During this period, the Hong Kong industry was one of the few in the world that thrived in the face of the increasing global dominance of Hollywood. Indeed, it came to exert a comparable dominance in its own region of the world. The regional audience had always been vital, but now more than ever Hong Kong product filled theatres and video shelves in places like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea. Taiwan became at least as important a market to Hong Kong film as the local one; in the early 1990s the once-robust Taiwanese film industry came close to extinction under the onslaught of Hong Kong imports (Bordwell, 2000). They even found a lesser foothold in Japan, with its own highly developed and better-funded cinema and strong taste for American movies; Jackie Chan in particular became popular there.