Fueled by rapid development of AI technology, Chinese comic dramas are gaining immense favor in overseas markets.
In eastern China's technology hub Hangzhou of Zhejiang Province, an AI comic drama production company is creating a story of the Chinese household name and cultural icon Sun Wukong for the Vietnamese market.
According to the producers, assistance from AI allows the team to transform Chinese traditional stories into a visual language suited to overseas audiences. With lower production costs and incomparable production speed, AI tools are helping the crew to share Chinese stories with global audiences in a more effective way.
"Our overseas business has grown especially fast over the first half of the year and this trend last until now. Now we can launch 100 short dramas online every day, mainly targeting Southeast Asia markets, and are also extending into European and American markets. By the end of this year, revenue may reach tens of millions of yuan," said Yi Fengping, founder of the Hangzhou-based company. While in Shanghai, a firm that was initially an animation production contractor has redirected its focus toward the global distribution of AI comic dramas, given that the starting revenue per 10,000 views on overseas platforms is at least seven times that on domestic platforms, according to its founder. "In the first half of the year, our domestic business counted probably about 90 percent of the total. But now that part has shrank to only 30 percent, while overseas business accounts for 70 percent. After currency conversion, overseas revenue (per 10,000 views) outpaces domestic gains," said Sun Hao, founder of the company.
According to predictions from data analysis and research institution DataEye, the overseas micro drama market is expected to reach six billion U.S. dollars in 2026, with AI comic dramas expected to exceed four billion U.S. dollars, up about 390 percent from 2025. Chinese companies account for more than 90 percent of the market.
Industry insiders noted that the steady growth of domestic AI comic dramas' overseas business relies on the rapid iteration of domestic large models in video generation, speech synthesis, and multilingual translation.
"For example, we have a script agent, a character styling agent, and a storyboard agent. It can learn from directors' past experience and turn that into our agent's own capabilities, which are the agent's autonomous planning and self-reflection capabilities," said Chen Weiyu, head of AI technology at Yuewen Group, a Shanghai-based cultural IP powerhouse.
Chinese AI comic dramas win overseas favor
