As China eyes further opening up, the nation’s movie industry is expected to get yet another boost from the nation’s rising cultural confidence, experts said Tuesday.

“China needs its own track to promote its movie industry with soft power. The pattern applied by Western countries can only be a reference,” Chiu-ti Jensen, a New York-based Chinese publisher, at a forum hosted by the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) in Beijing on Tuesday.

Jensen, also a senior CCG fellow, mentioned that the rise in cultural confidence also gives China strength for “going out.”

Aiming to develop its cultural industry into a pillar of the national economy by 2020, China has been endeavoring to advance the globalization of the industry on the right path.

With fast expansion, China’s cultural industry had combined revenue of some $1.5 trillion in 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

In regard to the movie industry specifically, China is now the second largest movie market in the world after the US. Between 2006 and 2016, the domestic box office has risen by 33.8% to $7.2 billion. Some 48 out of 89 movies that yielded more than 100 million yuan at the Chinese box office in 2016 were made in China.

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In 2018, Chinese anti-terrorism action film “Operation Red Sea” already topped the box office with over $531 million and became a blockbuster in the overseas market as well, earning an average rating of 7.7 out of 10 on IMDB and 8 on Rotten Tomato, two well-known movie review websites.

Based on a real evacuation mission of PLA Navy, the story “brought in” Hollywood style in terms of production scale and technology, and “went out” with a Chinese story to spark patriotism with audiences of diverse backgrounds, experts at the forum pointed out.

The success of “Operation Red Sea” globally will definitely give China more confidence to tell China’s story well in the international context, experts noted.

China has been continuously injecting impetus to globalization by deepening overall reform and opening-up. Chinese President Xi Jinping renewed the call on Tuesday by vowing to break new ground in opening China further at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference in Hainan province.