A Chinese Netflix? Bilibili makes a play for Gen Z viewers in China with documentaries and reality shows co-produced by overseas partners such as the BBC

Can cute pandas, cuddly foxes and endurance races help draw Generation Z viewers to Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili?

The website is partnering with overseas content producers to make documentaries tailored for the young Chinese market

2-MIN READ2-MIN

The first episode of Hidden Kingdoms of China, a Bilibili co-production with National Geographic, featured pandas in their natural habitat. The Chinese video sharing platform is hoping content like this will help it become China’s Netflix. Photo: National Geographic/ Jacky Poon

Published: 4:30pm, 3 Dec 2019Updated: 8:04pm, 3 Dec 2019

A Chinese online video sharing and entertainment platform is teaming up with leading content producers in the West to boost its reach among China’s growing audience of Generation Z viewers.

Bilibili, which is better known for its animated and comic content and mobile games, has recently collaborated with National Geographic on a wildlife series called Hidden Kingdoms of China, and Discovery for The First Man Out of China, a reality TV show that pits an Afghan war veteran against a group of Chinese sportsmen in survival games.

Also in the pipeline is a Netflix documentary called Hope Frozen, which revolves around a Thai-Buddhist couple grieving over the loss of their two-year-old daughter to cancer. The show, expected to be released next year, follows the family’s struggle to find closure after deciding to cryopreserve her in the hope that science might revive their beloved child in the future.

Other overseas partners include the BBC and, in Asia, the Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

Golden snub-nosed monkeys were featured in Bilibili’s Hidden Kingdoms of China. Photo: National Geographic/Jess Tombs

Bilibili’s boost in educational content such as documentaries signals its ambition to target China’s fast-growing Gen Z market segment, which is made up of consumers born between 1990 and 2009.

Leo Zhang, general manager of intellectual property cooperation at Bilibili, says the platform is diversifying its content in response to the evolving tastes of its young viewers.