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China’s government is borrowing the format that has made short, binge-ready phone dramas a global habit and pointing it at official messaging. According to a South China Morning Post report published on Monday, Beijing is rapidly scaling up the use of artificial intelligence to produce short-form videos and microdramas in its publicity campaigns, in line with directives that stress technology’s role in strengthening ideological work and guiding public opinion. The result is a new wave of AI-generated miniseries that package policy, culture and history as entertainment, produced mostly by propaganda bodies and official media in cooperation with private studios and digital creators.
The newest example named by the South China Morning Post is “Tie Ji De,” or “The Iron Remembers,” an AI microdrama created by the news media centre of the People’s Liberation Army, whose first episode was released last Thursday. The paper contrasts it with the sensational tropes that dominate AI content on Chinese platforms, such as Cinderella romances, rebirth-for-revenge plots and post-apocalyptic survival stories. The official productions instead weave together Chinese culture, policies and initiatives, development achievements and revolutionary history. Beyond that opening, the full article sits behind a paywall, so this account relies on the portions of it that are public and on other reporting.
The policy backdrop is explicit. The report quotes President Xi Jinping as saying that mainstream media should use mobile dissemination to secure the strategic high ground in guiding public opinion, providing ideological direction and transmitting culture. Xi repeated the message at a Politburo study session in February last year, saying authorities must step up positive publicity and public opinion guidance and use modern science and technology to improve social governance. China also introduced rules for generative AI in 2023 requiring AI-powered content to conform to “socialist core values,” a set of 12 principles covering individual morality and public ethics under party leadership. Together, these directives frame AI not only as an industrial tool but as an instrument of messaging.
The report adds that publicity bodies are using AI microdramas to promote grass-roots policy initiatives and social governance, to showcase traditional Chinese culture and to display regional development. In plain terms, a local government that wants residents to understand a new policy, or visitors to notice a city’s progress, can commission a short fictional series instead of a brochure or a documentary. The material is designed to be watched on a phone, split into episodes of a few minutes and shaped to match the habits of viewers who already scroll through short videos.
The commercial industry around microdramas explains why the format is attractive. Microdramas are vertical, fast-paced serials that rely on cliffhangers and rapid twists, and they have become a major entertainment category in China. Xinhua reported in April that overseas revenue from Chinese micro-dramas rose 194.9 percent year on year in the first eight months of 2025, citing an industry white paper, and that AI is helping drive the global expansion by lowering costs and broadening who can make content. One creator in Wuhan, Yang Hanhan, made a historical short film with a team of three in 48 hours for about 3,000 yuan, or roughly $437, in computing resources. The Global Times quoted an industry figure estimating that about 2 million people in China now work on AI micro-drama content. Those are state-media and industry sources, but they point in the same direction: cheap, quick production at scale.
Abroad, the story is larger than propaganda. Beijing Review said overseas monthly active users of micro-drama platforms are approaching 100 million, with Chinese apps occupying many of the top positions, and argued that this growth was driven more by consumer demand than by policy support. China Daily has described a “self-and-other” approach in which creators reshape scripts for local idioms and commission remakes with local actors, such as versions of “domineering CEO” stories that have resonated with women viewers in the United States. That is a commercial strategy for winning audiences, but it also gives Chinese producers a channel into foreign phones that traditional state broadcasters have struggled to reach.
It is important to separate the two threads, because the evidence does not show them as one coordinated campaign. Entertainment microdramas for export are largely driven by private companies chasing revenue, and the reports reviewed do not claim they are directed by the state. The AI microdramas the South China Morning Post describes are the official ones, made by publicity authorities and aimed mainly at domestic audiences, with an ambition to improve how national narratives land at home and abroad. How much of that official content is being distributed to foreign audiences, and how well it performs there, is not documented in the coverage reviewed. There are no public viewership figures for “The Iron Remembers,” and no independent measurement of whether such dramas change attitudes.
The ethical and practical questions are easy to see. When AI makes video cheap, the barrier to producing persuasive content falls for governments, companies and individuals alike, and viewers may not always know who made what they are watching. China’s own industry has had disputes over AI “digital doubles,” with a Shanghai company criticized after debuting AI actors whose faces looked like those of known stars, according to Resonate, and Global Times noted that AI-generated content is easier to copy, clip and misuse. Those controversies concern entertainment, but they show how fast the tools are moving ahead of norms. For foreign audiences, the central issue is transparency: knowing whether a polished short series is a commercial drama, a creator’s work or an official publicity product.
For other countries, including the democracies that run their own public diplomacy, the development is a reminder that the contest over attention now happens in short clips and algorithmic feeds. Western governments and broadcasters have also experimented with short-form video, though not typically with state-directed fictional series, and each approach raises its own questions about credibility. Media literacy, platform labeling practices and disclosure rules will matter more as AI makes production easier. That point is general analysis, not a finding of the report.
What to watch next is concrete. Look for further episodes and spin-offs from official outlets, any release of audience data, signs that central bodies are issuing new guidance on AI-generated publicity, and whether foreign platforms or regulators adopt labeling requirements. The South China Morning Post’s full report is available at its site, and Xinhua’s account of the commercial boom is in its report on AI and the micro-drama industry abroad.
Readers who follow global technology, media and business stories can find more coverage at BusinessTech Nigeria. The short version is that China is not only exporting microdramas as entertainment, it is also testing them as a tool for messaging, and the viewers will be the ones to decide which stories they believe.
