Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for cheaper and more accessible cancer drugs after a successful new film sparked public debate on the issue

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for cheaper and more accessible cancer drugs after a successful new film sparked public debate on the issue

Mr Li spoke after Dying To Survive stormed the box office, taking in USD 390m in its first two weeks

It tells the fictional story of a shopkeeper who imports cheap, Indian drugs banned in China for profit

Cancer is China’s number one killer, with nearly three million people dying of the disease each year

It is inspired by the true story of Chinese businessman Lu Yong who was arrested five years ago for importing a generic cancer drug

The case against him was dismissed after public debate of the issue, AFP news agency notes

Xu Zheng, a popular comedy actor and director, plays Mr Lu, a smuggler who develops compassion for the patients who buy his drugs

"It is real life," one Beijing cinema-goer, Dr Zhang, was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal. "I know patients who had leukaemia [and] ended up losing both lives and money."

The low-budget film touches a "social wound" about not being able to get hospital treatment, said Gao Wei, an industry expert at the China Centre for Globalization

"As a film that criticizes what is actually happening, it could only become popular because it got the level of criticism right to pass China’s censors," Reuters quoted him as saying

The film’s appeal can be measured by comparing it with big-budget fantasy epic Asura which made just USD 7.5m when it opened this past weekend

Writing on the popular WeChat account of the magazine Vista Story, film critic Yang Eryu said of Dying To Survive: "This little step might actually be a big step for domestically-made films."