China's micro-drama market doubled to more than 100 billion yuan (about 14.41 billion U.S. dollars) last year compared to 2024, said an official from the National Radio and Television Administration at a press conference in Beijing on Friday.
Micro-dramas are serialized video dramas with episodes lasting 1-3 minutes each, designed for mobile viewing. The booming entertainment format has exploded in China over the last couple of years, generating billions in revenue through pay-per-episode models and advertising.
Wang Xiaoliang, director of the Department of Network Audio-visual Program Management under the administration, said at the press conference that 33,000 micro-dramas were launched in 2025, attracting nearly 700 million domestic users.
To foster the booming sector's development, he said the administration will formulate measures and implement an action plan, with the ultimate goal of boosting service consumption.
According to Wang, the planned "Administrative Measures for the Development of Micro-dramas" aims to bolster fair market competition while safeguarding content safety, thereby stimulating innovation and creativity and creating a healthy, positive, and orderly environment for the industry.
He noted that the action plan is designed to empower the development of culture, tourism, sports, agriculture, and other sectors by integrating different industries to expand service consumption.
"We will promote the integration of technological and industrial innovations, and utilize new technologies such as artificial intelligence to create new service consumption scenarios, in order to unleash the potential of service consumption. We will encourage service exports, including helping excellent micro-dramas to go overseas and tap into international markets," said Wang.
China's micro-drama market doubles in 2025, reaching nearly 700 million viewers
