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Media and Creative Industries in East Asia

Edited by Darrell William Davis, Michael Berry, Peichi Chung, Wesley Jacks, Wenchi Lin and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh

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Published 31 March 2027

About this book

Offers a collection of original scholarly essays on current and emerging East Asian mediascapes

  • Explores key themes of resilience in the face of post-pandemic uncertainty, financial constraints, government regulation and technological disruption
  • Covers a broad and balanced range of media and creative industries, from legacy media like Japanese anime and Hong Kong cinema to emerging digital forms, including Taiwan podcasts, Chinese webnovels, video game heritage, and AI K-pop idols (e.g., Aespa, Superkind)
  • Features different sectors/genres in media and creative industries including film, television, anime, video, games, streaming services, theatre, popular culture and Internet of Things
  • Examines the dynamic media environments across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, focusing on both local specificities and global challenges, such as the strategic responses of local industries to Netflix's global dominance

This volume of scholarly essays is a valuable look into current and emerging landscapes of media and creative industries. With 13 chapters structured into three parts, the areas covered range from Chinese film distribution, webnovels, game design and marketing, Japanese anime, Korean Wave, Hong Kong video diffusion, Taiwan podcasts, and East Asian film and television vis a vis Netflix. A major theme is resilience in a post-pandemic, changing phase curbed by financial constraints, government regulation, internet disruptions and creative impulse under these stressful conditions. Human ingenuity breaks through in a time of machine generated outputs in creative sectors, from music, movies, art, and literary composition.

Table of contents

Figures

Acknowledgements

List of contributors

Introduction: Media and Creative Industries in East Asia
Darrell William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh

Part I. Histories

1. Japan’s Anime Industry: An Economic Ecology and its Changing Dynamics
Nobuko Kawashima

2. The Long 1980s of the Chinese Film Industry: Import Partnerships and Distribution Characteristics
Wesley Jacks

3. The Making of Video City: The Diffusion of Video Technology in Hong Kong 1960s–1990s
Klavier Jie-Ying Wang

4. The Korean Wave: Origins, Evolution, and Future Trajectories in the Post-National Age
Doobo Shim

Part II. Genres

5. Digital Heritage and the Documentation of Hong Kong in Video Games
Peichi Chung

6. Innovation and Creativity in Taiwan’s Emergent Podcasting Culture: Toward a Local Articulation
Eva Tsai

7. The ‘Comprehensive and Individualistic Peer Production’ of Webnovels in China: Storytelling and Storylistening under Capitalist Platformization, State Regulation, and Intellectual Intervention
Matthew Chew

8. The Evolution of Metaverse and AI K-pop Idols
Jinhee Park

Part III. Sustainability

9. Walled In, Walled Out: The Transformation of Hong Kong Cinema in the Early 2020s
Yiu-Wai Chu

10. Integrating the Experiences of Viewers: Strategies of Major Japanese Television Networks in the Age of Netflix
Erica Ka-yan Poon

11. The Hype and Hope of Chinese-language Production Centre: Netflix and the Genrification of Taiwanese TV Dramas
Shuling Huang

12. Navigating Legitimacy: How Streaming Platforms Reshape Media Piracy in Contemporary China
Fengyun Zhang

13. Viu and Its Originals in Southeast Asia: The Regionalization of a Streaming Platform as an Interregional Contact Zone
Enoch Yee-lok Tam

Index

About the contributors

Darrell William Davis

Darrell William Davis is Honorary Professor in the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh co-authored East Asian Screen Industries (2008), the first of its kind in the field. Davis coedited Cinema Taiwan: Politics, Popularity and State of the Art (2007), and most recently, he coedited 32 New Takes on Taiwan Cinema (2022). He wrote a key essay in A Companion to Chinese Cinema (2012); Davis was visiting professor at New York University, where he taught Chinese media marketization, Japanese and Taiwanese cinema.

Michael Berry

Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. He is also Director of the Center for Chinese Studies. A distinguished scholar in the field of Sinophone studies and recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, Professor Berry has authored 20 books and is renowned for his contributions to understanding modern Sinophone literature and culture. He has a particular interest in thriving, interdisciplinary fields such as digital humanities, intercultural communication, translation studies and more. His publications include Translation,
Disinformation, and Wuhan Diary: Anatomy of a Transpacific Cyber Campaign (2022), Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke (2022), A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (2008), and Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (with a foreword by Martin Scorsese, 2005).

Peichi Chung

Peichi Chung is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious and Cultural Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and received her PhD in Telecommunications from Indiana University Bloomington. Her research interests focus on the political economy of game industries in Asia and new technology and digital culture in East Asia. Her journal articles and book chapters appeared in edited volumes of Media and Technologies for Work and Play in East Asia (2021), Global Game Industries and Cultural Policy (2016) and Handbook of China’s Cultural and Creative Industries (2016). Her current research projects focus on independent game distribution and digital labor and data analytics in the esports industry in East Asia.

Wesley Jacks

Wesley Jacks is Assistant Professor in the Department of Digital Media and Creative Industries, Lingnan University. His research centers on media industry studies and Chinese film historiographies. His work has appeared in Journal of Chinese Cinemas, International Journal of Cultural Policy, and Global-e.

Wenchi Lin

Wenchi Lin is Professor of English at the National Central University, Taiwan and was the founding director of Taiwan Film Institute. He produced and curated Taiwan Cinema Tool Kit. Lin was visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, where he taught a course on Taiwan cinema. His most recent publication is 32 New Takes on Taiwan Cinema (2022).

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh

Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh is Lam Wong Yiu Wah Chair Professor of Visual Studies, Dean of Arts and Director of the Centre for Film and Creative Industries at Lingnan University. She is editor or co-editor of The Colonial Screen: Early Cinema in Hong Kong (2025), Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Republican China (2018), , co-eBeyond Shanghai: New Perspectives on Early Chinese Cinema (2016), Rethinking Chinese Film Industry: New Methods, New Histories (2010) and she is co-author of Staging Memories: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s City of Sadness (2015) and East Asian Screen Industries (2008).