What’s behind the Barbie mania in China?

The Barbie movie has dominated the box office in China, in a year when many other US movies haven’t performed well in the world’s second-largest film market. It outperformed movies like Mission Impossible and the films from the Marvel franchise. It’s been eagerly received for its message, raising a question of whether it flew under the radar of the country’s media censors. So what’s behind Barbie’s success in China? In this episode: • Yifan Yu ( @YifanYuNews • ), tech reporter for Nikkei Asia • Marrian Zhou ( @ZhouMarrian • ), US-China relations reporter for Nikkei Asia Episode credits: This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li and our host Malika Bilal. Khaled Soltan fact-checked this episode. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik. Munera AlDosari and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. Special thanks to Ben Li. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook