The cinema of China is the filmmaking and film industry of mainland China, one of three distinct historical threads of Chinese-language cinema together with the cinema of Hong Kong and the cinema of Taiwan. China is the home of the largest movie and drama production complex and film studios in the world, the Oriental Movie Metropolis and Hengdian World Studios. In 2012 the country became the second-largest market in the world by box office receipts behind only the United States. In 2016, the gross box office in China was CN¥45.71 billion (US$6.58 billion). China has also become a major hub of business for Hollywood studios.

Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896. They were introduced through foreign film exhibitors in treaty ports like Shanghai and Hong Kong.

China was one of the earliest countries to be exposed to the medium of film, due to Louis Lumière sending his cameraman to Shanghai a year after inventing cinematography. The first recorded screening of a motion picture in China took place in Shanghai on 11 August 1896 as an "act" on a variety bill. The first Chinese film, a recording of the Peking opera, Dingjun Mountain, was made in November 1905 in Beijing. For the next decade the production companies were mainly foreign-owned, and the domestic film industry was centered on Shanghai, a thriving entrepot and the largest city in the Far East.

The first domestically-produced Chinese films to achieve financial success came out in 1921, most notably Yan Ruisheng, leading to increased investment in the film industry. In the early 1920s, China saw the establishment of several new film studios, such as Zhang Shichuan's Mingxing Film Company, with most popular films being at least partially based around established western genres. Following the May Thirtieth Movement, Chinese films began moving towards depictions of Chinese culture. This trend was manifested through the rise of "traditional costume films," including Romance of the Western Chamber, which dramatized classical stories, especially romances, and of the Wuxia genre. This tendency towards a more "Chinese" Cinema, as opposed to the earlier focus on westernization, was described as the campaign to "revive national cinema" (复兴国片) by figures like Lo Ming-yau.

From the start of the 1930s to the outbreak in earnest of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese cinema grew increasingly divided along political lines, primarily due to the ongoing Chinese Civil War and internal debates surrounding the invasion of Manchuria. After the Chinese government declared a ban on films related to the war with Japan, which were deemed "provocative," prominent figures in Chinese cinema aligned themselves with the "Left-Wing Film Movement," which had been founded by Communist-aligned literary circles.

During the late 20th century, a period when socialist dramas were beginning to lose viewership, the Chinese government began to involve itself deeper into the world of popular culture and cinema by creating the official genre of the "main melody" (主旋律 zhǔxuánlǜ), inspired by Hollywood's strides in musical dramas. In 1987, the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television issued a statement encouraging the making of movies which emphasizes the main melody to "invigorate national spirit and national pride". The expression main melody refers to the musical term leitmotif, which translates to the 'theme of our times', which scholars suggest is representative of China's socio-political climate and cultural context of popular cinema. These main melody films, still produced regularly in modern times, try to emulate the commercial mainstream by the use of Hollywood-style music and special effects. A significant feature of these films is the incorporation of a "red song", which is a song written as propaganda to support the People's Republic of China. By revolving the film around the motif of a red song, the film is able to gain traction at the box office as songs are generally thought to be more accessible than a film. Theoretically, once the red song dominates the charts, it will stir interest in the film that which it accompanies.

Main melody dramas are often subsidized by the state and have free access to government and military personnel. The Chinese government spends between "one and two million RMBs" annually to support the production of films in the main melody genre. August First Film Studio, the film and TV production arm of the People's Liberation Army, is a studio that produces main melody cinema. Main melody films, which often depict past military engagements or are biopics of first-generation CCP leaders, have won several Best Picture prizes at the Golden Rooster Awards. Some of the more famous main melody dramas include the ten-hour epic Decisive Engagement (大决战, 1991), directed by Cai Jiawei, Yang Guangyuan and Wei Lian; The Opium War (1997), directed by Xie Jin; and The Founding of a Republic (2009), directed by Han Sanping and Fifth Generation director Huang Jianxin. The Founding of an Army (2017) was commissioned by the government to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the People's Liberation Army, and is the third instalment in The Founding of a Republic series. The film featured many young Chinese pop singers that are already well-established in the industry, including Li Yifeng, Liu Haoran, and Lay Zhang, so as to further the film's reputation as a main melody drama.

When faced with the complexity of real society, their hands and feet quiver, and they deliriously shoot a bunch of childish fairy tales