"Qiu Ju's story is about an ordinary woman's struggle for justice from the judicial system. Such productions can strike an emotional chord across the world. Coming Home and The Continent are more tailored for the Chinese market. Only Chinese understand their storylines and most dialogue."

Insiders say it doesn't matter that China ties with Canada for second in terms of the number of foreign film nominations. (France has six.)

"The winner could be the only film one country enters," China Film Archive researcher Li Xu says.

But even if China's candidates don't win, their nominations may yet translate into commercial potential overseas.

"It's difficult to predict the influence on international sales but is definitely encouraging to Han Han as a new director," says Zheng Ye, production planning director of Bona, the distributor of The Continent.

The 2015 Golden Globe Awards will be held on Jan 11 and hosted by comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler for the third time.

More than 51 percent of dialogue must be in a language other than English to qualify for the best foreign language film category.

Five Chinese films qualified last year, but none won.

They included Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster, Feng Xiaogang's disaster epic Back to 1942 and film-festival darling Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin.