China authorized a chain of national animation studios and research
institutes to become centres for national animation on Monday to help propel a
sector now dominated by foreign animators.
Nine studios and four colleges, including the Shanghai Animation Film Studio,
China International Television Corporation, Communication University of China,
Beijing Film Academy, China Academy of Art, are to become the first group of
licenced animation centres.
"The establishment of these bases is a major step for the State
Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to accelerate the
development of China's animation industry," said Xu Guangchun, director of
SARFT, at the licence-awarding ceremony.
The nine studios are encouraged to produce cartoons with depth and refinement
to form an animation industry chain, Xu said.
Xu said SARFT will give support to the development of national animation
films and co-ordinate with the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration
of Taxation to grant these favourable financial and tax policies to the centres.
Local broadcast authorities are also required to give full support to them.
"It is certainly a good thing, which reflects the central government's
resolution to enhance China's animation industry. China's animation industry is
now facing its best time in the history," said Lu Shengzhang, dean of animation,
at the Communication University of China.
Lu said that China has a population of children and teenagers of 370 million,
representing a huge animation market. But at present, about 90 per cent of the
market is occupied by foreign cartoon producers like Japan, the United States,
and the Republic of Korea with the largest share going to Japan.
More and more Chinese children are fascinated by foreign cartoon figures like
Transformers, Dragon Ball, Garfield and Snoopy, instead of Chinese ones which
they consider to be too "black-and-white."
With a glorious past, Chinese animation now faces severe competition when the
international animation industry is dominated by massive Japanese and US cartoon
outputs.
"China used to view animation as education and art for children instead of an
industry. So the potential of domestic animation sector has not been developed
fully," Lu said.
China's domestic animation output last year was estimated at about 29,000
minutes. However, the market demand adds up to a huge 225,000 minutes even on
the assumption that each province shows only 5 minutes of animation programmes a
day, according to Lu.
In April, SARFT issued Principles for the Development of China's Animation
Film and TV Industry, an important policy document encouraging quicker
development of the sector. One of its clauses mandates that domestic programmes
should make up no less than 60 per cent of the total on every local TV's cartoon
channels.
"No TV stations can carry out this mandate except CCTV," Lu said. "The vacuum
hence has to be filled by foreign cartoons."
