It’s no accident martial arts stars are in Star Wars, or a Chinese pin-up popped up in X-Men. And there are one billion reasons why you won’t see a Tibetan mystic in Doctor Strange. Welcome to the really rather sinister world of... Chollywood

On a rocky hillside in eastern China peasant workers dig boulders from the barren landscape. Behind them an extraordinary edifice is rising. It’s a silvery string of 50ft tall Chinese letters that looks just like the iconic Hollywood sign above Los Angeles more than 6,000 miles away.

Matt Damon in The Great Wall. Its origins are in Hollywood but it was made in China by a Chinese director with a mostly Chinese cast and a Chinese/Western crew

This is the improbable location for Chollywood – though the sign reads ‘Oriental Movie Metropolis’ – China’s audacious multi-billion-pound bid to snatch Hollywood’s crown as the artistic and economic home of the global movie industry.

In recent months, Chinese tycoons have bought into US studios, production companies and distribution arms. They have also forged lucrative alliances with LA power players such as Steven Spielberg. The biggest cinema chains in America and Europe, including Odeon and UCI, are already in Chinese hands.

But it’s Chollywood, an arid stretch of coastline where you’re more likely to see a mountain goat than an A-lister on the red carpet, that reveals the true scale of the country’s ambition.

When complete in 2018, it will be a £6.6 billion film hub, developed using British expertise from Pinewood Studios, home to James Bond and Star Wars.

Chollywood, an arid stretch of coastline where you’re more likely to see a mountain goat than an A-lister on the red carpet,

By then the movie world should know the ramifications of new cinema censorship laws imposed this month by China’s ruling Communist party.

They outlaw anything morally or politically repugnant to the Chinese government in Beijing – cinema is now forbidden from promoting gambling, superstition, drug abuse and violence as well as time travel and one-night stands. It can’t depict scenes deemed to teach criminality and must ‘serve the people and socialism’.

Potentially, the new rules could ban actors who say or do anything to offend Beijing beyond China’s borders. Industry watchers are reminded of Brad Pitt’s two-decades-long absence from the Chinese market after he starred in Seven Years In Tibet. He returned to Shanghai for work last November for the first time since the 1997 film, which inflamed the diplomatic row over Tibetan sovereignty.

In short, a shift to the Far East for the movie business could have serious consequences for creative freedom.

Already there are signs of self-censorship. In last autumn’s Marvel blockbuster, Doctor Strange, the Tibetan mystic who features in the comic book version became a Celtic woman played by Tilda Swinton.

Transformers: Age of Extinction, in which the Chinese Communist party stood up to alien invaders while the White House dithered, broke Chinese box office records with larger takings than it saw in the US

Screenwriter Christopher Robert Cargill admitted the Tibetan character was ‘a cultural landmine’ saying: ‘He originates from Tibet, so if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that’s b******* and risk the Chinese government going, “Hey, you know one of the biggest film-watching countries in the world? We’re not going to show your movie because you decided to get political.”

Even where censorship is not a factor, there is wide-ranging evidence of the country’s growing influence.

Asian stars and Chinese plot-lines give Hollywood movies more traction in a cinema market that is forecast to overtake America as the biggest in the world by 2020.

This accounts for the appearance of actor-director Jiang Wen and martial arts specialist Donnie Yen in the recent Star Wars blockbuster Rogue One.

It’s also why Chinese pin-up Fan Bingbing (the fifth highest-paid movie actress in the world according to Forbes, commanding the same pay packets as Jennifer Aniston and Charlize Theron) plays a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her mutant in X-Men: Days of Future Past. She admits: ‘Hollywood considered the Chinese market, wanted to add Asian faces and found me. In ten years time I’m sure I’ll be the heroine!’

Wang Jianlin, a Chinese entertainment and property tycoon and the driving force behind Chollywood

And no wonder Matt Damon’s The Martian, which featured the Chinese Space Agency saving Nasa, proved so popular in China. Similarly, Transformers: Age of Extinction, in which the Chinese Communist party stood up to alien invaders while the White House dithered, broke Chinese box office records with larger takings than it saw in the US.

