to 793.71 billion yuan in the first quarter, accounting for 43.5 percent of total service trade.
Exports of knowledge-intensive services reached 384.26 billion yuan, up 6.1 percent year on year. Personal cultural and entertainment services, as well as financial services, recorded particularly sharp export gains of 25.6 percent and 16.1 percent, respectively. Imports of knowledge-intensive services totaled 409.45 billion yuan, down 2.3 percent year on year.
Second, travel service exports and transport services imports grew rapidly.
In the first quarter, travel service exports jumped 32.3 percent year on year to 105.35 billion yuan in the reporting period, the highest growth among all service export sectors.
Meanwhile, imports of transport services totaled 230.2 billion yuan in the first three months, an increase of 22.8 percent, marking the fastest pace in the top five service import categories by scale.
Inbound tourism has been booming in recent years after China introduced expanded visa-free policies and conveniences such as instant tax refunding for departing visitors.
China's trade in services maintains positive growth in Q1
