Christian Bale, seen here accepting his Oscar for The Fighter, stars in Zhang Yimou's war epic The Heroes of Nanking. [Photo:CFP]

The DreamWorks animation Kung Fu Panda 2 last week broke box office records in China with 125 million yuan (US$19 million) in its opening weekend. The news is great for its creator but proves a little irritating for Chinese animators, according to the Guardian.

Hollywood movies have long used the exoticism of the Far East such as kung fu to entertain western audiences. Now, however, eyeing the ever-increasing Chinese film market,it has also aimed at wooing Chinese audiences.

According to a forecast by the China Film Producers' Association, China by 2015 will have built more than 7,000 new cinemas and have annual box office receipts of up to US$6 million. The country is set to overtake Japan as the second largest cinema market after the US.

While Hollywood is targeting the lucrative Chinese market, China's own film industry is already taking a step further to compete with its American rival.

For example, Legend of a Rabbit, the first release from a 4.5 billion yuan (US$694 million) animation facility developed by the state, will open in China this month.

The development shows that Chinese government wants to invest generously in cinema to spread the nation's cultural image to the world just as Hollywood has done for America.

It is not easy for westerners to understand traditional Chinese values through films, however, the Guardian points out, though it offers renowned Chinese director Zhang Yimou as an example of one of the most likely figures in China's film industry to bridge the gap.

Zhang's latest film, The Heroes of Nanking, is a big-budget historical drama about the 1937 massacre of Chinese citizens by Japanese troops, starring Oscar-winning Hollywood star Christian Bale. Zhang is departing from his usual martial arts spectaculars to portray the story of an American priest helping hundreds of civilians escape death during the Rape of Nanking.

The director says The Heroes of Nanking was made with international audiences in mind, not only with a story that carries a universal message about humanitarianism, love and redemption, but also in its casting of Bale in the leading role.

What matters for Chinese filmmakers is not whether they will be able to reach foreign audiences but whether they'll be able to satisfy their own, Zhang says. The Chinese film industry has to prepare in advance, as Chinese cinemagoers will certainly need a large amount of films to satisfy their entertainment needs in the near future.