The Shanghai Daily mentions a report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Social Sciences Academic Press which claims that the native Chinese animation industry is being damaged by imported cartoons, primarily from America and Japan, with ‘by-products’ from such cartoons (I suspect from the context they mean sales of merchandise tied to the cartoons) accounting for 80% of the sales for ‘cartoon-derived products’ in China. The influx of overseas work has also had a knock-on effect on Chinese animation which, it is claimed, is losing its own cultural identity as Chinese animated films like “Butterfly Lovers” adopt styles and plots from forgeign works; looking at this still from the “Butterfly Lovers” which resembles (to me anyway) a rather poor imitiation of Disney’s “Mulan” they might have a point on that score.
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television banned foreign cartoons from prime time broadcast slots in September to help protect the native products. Given the Far East is actually where an awful lot of ‘Western’ animation is produced these days I’m wondering how much of this report is true and how much is a knee-jerk reaction to the perceived dubious influences of foreign cartoons corrupting Chinese youth (especially considering China’s less than shining record on censorship and media control). It might also be argued that native Chinese animation needs to embrace more influences from around the world if it is to be successful with audiences outside its homeland and such protective measures may do more harm than good in the long run.
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March 5th, 2007 at 11:45 am
[...] Following on from news last week about how China’s native animation industry is losing out to foreign competition even on its home turf an article in the Vietnam Net Bridge reports that their Vietnamese counterparts are doing worse. The article reports that there is only a single production company creating cartoons in the country and that is a part of the Vietnam Television’s Film Centre (VFC). To add insult to injury most of the cartoons created by the VFC have been shown only at home and overseas film festivals rather than general release and so are largely unknown to the public – not a good way to build up an audience following. The VFC has created a small number of cartoons in the last five years, including Knight With a Protruding Forehead, Tit Mit and Pigeon’s Class (I’m not making these names up). Government funding is due to dry up soon making the future even less certain for local cartoon creators, although as the article quotes one teenage viewer as saying most Vietnamese-created cartoons “are dull moral lessons” and the imagery was poor it doesn’t look as it the native viewing audience will be overly upset. [...]