A Brief Analysis of the Current State of Chinese Musicals: Based on an Analysis of the Collaborative Networks Among Chinese Musical Producers

After over four decades, China’s musical theater industry has seen rising original productions and market enthusiasm, yet still faces structural pressures, notably the lack of an efficient producer collaborative network. Using data crawled from platforms like Rednote, this study applies social network analysis (SNA) with Ucinet to examine overall network traits and key nodes. It reviews producer types, development status, and network evolution.Traditional leaders such as Beijing Poly Theatre Management Co., Ltd. still dominate the market, and emerging players such as Yahua Lake Cinema Line, MSK, Damai | Mailive, and China Oriental Performing Arts Group are on the rise. The collaboration is becoming more diverse and cross-regional. However the network is still loosely connected, unstable and poorly supported with talent. The paper proposes to enhance the capacity of producers, optimise the content and theatre operations, establish a hierarchical talent system, improve market positioning, and improve policies to improve the ecosystem and enhance the quality and influence of original production.