China's 550,000 micro-dramas in ten months are 94% AI-made

Cao Shumin, head of China's National Radio and Television Administration, said at an industry conference that nearly 550,000 micro-dramas were released in China in the first ten months of 2026, nearly 17 times the number recorded in 2025, as reported by Caixin Global on Nov. 5, 2026.

NRTA data reported by Maeil Business Newspaper on Nov. 8 put at least 94% of this year's new releases as made with AI. The parts add up: the China Internet Audiovisual Program Service Association counted 275,000 AI micro-dramas in the first half of the year, and NRTA data records 242,000 more released from July to October. Those two come to about 517,000, or 94% of the ten-month total.

Micro-dramas are short-form series built for a phone screen, and the format is one of China's fastest-growing in entertainment, according to Maeil Business Newspaper.

How 2026 compares

The second-quarter row comes from the China Netcasting Services Association, reported by ecns.cn on Sept. 15, 2026; the later rows come from the regulator's own officials.

Those numbers moved quickly. At a Sept. 17 press conference in Beijing, NRTA official Wang Xiaoliang said that about 430,000 micro-dramas had been released in the first eight months of 2026, 13 times the 2025 total. Wang, who runs the NRTA's Network Audio-visual Program Management Department, put the audience at more than 800 million viewers and the domestic market at more than 100 billion yuan (US$14.97 billion) in 2025, in the China SCIO readout.

The audience keeps growing on the platform side. ByteDance's micro-drama app Hongguo recorded 430 million monthly active users in September 2026, up 82% from a year earlier, according to QuestMobile figures reported by Maeil Business Newspaper.

Cost and speed explain the volume. Seoul Economic Daily reported on Nov. 7 that production time for a micro-drama has fallen to within five days from 15 to 30 days before AI, and costs to about a fifth of previous levels. ecns.cn, citing a studio co-founder, put computing costs below 200 yuan (about $30) a minute, about 10,000 yuan ($1,500) for a roughly 50-minute production.

The regulator's response is procedural. The NRTA called on platforms to review all content before release and put it through full human review, and pledged to crack down on AI-assisted plagiarism, unauthorized remakes and the unauthorized use of people's likenesses and voices, the Global Times reported on Nov. 8. Wang said in September that AI-produced micro-dramas must carry labels, and that platforms must verify a creator has permission to use a person's likeness or voice. "AI is a tool. Humans are the creators," Wang said.

Enforcement is already running: the regulator has removed 68,000 micro-dramas and moved against more than 1,200 accounts this year, and more than 90% of the targeted content was AI-produced, Wang said. The NRTA also says it supports live-action micro-dramas as the main source of high-quality content, and aims to release 1,000 high-quality micro-dramas this year.

For creators outside China, the rules read as a preview. If labeling and likeness-consent requirements spread to the platforms that buy AI micro-dramas, a maker would need review before release and documented permission for any real face or voice in a clip.

The NRTA's new micro-drama rules took effect on Sept. 1, 2026; labeling and human review are the next step for platforms.