Aamir Khan in China: Dangal and a "National Treasure" Label
In China, Aamir Khan is called a national treasure of India. How 3 Idiots and Dangal built that fame, and the TV show behind his image.
Aamir Khan's stardom has a second home. In China, where his films found audiences through pirated DVDs before they found cinemas, he is described by local media as a "national treasure of India". His Wikipedia biography, which draws on Reuters, Forbes and Chinese review sites, lays out how that happened and why it differs from his image in India.
How it started
The biography credits Khan with opening the Chinese market for Indian films in the early 21st century. It says his father, Tahir Hussain, had earlier success there with Caravan, but Indian films had faded from the market. Lagaan became the first Indian film to get a nationwide release in China.
Then came 3 Idiots. When it released in China, the country was only the 15th largest film market, partly because of widespread pirate DVD distribution, which introduced the film to most Chinese audiences. The entry says it became a cult hit and ranked as China's 12th favourite film of all time on the review site Douban, with only one domestic film, Farewell My Concubine, ranked higher.
Dangal
By 2013, the entry says, China had become the world's second largest film market. Dangal, the 2016 wrestling drama in which Khan played Mahavir Singh Phogat, then became an overseas blockbuster. Wikipedia says it was the 16th highest-grossing film of all time in China, the eighth highest-grossing foreign film there and the highest-grossing non-Hollywood foreign film.
It also says Dangal was watched more than 350 million times on Chinese streaming platforms. Reuters, in a 2017 report headlined as a blockbuster in China, and a Forbes piece from the same year describing him as the country's favourite movie star, covered the phenomenon at the time; both were blocked when we tried to open them, so we rely on the biography and search summaries, which put the film's Chinese earnings above 125 million dollars.
For the role Khan weighed 98 kg to play the older Phogat before losing weight to play the younger man, the entry says.
Why Chinese fans like him
Wikipedia reports that in Chinese media he is often called a "national treasure of India" or the "conscience of India", because much of his work tackles social issues relevant to Chinese society that domestic films often do not portray. Taare Zameen Par (2007), 3 Idiots (2009), Dangal (2016) and his television show Satyamev Jayate are some of the highest-rated productions on Douban.
Chinese media once called him "India's Andy Lau", the entry says, and younger fans now use the nicknames "Uncle Aamir" and "Mishu". It describes him as the most famous Indian in China.
The talk show behind the image
Satyamev Jayate, his first television show, began on 6 May 2012 and dealt with social issues. According to the entry, it ran simultaneously on StarPlus, Star World and Doordarshan in the 11 am Sunday slot in eight languages, the first show to do so in India.
Honours at home
Wikipedia lists the Padma Shri in 2003 and the Padma Bhushan in 2010, along with nine Filmfare Awards and four National Film Awards. It says the Government of China gave him an honorary title in 2017. As a producer, his company Aamir Khan Productions, founded in 1999, made Lagaan, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 74th Academy Awards.
More recently, he co-produced Laapataa Ladies (2024) with Kiran Rao and Jyoti Deshpande. A search summary says it was selected as India's official Oscar entry for 2025 but was not nominated.
What we could not confirm
We could not open the Reuters and Forbes articles, so the Chinese earnings figure comes from a search summary and the biography. We did not verify the Douban rankings directly. We found no source on the honorary title beyond the biography's one-line mention. We did not check Chinese box-office records for his later films.
Sources
*Cover photo: U.S. Department of State from United States, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Secretary_Clinton_Speaks_About_Education_and_Community_Service_%283731827795%29.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Secretary_Clinton_Speaks_About_Education_and_Community_Service_%283731827795%29.jpg)* (Public domain).*