Damon’s The Great Wall, currently showing at British cinemas, is in the vanguard of the move eastwards. An 11th century action spectacular, it is the biggest budget film (£120 million) to be shot entirely in-country. Its origins are in Hollywood but it was made in China by a Chinese director with a mostly Chinese cast and a Chinese/Western crew.

It’s the work of Legendary Entertainment, which was bought last year by Wang Jianlin, a Chinese entertainment and property tycoon and the driving force behind Chollywood.

Next, the studio will begin work in China on the follow-up to Idris Elba’s sci-fi action picture Pacific Rim, and a Godzilla sequel is slated to start shooting this summer.

Wang, a self-made billionaire, is the boss of Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda and the country’s richest man, worth a staggering £25 billion. He’s leading a 21st century gold rush towards China’s £150 billion entertainment and media market.

Despite the looming threat of the censors, Wang’s plan is to lure major Hollywood directors and actors all the way to Chollywood. Along with the state-of-the-art facilities he’s offering a 40 per cent production rebate for foreign TV and movie makers, plus huge savings in production costs and an unlimited supply of extras. At £7 a day, they’re about a tenth of the going rate in California.

Chinese pin-up Fan Bingbing is the fifth highest paid movie actress in the world according to Forbes, commanding the same pay packets as Jennifer Aniston and Charlize Theron

For now, Chollywood is still a building site, and it’ll take more than that for Hollywood’s A-listers to desert the boutiques and brasseries of Los Angeles.

But Wang is determined to realise his silver screen dream. He understands that in real life, not just in the movies, anything is possible. e

By Sarah Oliver in London and George Knowles in China

On a rocky hillside in eastern China peasant workers dig boulders from the barren landscape. Below them an old man in a flat cap collects cardboard, roping it to his back. The soundtrack to the scene is the rhythmic clank of building work on a vast grid of outsize buildings and its backdrop is a silvery string of 50ft tall Chinese lettering with an oddly familiar look.

This is the improbable location for Chollywood – the sign will spell out the words ‘Oriental Movie Metropolis’ – China’s audacious multi-billion pound bid to snatch Hollywood’s crown as the artistic and economic home of the global movie industry.

In recent months Chinese tycoons have snapped up US studios, production companies and distribution arms. They have also forged lucrative alliances with LA power players such as Steven Spielberg. The biggest cinema chains in America and Europe, including Odeon and UCI, are already in Chinese hands.

But it’s Chollywood, an arid stretch of coastline where you’re more likely to see a mountain goat than an A-lister on the red carpet, that reveals the true scale of the country’s ambition.

By this time next year it will be a £6.6 billion film hub – and it’s been developed using British expertise from Pinewood Studios, home to James Bond, Star Wars and Harry Potter.

It is part of China’s emergence as a 21st-century economic superpower. However, it’s unlikely to have a Hollywood-style happy ending, for the dragon nation’s raid on the film business coincides with the implementation this month of stringent new censorship laws.

These outlaw anything morally or politically repugnant to the Chinese government in Beijing – cinema is now forbidden from promoting gambling, superstition, drug abuse and violence. It can’t depict scenes deemed to teach criminality and must ‘serve the people and socialism’.

The handiwork of the People’s Congress Standing Committee, these draconian regulations would instantly outlaw big screen classics such as Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, Trainspotting and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. Any attempt today to make movies like these in China, or to even show them in a Chinese cinema, would put the industry on a collision course with hardline President Xi Jinping.

Traditionally Chinese films have been inoffensive epics set in Imperial times, featuring downtrodden peasants bravely rising up against their oppressors. They were made for domestic consumption and propaganda purposes and deftly avoided the censor’s pen.

But if China’s corporate assault on Hollywood succeeds these new laws could have serious ramifications for Western creative freedom and therefore cinema audiences around the world.

Already there are signs of self-censorship. When Benedict Cumberbatch starred as Doctor Strange in last autumn’s Marvel blockbuster, the Tibetan mystic who features in the comic book version became a Celtic woman (played by Tilda Swinton) to sidestep China’s sensitivity to the row over Tibetan sovereignty.

