Invitations to the China debut, at the upscale Oriental Plaza Mall in downtown Beijing, said the film was scheduled to start at 9 p.m., about an hour before the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Cannes is still considered the "official worldwide premier," said Li Chow, general manager in Beijing for its distributor, Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

But the one-hour head start electrified Chinese media. The Beijing News newspaper declared: "China to be the First with Beijing Premiere of 'Da Vinci Code."'

"I wouldn't be surprised if more films aren't going to be released in China as the 'global first' in the future," said Wang Ran, chief executive of China eCapital Corp., a Beijing media consulting firm.

While China accounts for a small fraction of Hollywood's global earnings, American filmmakers have a huge and growing interest in courting the Chinese market. Box office sales hit a record in China last year, reaching 2 billion yuan (US$247 million).

Four of the top-ten biggest money-makers were foreign, with Warner Brothers' "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" the No. 2 earner, bringing in 93 million yuan (US$11.5 million;euro9 million).

While "The Da Vinci Code" marks a new high in Hollywood's marketing effort, it has increasingly been giving China special attention. Last year U.S. studios included Chinese cities in the simultaneous worldwide releases of the latest "Harry Potter" film and "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith."

Foreign studios hope that the attention will encourage the government to allow more co-productions and ease limits on the imports of foreign titles, said Wang, the media consultant.

Under current regulations, only 20 foreign movies per year are allowed to share in Chinese box office revenues.

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