While Hollywood limps toward the finish line of 2025 hoping to scrape together a respectable global total, China has already left last year in the dust — and it’s not even Thanksgiving.
By November 20, 2025, mainland China’s cumulative box office reached ¥43.8 billion RMB (approximately $6.12 billion USD), officially surpassing the full-year 2024 total of ¥43.5 billion — with two full months still to go. Local blockbusters like Ne Zha 2 (¥9.8 billion), The Battle at Lake Changjin III (¥7.3 billion) and the animated phenomenon Boonie Bears: Future World (¥4.1 billion) are driving the surge, but the real rocket fuel is something far more ingenious: the “ticket-stub economy” (票根经济).
Here’s how it works.
Since early 2024, dozens of provinces and over 60 major cities (including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Hangzhou) have rolled out cross-industry voucher programs tied to physical or digital cinema ticket stubs.
Show your movie ticket from the past 30–90 days and you unlock:
- 30–70 % off ski-lift passes and equipment rental at 200+ resorts;
- 50 % off hot-spring and theme-park entry (Happy Valley, Chimelong, etc.);
- 20–40 % off KTV private rooms, escape rooms, and live houses;
- Buy-one-get-one-free deals at thousands of restaurants and bubble-tea chains;
- Up to ¥200 off high-speed rail tickets on select routes.
The math is brutal for anyone trying to compete with staying home.
One ¥80 cinema ticket can generate ¥120–¥180 in secondary spending within the redemption window — a 1.5–2.25× multiplier. A family of four that sees *Ne Zha 2* in IMAX can easily save ¥800–¥1,200 on a weekend ski trip or theme-park outing. According to the China Tourism Academy, the average household participating in these programs cuts entertainment + leisure costs by 18–32 % while actually spending 41 % more overall because the discounts lower the psychological barrier to going out.
The government is the silent co-producer.
Participating merchants receive tax rebates of 10–30 % on redeemed amounts plus direct subsidies from local culture & tourism bureaus (Shanghai alone allocated ¥1.2 billion in 2025 for the program). Cinemas, in turn, get a cut of the redemption data, allowing them to target ads for the next blockbuster. Some chains now print elaborate foil-stamped, QR-coded stubs designed by famous illustrators — they’ve become collectibles traded on Xianyu (China’s eBay equivalent) for up to ¥500 each.
The results speak for themselves:
- Cinema attendance in tier-2 and tier-3 cities jumped 46 % YoY in the first ten months of 2025;
- Over 1.8 billion ticket-stub redemptions were recorded from January to October (China Film Administration);
- Secondary consumption linked to movie tickets added an estimated ¥96 billion to the broader leisure economy — roughly equal to the entire annual box office of India and South Korea combined.
While the rest of the world debates day-and-date streaming and shrinking theatrical windows, China has quietly engineered a system where going to the movies literally pays for your next vacation.
And the best part? The program is expanding in 2026 to include concert tickets, museum passes, and even e-sports arena entry.
In China, your ticket stub isn’t trash — it’s a coupon, a souvenir, and a stimulus check all in one. No wonder the box office can’t stop breaking records.
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