And even where censorship is not yet the key issue there is wide-ranging evidence of the country’s growing influence.

Asian stars and Chinese plot-lines give Hollywood movies more traction in a domestic cinema market which is forecast to overtake America as the biggest in the world by 2020.

This accounts for the appearance of actor-director Jiang Wen and martial arts specialist Donnie Yen in the recent Star Wars blockbuster Rogue One. It’s why Chinese pin-up Fan Bingbing (the fifth highest paid movie actress in the world according to Forbes, commanding the same pay packets as Jennifer Aniston and Charlize Theron) plays a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her mutant in X Men: Days of Future Past.

It explains why it was the Chinese Space Agency that saved Nasa in The Martian, and why in Transformers: Age Of Extinction the Chinese Communist party stood up to the franchise’s alien invaders while the White House dithered. The latter was partly shot in Hong Kong and featured significant Chinese product placement too.

Matt Damon’s The Great Wall, currently showing at British cinemas, is in the vanguard of this movement. A period action spectacular, the story of a European mercenary embroiled in fighting a sci-fi monster army in ancient China is the biggest budget film (£120 million) to be shot entirely in-country.

Next there will be a sequel to Idris Elba’s sci-fi action picture Pacific Rim, and a Godzilla sequel is slated to start shooting this summer. Big names attached include Star Wars actor John Boyega, cult director Guillermo del Toro and Netflix breakout child star Millie Bobby Brown, a sure sign of confidence in the shift east.

CHOLLYWOOD OR BUST £6.6bn: Estimated building cost of Chollywood 5.4 million m2: Total area of Chollywood site £7: Daily rate for extras in China £14m: Amount earned last year by Chinese actress Fan Bingbing £150bn: Value of China’s entertainment and media market 27: Number of new cinema screens built every day in China in 2016 34: Number of foreign films allowed to be released in China each year Advertisement

So it is starting to look like a kind of new cultural revolution. The question is: where will it end? The answer lies on that barren hillside that will soon be a shimmering movie city on the outskirts of Qingdao – today famous only for Tsingtao beer – 400 miles south east of Beijing.

The mogul behind the complex is Wang Jianlin, boss of Dalian Wanda, an entertainment and real estate conglomerate. Wang is China’s richest man and he’s leading the gold rush towards China’s £150 billion entertainment and media market..

Last year he splashed out £2.8 billion on Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind Jurassic World and now The Great Wall. He has a movie finance deal in place between Sony Pictures and AMC cinemas, the parent company of Odeon and UCI, which belongs to him too.

He has made no secret of his aim to lure major Hollywood directors and actors to Chollywood.

Along with the state-of-the-art facilities he’s offering a 40 per cent production rebate for foreign TV and movie makers plus huge savings in production costs and an unlimited supply of extras. At £7 a day, they’re about a tenth of the going rate in California.

His vision has been delivered in part by Pinewood, whose consultants have been working on the design and build of the studios and provision of production and post-production services. The deal between the British company and the Chinese was signed in Downing Street in 2014.

Unveiling the metropolis in LA last October, Wang said it was ‘an opportunity for Hollywood, not a competition for Hollywood’. However, industry insiders disagree, and a senior member of the Senate has publicly stated he fears Dalian Wanda’s deals are orchestrated by Beijing as it uses the ‘soft’ diplomatic power of the movie industry to enhance its image on the world stage.

For now it still takes a Hollywood-esque suspension of belief to see A-listers deserting LA to live and work in dusty, remote Qingdao.

But China has a template in the extraordinary Hengdian World Studios just 600 miles from Qingdao. Set up by another Chinese tycoon the area was, until the Nineties, another rural backwater. Today it’s the largest film studio in the world attracting China’s own A-listers and drawing millions of fans keen to catch sight of their favourite stars.

It’s what Wang wants to do in Qingdao, just on a global scale. As a self-made billionaire and one of the most powerful people in the world, he’s a man who knows that in real life, not just in the movies, you can pull off the seemingly impossible. Hollywood might want to start manning its barricades. e

By Sarah Oliver in London and George Knowles in China