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It's a uniquely Chinese equation: take a government that's increasingly obsessed with its image abroad, add a wildly ambitious property tycoon, and you get a business announcement so elaborate that Leonardo DiCaprio will fly halfway across the world to bear witness to it. China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, broke ground on Sunday for what is being touted as the world's most expensive film studio in Qingdao, a quiet city of three million people on the country's east coast. When the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis opens in 2017, according to Wang's speech at the ceremony, it will cover more than 500 hectares (two square miles) and include a studio for filming underwater, a permanent car show, seven resort hotels, an indoor amusement park, a 300-berth yacht club, 20 sound stages and a hospital. DiCaprio, John Travolta, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta Jones, Jet Li and Ewan McGregor were all at the launch, alongside a host of other celebrities. Wang, 58, the chairman of the Beijing-based property developer Dalian Wanda Group, called the studio the most expensive film industryinvestment of all time – an "unprecedented project that will create history" according to transcripts of his speech posted to the company's website. It will cost up to 30bn yuan (£3bn) and open in 2017. The complex's sheer size is in keeping with the challenges that it seeks to overcome. China's film industry, while growing, is burdened by a stultifying bureaucracy and draconian censorship. | 
