'965,000 yuan spent on cinema tickets' sparks probe into China government department
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 27 November, 2014, 1:38pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 27 November, 2014, 6:41pm
Andrea Chen [email protected]
Cinema in China is now big business, with Hollywood film studios increasingly keen to promote their films there, such as last year's "Iron Man 3". Photo: Reuters
A Chinese government department is under the spotlight for spending 965,000 yuan (HK$1.2 million) on cinema tickets in a single year.
Wuhan’s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission was the fifth largest buyer of tickets in 2011 at Jinyi Cinemas, a leading mainland cinema chain – contributing 0.11 per cent of its total mainland revenue over 12 months, Jinyi’s prospectus has shown.
A 2005 Wuhan municipal government list of personnel shows the commission had only 76 employees.
If the all money was spent buying film tickets at Jinyi’s three cinemas in Wuhan that year, each member of staff would have ended up watching some 285 films.
However, today the commission rejected the claim in Jinyi’s prospectus – and posted an official online statement saying that the prospectus was “untruthful”.
The commission has also instructed its lawyers to file a complaint against Jinyi.
It has also demanded that Jinyi makes a public statement to clarify the level of the payment and also apologise about what has happened.
A spokesman for the commission said the municipal department had a number of different subsidiaries, which employed more than 200,000 staff. Occasionally the commission gave free cinema tickets to its employees, the spokesman added.
“However, it would not have cost us that much money.”
Mainland China’s cinemas showed 178 films during 2011, reported China Film Report, a newspaper administrated by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
News of the commission’s huge spending on cinema tickets at Jinyi Cinemas came to light on Wednesday after reporters spotted the figures in the cinema chain’s prospectus.
Jinyi Cinemas, founded in Guangzhou in 2004, is one of the top five mainland cinema chains, with 108 different outlets in 30 cities.
The company’s application for its initial public offering is to be reviewed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission tomorrow.
