The Rapid Rise of the Poly Theatre Management Company

China Poly Group, a state-owned corporate giant with assets worth over a hundred billion U.S. dollars, has been a growing business for the past two decades, and one of its subsidiaries, Poly Culture - which was listed in Hong Kong in 2014 - is one of its main pillars. Poly Culture’s annual report 2018 reveals that most of its profit (about 388 million yuan) was made by the division of Art Business and Auction, followed by 174 million yuan by Cinema Investment and Management, and 60.2 million yuan by Performance and Theatre Management. Though being the least lucrative, the business of Performance and Theatre Management, operated by Poly Theatre Management (PTM, a subsidiary of Poly Culture), is by no means a small one. By the end of 2018, PTM run 64 theatres in 56 cities across China, contributing over 9.000 performances per year. PTM has become - as what it proclaims - the world’s largest theatre chain and the largest performing arts agency.

 

When PTM was founded in 2003, perhaps no one would have expected that the newly-born company would grow to such an extent in less than twenty years. In retrospect, the breakthrough took place in 2009, as eight theatres fell into PTM’s hands in that single year - more than the theatres PTM "conquered” in the previous six years altogether. The rise could be attributed to China’s loosening policies. In July 2009 the Publicity Department of the Communist Party and the Ministry of Culture of China jointly issued "Some Opinions on Deepening the State-Owned Art Performance Troupes Reform”, which is, to certain extent, a direct result of a nearly ten years experiment in restructuring the cultural field. 

 

 

Since the publication of `Some Opinions´ most of the state-owned performing arts organizations have been converted to commercial entities. The "iron rice bowl” (a Chinese expression referring to a job with guaranteed lifetime employment in state-run enterprise or public sector) in the cultural sector was hence broken, and artists had to start to "work” in accordance to business contracts with limited terms, even though the troupes they worked for merged to form state-sun for-profit performing arts groups - something that happened very often thanks to the supporting policies. Next to these fundamental changes, actions such as tax incentives and public purchase of and subsidies for non-profitable performances were also undertaken. Therefore, as it turned out, the performing arts market started to become vibrant. 

 

In the meantime, PTM took the advantages of these policies to amass resources of performing artists and their works. And just two months after the announcement of Some Opinions, the State Council of China published the "Plan on Reinvigoration of the Cultural Industry” which comprises the explicit goal that China "should develop art performance theatre lines and propel the chain operation of performance premises in major cities”. In other words, it set the tone for Poly's theatre chain, which had already begun to take shape, and dismissed the concerns on how a state-owned theatre stays in public ownership while outsourcing its management.

 

The year 2009 also marked the second year of the opening of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing. The controversial architecture mocked as "Giant Egg” in the heart of the capital caused many other cities in China to jump on the bandwagon. Amid the tide of theatre construction, the state-owned PTM favored by top authorities naturally became the local governments' reliable - if not the only choice of - partner.

 

 

In 2014, Poly Culture, the holding company of PTM, was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The prospectus disclosed that one of its main sources of income came from "theatre management fees paid by the theatre owners”, which implied that local governments, namely the actual owners of their cities' grand theatres, are barely competent to run the halls they have ordered to build. That is why they need to spend extra tax money buying the service of PTM in addition to the big spending on the building already. Hence to a large extent, the incompetence of Chinese local governments in theatre management has driven the growth of PTM.

 

It is worth noting that outsourcing theatre management is in full compliance with China's Government Procurement Law and the public-private partnership has been hailed widely in the country in recent years. In order to save cost and boost efficiency, local governments would be more than willing to offer theatres to PTM, as their "incompetence” can help strengthen their executive roles.

 

 

Whatever the reasons behind it, an undeniable fact is that the service provided by PTM is seen as "public service" in China, and to purchase it with taxpayers' money is not only lawful but in line with the policies made by the central government. Yet, a key question is: 

 

 

In China, the answer is positive, despite the common sense that the number of people a performance serves is quite limited, whether by seat availability or by venue location. Thus, the rise of PTM is actually premised on "theatre is a public service”, otherwise the deal between PTM and the local governments would lack legitimacy.

 

Touted by media as "a thousand times of growth in 15 years", "a constitutional model of culture", "a budding aircraft carrier of culture", etc., PTM's success is usually attributed to the strategies designed by its top leaders and their management approach. However, if there had been no open cultural policies implemented at a national level ten years ago, no theatre building boom, no incompetent local government in theatre management, and no such premise that "theatre is a public service" to guide policymaking and tax spending, the business of PTM could never have reached the same scale as it is today.

 

 

The usual practice for Poly Theatre Management (PTM) after taking over a new theatre is to set up a local subsidiary operated under PTM’s direct management. As the headquarters in Beijing takes charge of most of the programming, tour, and promotion, a poly theatre, in essence, is just an empty hall to be filled with performances, where only administrative staff rather than any artist or artistic director work. In other words, a theatre's joining the chain of PTM means to relinquish the right to establish its own "soul" -- or specifically, its own artistic profile.

 

The way that PTM deals with programming is quite simple: shortlisted stage works are put into three categories, and from each category a somehow equal amount of performances is picked to form a season's program. For instance, Category A (performances by royal ensembles or by Chinese central government-owned troupes) takes 30% of the shows in a season, Category B (performances by the winners at the provincial level of competitions in China) takes 40%, and Category C (experimental theatre and small-scale performances) takes 30%. This means that, as PTM grows bigger, theatres in China are expectedly to become more homogenized.

 

 

The management of Poly theatres is highly standardized, which is a feature of the theatre chain. However, the unique standard in management gives no chance to local governments to learn how to do the job. (Of course, PTM has no obligatory to teach them, either.) Hence, as time goes by, the local governments become more and more reliant on PTM. A fact is that in the past 16 years since PTM was founded, not a single Poly theatre has been handed over to its official owner. The reliance can lead to PTM asking a higher price when the management contract is renewed. Yet, whatever price a local government pays, the money comes from tax revenue. And despite the sum is used in the name of public purchase, there is a lack of transparency in the process of dealing. By far the only information disclosed online regarding PTM’s management service fee is 47.4 million yuan (roughly 6.8 million U.S. dollars) paid by Hebei Provincial Government for a three-year term of management of Baoding Guanhanqing Grand Theatre.

 

PTM, on the one hand, monopolizes abundant theatre resources; on the other hand, it has the absolute right to say "yes” or "no” to what can be performed. So not surprisingly, it has always been wooed and lobbied by arts groups, agencies as well as producers. And it is believed that before any final decision was made on programming, there is always a strenuous process to sift through all possible works. 

 

Notwithstanding the subjective considerations, there is one objective standard PTM must follow in programming - to bang the drum for national strategies and patriotic education. As shown in PTM's programs for the 2019/2020 season, the most important performances are those related to the topics "One Belt, One Road”, "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area”, "Coordinated Development of the Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Region”, and "the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China”. Obviously, PTM plays the role of political propagandist. To give another example, the model operas produced during the Cultural Revolution, such as The Legend of the Red Lantern, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, and The Red Detachment of Women, are still performed in many Poly theatres.

 

The rapid rise of PTM epitomizes the development of theatre in China, and PTM's two key rivals - China Performing Arts Agency and Juooo Theatre Management - are also expanding at full throttle. Nevertheless, it is still too early to claim that theatre in China has become flourishing, as the real value of a theatre takes root in its distinctive arts that nurture the souls of the people in a community, rather a venue being privatized to join a theatre chain at the expense of public money.