BEIJING — For someone who’s lived in China since before the pandemic, the success of the animated film “Ne Zha 2” marks more of an industry milestone than a surprise.

The steady drumbeat of homegrown animation had picked up in 2023, just after the end of Covid-19 restrictions, with popular releases such as “Chang An” — a re-telling of Chinese poet Li Bai’s life from the perspective of his friend. It raked in about $250 million as the only animated film in China’s top 10 movies for the year, according to box office data from Maoyan.

The team behind “Chang An,” Light Chaser Animation, works largely out of an old white building in the sleepy outskirts of Beijing. The ceilings are high; stairs wind through the building to connect multiple floors and rooms — and a gym.

When I visited this week, some animators — working on their computers in the dark — were racing to finish cinematic lighting effects on scenes for this summer’s movie. Others designed historical Chinese robes, detailed eyebrows and re-created buildings.

“This place is no longer big enough,” Yu Zhou, president of the studio, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

He said the 380-person company needs to hire at least 100 more people in the next year to keep up with its new production plan: two movie releases annually starting from 2026, up from one a year currently. AI, he said, can only be a tool for now. Light Chaser plans to move to a new office in the second half of this year.

The studio sticks to a three-year production plan for all the movies it’s making simultaneously. It tries to imagine the future, and whether 20 million to 30 million people will watch it when the movie comes out, Yu said. “Will this story work in three years?”

This film slated for this summer, “Curious Tales of a Temple,” re-tells “Chinese ghost stories,” Yu said. The studio is in talks with “Hollywood mainstream players” for releasing the movie in theaters overseas, including in North America, at the same time as the planned China launch, he said.

Alluding to the studio’s appeal among global audiences, Yu claimed Light Chaser’s “Green Snake” — which is a rendition of a Chinese legend sets it partially in a futuristic city — did well on Netflix after its 2021 launch, remaining in the top 10 non-English content for three weeks.

Among the other animated features in the works, video-streaming company iQiyi is developing “Master Zhong” that’s expected to be released in China this year. Ya Ning, a senior vice president at the firm, said Chinese animation had started to break its “childish” image and was turning into an industry, expanding into movie merchandise and games as well.

“In the history of Chinese animation, there has never been a film like “Big Fish and Begonia.” … as far as the Chinese industry goes, this bold and breathtaking fantasy adventure stands alone,” entertainment industry magazine Variety wrote after the movie’s 2016 release.

The film was made by Beijing Enlight Media. That’s the same producer behind this year’s “Ne Zha 2” and “Ne Zha 1” that came out in 2019 — it had topped China’s box office that year.

“Deep Sea,” from Beijing studio OctMedia, won acclaim in early 2023 with its fantastical pastel-colored rendering of a young girl’s journey of healing following her mother’s abandonment.

While popularity hasn’t always turned into box office sales, “Ne Zha 2” was able to succeed in part because it appealed to all ages, Liu Anxing, manager at a movie theater in Chengdu, told CNBC. While Liu said he was proud of Chinese animation industry’s achievements, he didn’t expect another “Ne Zha 2”-like blockbuster in the near future — at least not until “Ne Zha 3” comes out in 2028.

“Ne Zha 2” came out in China in late January as one of six movies for the week-long Spring Festival holiday — and took half the box office for the period, according to Maoyan. After its release in North America on Feb. 14, Maoyan data showed the movie beat Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” as the top-grossing animated film worldwide with more than 13 billion yuan ($1.79 billion) in ticket sales.

In contrast to Light Chaser’s focus on in-house production, the makers of “Ne Zha 2” relied on various studios. The director came from Chengdu-based Coco Cartoon, while Beijing Enlight Media was the primary producer and distributor. Chinese state media said nearly 140 businesses contributed to the production.

State media also highlighted how government subsidies from Chengdu to Qingdao have helped support domestic animation. Beijing in 2021 laid out a national plan for “building China into a major cinematic player” by 2035 that included a call for producing 50 films a year with box-office sales of at least 100 million yuan each.

Jonathan Clements, author of “Anime: A History,” cautioned that over-production of films could unpleasantly shock studios and investors. “Animation consumers are themselves a resource that needs to be carefully managed,” he said.

Clements added that in contrast to how Disney blockbusters made more than $1 billion in box office sales across multiple countries, “Ne Zha 2” has done so primarily due to sales in China. “You don’t have to worry about whether your story, or your characters, or your attitudes will play in other countries.”

China’s plan also specified that domestic films should account for at least 55% of the country’s annual box office sales.

Hollywood films, when allowed into China, have seen waning interest from domestic audiences. “Godzilla x Kong” was the only one to crack the top 10 last year, according to Maoyan. “Oppenheimer” failed to enter China’s 20 top-grossing movies in 2023, and “Barbie” was even further behind.

Back in 2019, “Avengers: Endgame” ranked third by domestic box office, according to Maoyan, just behind Chinese sci-fi sensation “The Wandering Earth” and the first “Ne Zha” film.

