The latest Bond movie has been released, and it may shock some fans of the British spy series that the hero is Chinese and the arch villain is American.

Funded almost entirely by Alibaba Entertainment, the movie was bound to echo the changing balance of power between east and west. But to feature a Chinese actor as the hero – his character went to Eton and Oxford before being recruited by MI6 – is perhaps a stretch too far.

Not for China; movie-goers from Beijing to Tianjin are mad about the new Bond, and they are a big audience, outnumbering even Bollywood fans in India.

“Everyone knows China is dominant now,” says a teenage blogger, “and Chen Bond is the face of a new generation of heroes!”

American fans might be a bit put out that the chief villain in the new movie is a swashbuckling Texan oil baron, but the bad guys can’t always be from obscure Eastern European or Central American countries.

British film critics are quite sanguine about the whole thing. “After all,” they say, “Bond might have a Chinese mother, but his father was an Englishman! What’s all the fuss about?”

Alibaba Entertainment claims to have given the writer and director of the movie free reign to create a blockbuster that “would appeal to a global audience, bar none.” Every actor and entertainer knows that he who pays the piper, calls the tune.