Europe is master of an art form for which the BBC has been the standard bearer

As the world has been transfixed by China's economic transformation over the past 30 years, another great change has taken place, one that has barely been noticed: a cultural reformation that some would say is a result of the prosperity that opening-up has brought to the country.

Of course, the word culture covers a multitude of activities and facets of a nation's essence, but here I propose to focus on one very specific aspect of that, documentary films.

Exploring the unknown is a trait as deeply ingrained in humans as life itself, which explains the popularity of this genre, and for many years Chinese audiences have been highly attracted to documentaries of foreign origin, particularly from Europe.

From the start of the policy of reform and opening-up in 1978 to the beginning of this century, the TV documentary Animal World has been a staple of China Central Television. Indeed for Chinese it is virtually a household name.

Most of the program's contents were bought from the BBC, reflecting the fact that documentaries from Europe have been part and parcel of the development of Chinese TV.

But TV is not the only venue where documentary makers show their wares.

In 2010 the Frenchman Jacques Perrin brought his documentary masterpiece Ocean to China, and it brought in 25 million yuan ($4 million; 3 million euros) at the box office, ranking second in Chinese documentary film history after Michael Jackson: This Is It, which brought in 40 million yuan in 2009.

Of course 25 million yuan is chicken feed as a proportion of the country's total box-office takings, but Chinese audiences are not used to going to the cinema to see a documentary, so the figure is impressive.

CSM Media Research reckons that of the top 10 documentaries shown on CCTV's Documentary Channel Nine that recorded season-high ratings last year, five were from the BBC: Life, Frozen Planet, Planet Earth, Water Life, and Nature's Great Events; one from France, Apocalypse: World War II; and one from Russia, The Great Patriotic War.

During the Spring Festival a few weeks ago, a documentary from ITV of Britain, Too Cute, the theme of which is people keeping diaries of their pets, was a blockbuster. The program, which naturally stars kittens and puppies, swelled traffic on the Internet, giving plenty of grist to young micro-bloggers in particular.

So why exactly are Chinese audiences so enamored of documentaries from Europe?

Compared with more commercialized documentaries, those from Europe tend to have an idealistic air. At the same time, because of less commercial pressure, they appear to have a more independent spirit.

In rapidly developing China, audiences seem to have tired of commercially driven programs. Fed a daily media diet which has the main ingredient of economic triumphalism, those who watch documentaries from Europe are given a take on the world that is much more poetic and much more spiritual.

For audiences who feel the tide of economic change simply leaves them adrift, the documentary offers a visual getaway that calms the spirit and sates their sense of curiosity about the world. As Lord Byron put it:

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Storytelling is an important tradition in European culture. Whether it is North European mythology or Harry Potter, whether it is Shakespeare or Dickens, stories from Europe are told the world over.

One job of a documentary maker is to record the truth, and another is to relate a story in a sensitive way. In doing the last of those two, a good documentary must have a good narrative. It may well be that with the narrative offered in commercial films Hollywood is unmatched, but with documentaries, Europeans are undoubtedly superior, as they are with literature.

Chinese documentary viewers owe a debt of gratitude to these outstanding European documentary film producers and directors, who translate these great narratives into the language of image.

Another reason for the Chinese attraction to European documentaries is that the choice of viewing venues is still relatively limited in China. Internationally, television is no longer the major sales channel for documentaries, largely having been supplanted by the cinema, new media and offline sales.

But in China, TV stations continue to be the biggest documentary buyers and transmitters. CCTV has a long-standing relationship with the BBC, which in a sense flies the flag for European documentary producers.

The BBC's successes on Chinese state television are no doubt one reason for the popularity of European documentaries generally in the country.

The Documentary Development Alliance and Chinese Documentary Filmmaker Union, set up last year, have connected the country's more than 100 television stations and more than 1,000 documentary production institutions, forming China's largest documentary broadcast and production network.

Its documentary production capacity and purchasing power cannot be underestimated. The CCTV documentary channel, for example, now has a well thought-out strategy for buying and commissioning, supplemented by independent shooting of its own films. Other Chinese television stations buy most of their documentaries rather than making their own.

Under this strategy, Chinese TV stations will become important buyers of documentaries on the international market.

At the same time, as China's new-media industry continues to grow, so will the purchasing power of video sites, and young viewers will become even more willing to watch documentaries on the Internet.

So in the foreseeable future, China may have a growing appetite for documentaries. For European documentary filmmakers and investors, to come to China filming a documentary, or shooting a documentary about China and selling it to the Chinese is akin to being preoccupied with trivialities while overlooking the real task at hand.

Europeans could learn from Hollywood by working with Chinese film makers on co-productions or joint ventures. These, with Chinese elements added to an almost perfect script, then a bit of editing, might be a key to gaining access to the Chinese market.

After all, every country has its own linguistic and narrative habits, and there is at least one principle of international business that is immutable: in selling to a market, cultural differences need to be handled properly.

Of course, successful European documentary makers cannot ignore the competition from local Chinese counterparts. In fact the heat of such competition is happening not just in China but around the world.

A single episode of CCTV's A Bite of China, during its first round of overseas promotion, sold for more than $350,000, a landmark for the rise of the Chinese documentary.

The second season of this documentary is now being shot, and it is easy to imagine Chinese food lovers worldwide gorging heartily on it. This program has also created a new filming model for Chinese documentaries, and the way it has been put together can be replicated. As individual directors have a reduced role in production, large-scale quality documentary shooting in China becomes possible.

In the near future it may even be that for documentary makers worldwide, works from China will be regarded not only as something to admire, but, in a spirit of competition, something to fear.

The documentary market in China is vast, but for those who want to get their hands on the first nuggets of gold, the digging will not necessarily be that easy. The documentary industry chain in China is far from complete, unlike the large industrial chain that has been put together in the commercial-films realm.

But as the country's legal system and the system of intellectual property rights protection are improved, Chinese documentaries will find that they have a promising future that knows no bounds. There is no reason, either, why European documentary makers should not continue to prosper.

In the words of the Chinese saying, big waves sift out sand, and gold will always shine.

The author is a researcher at CCTV Development Research Center. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily 03/08/2013 page11)