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
Agreements signed between China and Kyrgyzstan at the 2026 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Bishkek are expected to inject fresh momentum into Kyrgyzstan’s growing technology sector, especially in digital economy, artificial intelligence (AI) and clean energy, an expert said.
The summit, held Monday and Tuesday in the Kyrgyz capital, ran under the theme "25 Years of the SCO: Together Towards Sustainable Peace, Development, and Prosperity" and brought together leaders from more than 20 countries.
In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Chubak Temirov, deputy director of the High Tech Park of the Kyrgyz Republic, said the SCO’s 25 years of trust now pave the way for joint technology ventures beyond Kyrgyzstan’s domestic market.
"The SCO spent 25 years building relationships and trust between our countries, between China and Kyrgyzstan and all other members. And I believe the next stage should be about building things together, in relation to technology; technologies, companies, research, products, and maybe new markets. Today, technology company in Bishkek doesn't necessarily think only about our domestic market, which is only 7.4 million people. We think broader, in relation to all SCO countries, or even global market," Temirov said.
In his meeting with Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov on Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China and Kyrgyzstan should work together to build the Belt and Road Joint Laboratory and strengthen cooperation in areas including AI.
Echoing President Xi's words, Temirov identified local-language AI applications as the most immediate opportunity for Kyrgyzstan, while emphasizing that the best form of technology transfer lies in building local capacity to develop future products independently -- a partnership model that could deepen bilateral collaboration following the summit.
"I think the immediate practical opportunities for Kyrgyzstan in AI would be the local language AI. For example, let's imagine just a farmer in rural area, in some remote mountain in Kyrgyzstan, as you know, Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country, could speak to an AI assistant in Kyrgyz language and receive information about weather, maybe agriculture. A student could have an AI tutor, for example, in his own language, in native language. Or a citizen could interact with digital public services, right? Digital public services now, in every country, are becoming a major trend of digitalization. Everyone now, just sitting from home, can get any public service s and get different things to make his life easier, right?" he said.
"China has a big scale from infrastructure and a mature AI ecosystem. The best technology transfer is not when you receive any finished product. As I said, it's when your people gain capability to build already the next product themselves, right? This is the kind of China-Kyrgyzstan technology partnership I would see as a really good example. I truly believe that after this summit, we can go to a new layer of friendship and collaboration. And I see more opportunities between China and Kyrgyzstan in AI in general, and in other technologies," he added.
China, Kyrgyzstan double down on tech innovation at SCO Summit
