Under reforms introduced earlier this year, however, local film distributors are permitted for the first time to pick, choose and bargain with film studios.

For Chinese audiences, this is a potentially enormous boon, a liberation from tedious productions often created more by political whim and bureaucratic fancy than artistic inspiration.

Film distributors and cinemas now have visions of luring millions of Chinese away from the television sets, karaoke bars and discos back into cinemas.

Meanwhile, state-run film studios are trembling with fear.

Political interference has been at the heart of China's failure to develop a film industry commensurate with the country's population, wealth of history and themes. But the old distribution system also shares the blame.

''The shortcomings of such ways of distribution have been thoroughly exposed,'' said Li Wenbin, a jocular and outspoken director in the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, and chief editor of China Film Weekly. ''In the past, film studios didn't worry about distribution, just like the daughter of an emperor not having to worry about getting married.'' Among the major deficiencies of Chinese films, lack of humour and truthfulness have been the most glaring, Li said.

''It is said that in foreign films, all the details look real though the whole story is not, but with Chinese films, though the story may be based on real life, all its details seem false,'' he said.

''Many Chinese films are too depressing,'' said Geng Xilin, a director of the Beijing Film Distribution Corp. ''There's a large gap between the films and the needs of our audiences.'' Formerly, all copies of films, no matter how good or bad or what the production costs, sold for 10,500 yuan (HK$14,238). OF COURSE, a popular film would sell more copies than a mediocre one, ''but there wasn't much difference between a good and bad film in terms of income'', said Geng, an effusive chain-smoking woman in a long, shiny black coat and black leotard over white lace stockings.

''Studios earned little more by making good films,'' Li said.

Under the reforms, distributors will have to haggle with studios over prices. While distributors may well have to pay much more for copies, they should, in theory, be able to make much more money, provided they have an eye for films audiences like.

After largely ignoring the tastes of audiences for four decades, distributors, directors and bureaucrats do not seem to be sure of what it is Chinese people want.

Mr Liu Hongpeng, manager of Beijing's Capital Cinema, said it was ''police-love-fight films'' which attracted the largest numbers, along with ''all films not suitable for children''.

Geng said Chinese people wanted kung fu films, love stories, thrillers and detective movies, along with a smattering of films about ''great people''.

Li said in addition to thrillers, police stories and comedies, audiences also wanted films about Chinese history and its leaders, and ''films about our traditional ethics and morals and our national spirit''.

Whatever it is that Chinese people want, studios will have to start making it, and that is causing concern in some quarters.

A woman director from a southern province said: ''Now we are forced to collect funds ourselves and you know, directors aren't businessmen.'' And, she said, high-minded works could suffer as studios competed to satisfy more vulgar tastes.

''Now we have to cater to the tastes of moviegoers - most of them youngsters,'' she said. ''And you know those youngsters care for nothing but stimulation. They love pop songs and rock 'n' roll instead of high-grade and graceful symphonies.'' However, a man whose Shenzhen company makes and distributes films disagreed.

''I don't think the new method will vulgarise our films,'' he said. ''For example, kung fu and police films from Hongkong are nice because they combine fighting with love affairs. Not like our films: a hero talks love with the heroine, then fights with some bad guys, with the two parts strictly separated. Of course, such films have less artistic appeal.''