[The following is an overview of the history of film stock manufacturing in China with an emphasis on colour stocks.]

China did not gain the capability of manufacturing film stocks until the 1950s. Before the Communist Party established its political regime, most film industries were centralized in Shanghai. They sourced film stocks through the Chinese distributors of Agfa and Kodak. However, during World War II, the importation of foreign film stocks was constrained – domestic filmmaking was hugely affected by this shortage. Meanwhile, Japan invaded and occupied Northeast China, establishing the Manchukuo puppet state. Subsequently, Manchurian film production relied mostly on Japanese film stocks. After the war, the Communist Party confiscated film equipment from Manchuria and established the first socialist film studio, the Northeast Film Studio. Relying on remaining Japanese film stocks, the Northeast Film Studio set up a plant producing recycled film stocks. The production of recycled film stocks reused the cellulose nitrate base from developed film prints, adding new emulsion to it. However, the quality achieved was far from adequate, due to stains and damage to the used film-base. In addition, the inflammable nitrate base created a fire risk during filmmaking.

After the establishment of the socialist regime, production of film stocks in China evolved in line with other countries, as Chinese engineers learnt and imported technical know-how and production techniques from other countries. This commenced with the Baoding Film Stock Plant, which began construction in 1957, but was only officially ready for extensive, industrial production in 1965. The Baoding Film Stock Plant was one of 156 Soviet-aided industrial projects in the early Maoist-era, when China copied production models from the Soviets under the planned economy. During the 1950s, research on film stocks followed developments in other socialist countries – particularly Svema in the Soviet Union and Agfa in East Germany. After the sudden Sino-Soviet split in 1960, domestic research steadily turned to reproducing technical materials from diverse sources, including the United States, which meant that most Chinese colour film stocks were generally copies of Germany’s Agfacolor and Kodak’s Eastmancolor.

However, the Baoding Film Stock Plant (renamed as the First Photosensitive Film Stock Plant of the Ministry of Chemistry after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976) was not the only film-stock manufacturer in China, although it was the first and most comprehensive producer of colour film stocks in China. Other film-print manufacturing plants were built from the 1950s through to the 1970s: they included the Shantou Gongyuan Photographic Chemical Plant (Brand: Gongyuan); the Tianjin Photosensitive Film Plant; the Shanghai Photosensitive Film Plant (renamed as the Shanghai First Photosensitive Film Plant in 1978); the Wuxi Film Stock Plant (Brand: Aermei, after forming the joint venture with Agfa in the 1980s); the Liaoyuan Film Stock Plant (Brand: Jilin Film); and the Second Photosensitive Film Stock Plant of the Ministry of Chemistry – although many of these focused largely on making B/W stocks and consumer still-photography products. 

During the 1980s, China opened up to foreign capital investment. Kodak and Agfa-Gevaert’s products were the most predominant imported into China. The Wuxi Film Stock Plant became the Chinese manufacturing base of Agfa. In 1998, Kodak formed a joint venture with all the Chinese film stock manufacturers, including The First Photosensitive Film Stock Plant, and has subsequently dominated the production of film stock in China. However, the First Photosensitive Film Stock Plant still maintained the Lucky brand, which had become the brand name for all of its film stocks from 1984. The First Photosensitive Film Stock Plant was the last manufacturer of film stocks in China; eventually ceasing production of film stocks in 2012.