The characters and plots of many Chinese animated television series have come from stories written online by relatively unknown authors. China Literature, the operator of a major app for user-generated content, said 15 of the top 20 most watched online animated series in the first half of last year were based off content on its platform — in the last few years it’s also started putting the adaptations on YouTube as it strives to broaden its audience.

Chinese creators are also leveraging generative AI for filmmaking. Short-video streaming app Kuaishou is releasing a seven-part mini series, “New World Loading,” that’s largely created using the company’s Kling AI for video generation. Director Chen Xiangyu said the team just fed the AI model simple scripts, instead of having to draw characters.

For the third year in a row, CNBC is working with market research firm Statista to list the world’s top financial technology companies.

Including startups, scaleups and established tech players, the top global fintech list aims to assess companies using an objective, key performance indicator-based methodology.

You can find out more information on the research project and methodology by clicking here.

Applications are now open for companies to register their information for consideration by Statista’s researchers. To qualify, a company must focus primarily on developing innovative, technology-based financial products and services.

This year, we’re also digging deeper into the research to name the standout companies operating in the U.K. — the largest fintech market in Europe, as measured by the amount of funding raised.

Applications from companies headquartered in the U.K. will — in addition to being considered for the global fintech list — also be considered for a separate list of the U.K.’s top fintech companies. Firms do not need to fill in a separate application to be considered for the U.K. ranking.

Last year, fintech startups in the U.K. raised $3.6 billion in venture capital, ranking second worldwide and first in Europe for funding, according to industry trade body Innovate Finance. The country is also home to Revolut, Europe’s biggest fintech unicorn with a $45 billion valuation.

Companies can submit their information for consideration by clicking here. The form, hosted by Statista, includes questions about a company’s business model and certain key performance indicators, including revenue growth and employee headcount.

The deadline for submissions is April 25, 2025.

If you have any questions about the lists or need assistance filling out the form, please reach out to Statista: [email protected].

Successful companies will be listed in the category that most closely reflects their business model. This year, insurance technology will be included as a category in the global fintech list. The other categories are payments, neobanking, digital assets, alternative financing, wealth technology, and enterprise fintech.

You can check out last year’s list here, which included well-known brands such as Mastercard and China’s Ant Group, global unicorns such as Brazilian digital lender Nubank and buy now, pay later firm Klarna, as well as smaller disruptors including payments platform Primer and investing app Stash.

Democrat lawmakers led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday held a forum pushing back against the moves that the Trump administration and Elon Musk have taken to neutralize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Guests at the event included a retired military veteran helped by the agency, a mortgage broker who said the CFPB has helped curb industry abuses, and the bureau’s former head for supervision.

But the focus of the senators’ attention was Elon Musk, the driving force behind the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. While Musk was invited to the Washington, D.C, event, according to Warren, he didn’t make an appearance.

The lawmakers questioned whether Musk was conflicted in his efforts to dismantle the CFPB, highlighting his recent plan to launch a digital payments service within X, the social media network he owns.

“By seizing control of the agency, Musk can now root through all of the CFPB’s confidential data that DOGE has accessed on these potential competitors,” Warren said. “As Musk launches his new app, he faces oversight from the CFPB. His plan seems to be to eliminate the watchdog.”

A representative for Musk and X didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Earlier this month, operatives from DOGE gained access to CFPB systems, shortly before the bureau’s new leadership shuttered the agency’s headquarters, froze nearly all activities and laid off roughly 200 employees. A CFPB union has alleged in a lawsuit that acting CFPB Director Russell Vought intends to fire more than 95% of the agency’s staff.

“Elon, how do you justify shutting down the agency that’s going to be looking at your peer-to-peer payment plan?” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D.-Minn., asked rhetorically during the hearing Tuesday. “How do you justify shutting down the agency that has jurisdiction and oversight over many of the other financial issues that you are going to make money from doing?”

Responding to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D.-Md., about what Musk could do with CFPB data, Lorelei Salas, the former CFPB supervision director, said the regulator kept “very sensitive trade secret information,” including from payments services PayPal, CashApp and Zelle, as well as online lenders.

“We’ve been looking at a number of digital wallet companies, payments companies, and we have information… on the technologies that they’re using,” Salas said. “We have information on the secret sauce of the credit models that people used with artificial intelligence to make decisions about whether you get a loan or not.”

Late last year, the CFPB took steps to supervise tech giants and payments firms that dominate the market, including Apple and PayPal, and sued the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three biggest U.S. banks using it for allegedly failing to properly investigate fraud complaints.

Besides confidential data on companies examined by the CFPB, the agency has “very sensitive data” from consumers filing complaints, Salas added. Consumers often leave account numbers and other personal data in their complaints, agency sources have said.

Now, with the CFPB and its employees in a state of limbo, the question is how far Musk and Vought can take their campaign to minimize the watchdog. A federal judge has halted their efforts, saying that they cannot fire employees or purge bureau data for the time being.

“The CFPB has been sidelined, but it is not dead,” Warren said, asserting that only Congress can shut down the bureau. “Advocates are in court right now asking judges to enforce the law, and I am confident they are going to win.”