Opinion | Bollywood offers China lessons on soft power

President Xi Jinping recently told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he watched the Bollywood film, Dangal, and liked it. Their conversation took place on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, on June 9.

Apart from Titanic, a Hollywood blockbuster of the 1990s, few foreign films have been bestowed such glory in China as Dangal. In 1998, Titanic became such a massive hit that then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin recommended the entire Communist Party Politburo watch it. At that point, few Chinese expected a Bollywood movie would rock the whole nation 20 years later.

Dangal, a sports drama about India’s first gold medal-winning wrestler, Geeta Phogat, collected US$186.5 million in 47 days of its run in China, breaking a slew of records for the Indian film industry. It is the first non-Hollywood film to amass over 1 billion yuan (US$147 million) in China. It is the first time that the box office for a Bollywood blockbuster in China has outperformed that of its home Indian market. The Indian press, whose China pages are often occupied by stories of border disputes and diplomatic rows, are baffled at the reception for this film: they marvel that no matter where Aamir Khan appears during his travels across China, he creates a stir with his fans.

Dangal’s success reaches far beyond box office earnings in China. It also prompts a comparison between China and India. China’s state media has a long tradition of playing down and disparaging India. Beijing’s propaganda machine often portrays India as a nation of failure with appalling sanitary conditions, horrible public transportation and rampant rape. Beijing tries to link India’s “backwardness” to its democracy, suggesting that democracy leads to chaos while China’s totalitarianism creates prosperity and efficiency.