From TikTok-Style Soaps to Global Fame: The Rise of the Chinese Short Drama Industry
What started as bite-sized drama clips has grown into a booming global industry, turning unknown actors into stars and rewriting how fast TV can move.
Short-form soap operas from China are now driving one of the fastest-growing segments in digital entertainment. Built for vertical viewing, these one-minute episodes—known as 短剧 (duanju)—have turned social media into a global distribution channel and are racking up massive profits in the process.
Platforms such as ReelShort, DramaBox, GoodShort, and DramaWave pulled in nearly $700 million in Q1 2025 from in-app purchases. That’s a 300% increase from the same period last year, according to Sensor Tower. Collectively, these apps were downloaded 370 million times in Q1 alone—a 500% year-over-year jump.
ReelShort, the breakout player in this space, says it now has 55 million monthly active users. The company launched three years ago and has since expanded beyond romance and soap tropes into reality formats, thrillers, and art house concepts. A recent initiative opened a pitch competition to global creators, aimed at feeding a relentless content cycle that demands fast-paced, high-engagement stories.
Each season of a short drama is typically filmed in two weeks. Budgets are lean, casts are small, and the plots lean into dramatic tension: cheating billionaires, supernatural romances, secret heirs, and revenge arcs. Most episodes end on cliff-hangers and are pushed out through TikTok-style interfaces, generating repeat views and steady monetization.
Breaking the Ice—a romantic comedy centered on a professional ice hockey player—drew 300 million views on ReelShort. The company then adapted the story for Spanish and Japanese markets, swapping the hockey theme for football and baseball to match local preferences.
Localization is a key part of the strategy. Rather than dubbing existing footage, ReelShort re-shoots entire shows with cultural edits and new casts. This model helped the platform expand into Latin America and Southeast Asia, which now account for more than half of short drama app downloads globally.
The parent company of ReelShort, Crazy Maple Studio, was previously majority-owned by COL Group, a major Chinese digital fiction publisher. Today, founder Joey Jia holds a controlling stake, while COL retains 49%.
Chinese production teams and scriptwriters still guide much of the creative process, particularly when localizing for Western markets. Data-driven tweaks are standard practice. If a slap-to-the-face scene garners higher engagement when the actor falls to the ground, that gesture gets written into future scripts. Viewer drop-off rates and subscription triggers are constantly tracked to fine-tune plot pacing and actor performance.
While the genre’s storytelling remains rooted in cliché, it’s engineered for retention. In an era where streaming giants are tightening budgets and legacy studios are shedding staff, the Chinese short drama model offers speed, scale, and predictability. The formula might be simple—but it works.
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