Ne Zha 2 has taken top spot as the world’s highest-grossing animated film – the first non-American, non-English-language animation to achieve the milestone. The story of a legend now becomes a legend in its own right with a budget of just US$80 million, compared to second-ranked Inside Out 2’s US$200 million. This cost-efficient, high-quality production is not an isolated phenomenon but a part of China’s growing cultural and technological presence.
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It follows a wave of breakthroughs in China, from the launch of Black Myth: Wukong, China’s first video game to boast an investment in time and money large enough to qualify as an AAA title, to the viral adoption of artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek’s AI models. Alongside China’s dominance in industries such as electric vehicles, solar energy and robotics, its creative sector is proving it is no longer merely an imitator but an innovator.
Ne Zha 2’s cost efficiency and stunning visual effects are a direct result of cloud computing advances in China. The film not only drew captivating stories from China’s cultural roots, but also showed that the country has the technology capable of creating an immersive cinematic experience with compelling landscapes, fantastic battle scenes and vivid facial expressions.
Importantly, costs were kept down. The production team used the pioneering technologies of Rayvision’s Renderbus cloud rendering platform to streamline and refine the image and 3D model rendering processes, allowing some complicated scenes that would have taken 412 days to render traditionally to be completed in just 24 hours.
For Chinese entertainment and technology, often dismissed in the past as derivative, the tides are shifting. A world stunned by the reasoning skills of DeepSeek’s R1 model must admit that innovation can flourish against constraints – China’s artists, engineers and entrepreneurs are navigating limitations, enduring setbacks and pushing past imposed barriers.
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For many cinema-goers, Ne Zha 2 recalls China’s tech rise with its story of struggle and overcoming setbacks.