The raising of China's film import quota is creating more ripples in public discourse than in the film market.

The announcement that China will import 14 more films than the stipulated quota of 20 came as a surprise to many.

For one thing, the government had always shown unwavering determination to rebuff outside pressure to further open the country's film market.

Not that it is a behemoth of a market. At 13 billion yuan ($2.06 billion) of total box-office revenue for 2011 and a quite limited ancillary market (such as television rights and DVD sales), it was roughly 1/10th of the television market.

Some real-estate developers cannot help but scoff at it for being smaller than what one of their properties can fetch.

Yet films shown in movie theaters have a special allure.

A feature that is attended by 1 million filmgoers may well attract more media coverage than an online work that garners 100 times as many eyeballs.

You can call that the discrimination of the smaller screen. Not the "small screen" but the progressively smaller one.

The pecking order is more or less determined by the size of the screen, with the cinema screen at the top, followed by the television screen, then the computer screen and, finally, the mobile platform.

Maybe that is why the additional 14 imports are for the so-called "premium 3-D or Imax formats", which are larger in size or more lifelike than the other platforms.

At the tech-heavy high end of movie presentation, China lacks viable local products and thus needs a steady stream of imports to fill up the growing venues.