Stephen Chow's The Mermaid is part of an emerging trend: Chinese dominance at the box office

The growth in China’s economy may have slowed to the lowest level in a quarter of century, but mainland cinemas have never been as crowded.

While the size of the Chinese film market may still lag that of the US – where box office revenues rose 7.4 per cent to US$11 billion in 2015 – it appears only a matter of time before China and its 1.3 billion potential viewers take the top spot.

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“China will overtake the US as the world’s biggest movie market as early as 2017,” said Hou Tao, vice-president of Beijing-based entertainment consulting firm EntGroup, which tracks box-office revenues.

Just last month, China’s monthly box office surpassed North America’s for the first time in history, taking a record 6.87 billion yuan (US$1.05 billion) in ticket sales – about US$250 million more than the North American market, Reuters reported.

Box revenues in China in 2015 amounted to 44 billion yuan, a rise of about 50 per cent from 2014 and more than 100 per cent from 2013.

China’s cinema box-office revenue is seen as a good gauge of the country’s consumer spending potential and has been lauded as a shining star in the context of the slowdown in GDP growth.