General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

American Dreams in China (中国合伙人)

American Dreams in China (中国合伙人) is a 2013 Chinese comedy-drama film directed by Peter Chan (陈可辛) about three university friends who, after their own plans to study in America collapse or disappoint, build a private English-language school into one of China's largest education companies. It was released in mainland China on 17 May 2013, runs 112 minutes, and stars Huang Xiaoming, Deng Chao, Tong Dawei, and Du Juan.¹^•² The story is loosely based on the founders of the New Oriental education company, though the director repeatedly denied making an authorized biographical film.³

Key fact	Detail
Chinese and English titles	中国合伙人; English title American Dreams in China; other titles include 三个中国先生 and, in Taiwan, 海阔天空⁴
Release	Mainland China 17 May 2013; Hong Kong 30 May 2013; Taiwan 13 July 2013 (Taipei Film Festival); Toronto International Film Festival 10 September 2013⁵
Lead cast	Huang Xiaoming (成东青), Deng Chao (孟晓骏), Tong Dawei (王阳), Du Juan¹
Writers	Zhou Zhiyong, Zhang Ji, and Aubrey Lam Oi-Wah, from a first draft by Xu Xiaoping²^•³
Budget and box office	Investment of 40 million RMB; final mainland box office 540 million RMB⁶^•⁴
Major awards	29th Golden Rooster Award for Best Picture; 15th Huabiao Award for Outstanding Feature Film; 32nd Hundred Flowers Award for Outstanding Feature Film (2014)⁴
Ratings	Douban 7.6/10 from about 659,516 users (as of 17 September 2025); Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 77% from two reviews⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The film follows three students who meet at Yenching University in the 1980s: Cheng Dongqing (成东青), a rural youth who fails the college entrance examination twice before gaining admission; Meng Xiaojun (孟晓骏), the son of a family with a studying-abroad tradition who dreams of standing on American soil and changing the world; and Wang Yang (王阳), a romantic who savors the energy of the early reform era.⁹^•⁵

Only Meng obtains a visa to the United States. Cheng and Wang stay in China and begin teaching English, and their classes become popular among students hoping to go abroad. Meng, who finds work in America hard to get, returns to China and joins them; the three name their school "New Dream" (新梦想) and build it into a major brand.¹⁰ The school's success strains the friendship, as the three disagree about the company's direction, before they find a new way to work together.¹¹ The film ends with the company's listing in the United States.¹²

Origins and development

The project began with Xu Xiaoping (徐小平), a co-founder of New Oriental, who wrote the first-draft screenplay. China Film Group chairman Han Sanping showed the script to Peter Chan, a Hong Kong director who had long wanted to make a film about China's reform era but had struggled to find a suitable story, judging earlier business material too technical for general audiences.¹³

Rewriting the script. Chan, who had never made a business-themed film, rewrote the material with mainland writers Zhou Zhiyong and Zhang Ji, after an initial draft by Hong Kong colleague Aubrey Lam had established the plot outline. He deliberately shuffled characters and settings, keeping only the three protagonists' names and the school name "New Dream," because an unauthorized biopic would have made him responsible to every real-life prototype.³^•¹⁴ Xu Xiaoping later said the final script used only eighteen characters of his original draft: the title, the school name, and the three protagonists' names.¹⁵ Chan also consulted business figures including Li Kaifu and Feng Lun while preparing the film.¹

The film was shot in Beijing, Tianjin, and New York from 9 July to September 2012, with Christopher Doyle (杜可风) as cinematographer and Peter Kam (金培达) composing the score; the theme song, "The Story of Time" (光阴的故事), is sung by the three lead actors.⁵^•¹⁶

The real-life prototypes

The film's parallels to New Oriental were widely recognized: Cheng Dongqing corresponds to founder Yu Minhong (俞敏洪), Wang Yang to co-founder Wang Qiang (王强), and Meng Xiaojun to Xu Xiaoping.¹⁵ Yu himself listed the matching details, from failing the entrance exam three times and being refused US visas to teaching outside the university, founding a cram school in a run-down factory, fighting a lawsuit with Americans, and finally listing the company on the New York Stock Exchange.¹⁷

The prototypes reacted differently. Yu Minhong had opposed making the film at all, attended the premiere but refused to walk the red carpet, and commented that real business partnerships are more complicated than the film shows: "the three of us fought much more fiercely than this."¹² Wang Qiang declined to comment, while Xu Xiaoping wept several times watching the edited version.¹⁸ Chan responded to Yu's blog post by saying the film "is absolutely not a New Oriental biopic, but it films the spirit of New Oriental, the 30 years Chinese people experienced together."¹⁹ Chan also said the Deng Chao character incorporates much of the director's own experience.²⁰

Title and themes

Chan chose the English title deliberately. In his view the American dream no longer happens easily in America, where the economy is saturated and class structures are settled, whereas "this American dream happens every day in China," through entrepreneurship and wealth creation; the title carries, he said, a contradictory, slightly ironic feel.³ A scholar of the film noted that the English name fits the first half, before Meng returns to join the company, after which "China dreams in America" would be more apt.²¹

The film spans the 1980s to 2013 and frames the three men's fortunes within the reform era, with the visa interview as the point where Chinese values of modesty collide with Western values of self-assertion; Chan has said those five minutes may decide the rest of a person's life.¹³ Reviewers read it as a portrait of a generation's "Chinese dream," and the closing sequence juxtaposes old and new photographs of real entrepreneurs as a tribute.²² Gary Bettinson, a senior lecturer in film studies at Lancaster University, notes that Chan practiced prior self-censorship, omitting any coverage of the Tiananmen uprising despite the film's 1980s backdrop, quoting Chan: "if you want to recreate the Tiananmen incident on film, then forget about making your movie in China."¹⁴

Box office and reception

The film opened on about 36 percent of national screens and took more than 24 million RMB on its first day, 43 million on Saturday, and 108 million RMB in its first three days, overtaking Iron Man 3 as the weekend's box-office champion.²³ Against an investment of 40 million RMB, it reached 317 million RMB by 26 May and finished at 540 million RMB; a Lancaster University study gives the figures as a US$9 million budget and US$86 million domestic gross.⁶^•⁴^•¹⁴ Corporate audiences organized group screenings, and the film won the Golden Rooster, Huabiao, and Hundred Flowers awards.²³^•⁴

Critical response was divided. The lovehkfilm review called it an entertaining but problematic comedy-drama whose performances and relationships compensate for an underdeveloped third act.² Chinese critics praised its fusion of personal struggle with thirty years of national change, while others criticized heavy use of voice-over narration and, in one writer's view, a mercenary celebration of success.⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 77 percent Tomatometer score from two reviews; the San Francisco Chronicle's G. Allen Johnson gave it 4/4, writing that it "turns out not to be about American dreams at all, but universal ones."⁸ The film's success raised Chan's standing in mainland China and, in Bettinson's analysis, gave him leverage with regulators that may have eased censorship of his next project, Dearest (2014).¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026