Investors Can't Get Enough of AI-Created Dramas: Chinese Broadcaster Mango Up 64%

Investors piled into Mango Excellent Media this week. Shares of the Chinese broadcaster jumped as much as 64%, its biggest weekly gain since January 2015.

The rally made Mango the top performer on the MSCI Asia Pacific Index. That benchmark tracks large and mid-cap stocks across the region.

A Debut That Triggered a Buying Spree

The surge traces back to Aug. 31. That’s when Mango TV premiered “The Later Journey to the West,” billed as China’s first fully AI-generated long-form television drama.

The show also launched under a new “review-while-broadcasting” model. The regulatory framework lets producers submit episodes for approval in phases, rather than finishing an entire season first. That gives creative teams room to adjust later episodes based on audience feedback as a series airs.

The premiere’s impact spread beyond Mango’s own stock. Shares of Kunlun Tech and China Literature also climbed. Traders are betting that AI-made content could become the industry’s next growth engine.

The reaction echoes a broader pattern this year, as sudden investor enthusiasm has repeatedly followed breakthroughs in Chinese AI stocks.

Analysts Flag a Bigger Opportunity

State broadcaster China National Radio reported that roughly 128,000 micro-dramas hit the market in the first quarter. Micro-dramas are short, vertical video series popular with Chinese audiences. Of those titles, 95% were AI-generated.

Morgan Stanley analyst Rebecca Xu and colleagues framed the regulatory shift as a tailwind for streaming platforms.

“We see the policy shift as positive for platforms such as Mango and iQIYI amid rising competition from AI-enabled content and platforms.”

iQIYI is one of Mango’s main rivals in Chinese video streaming.

Citigroup analyst Brian Gong and colleagues took a different angle. They argued investors are overlooking the near-term commercial upside in China’s AI video models themselves.

ByteDance’s Seedance, which generates video from text prompts, remains the industry benchmark for quality, the analysts said.

However, rivals are carving out their own niches. MiniMax Group’s H3 model, a competing text-to-video system, offers near-premium output at a lower cost. Kuaishou Technology’s Kling has built a large global user base and is pushing to challenge the leaders.

Whether the rally holds may depend on how the show performs with audiences beyond its opening week.