Growing pains of China's animation movie
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Freelance writer Wang Xin watched James Cameron's new movie Avatar in December during her visit to America. She was moved by the story and amazed by the 3D effects of the half-animated movie.
The film reminded Wang, a 29-year-old cartoon fan, of a Chinese-made animated movie The Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf she watched at the beginning of 2009.
The film told the story of several goats who were fighting their enemy, the Big Big Wolf, who covets fresh mutton for his family.
It cost 6 million yuan to produce and fetched more than 80 million yuan (11.76 million U.S. dollars) at the box office.
In addition to children, many white-collar workers liked the film. "How to marry a husband like the Big Big Wolf" became a hot topic on the Internet.
The singer, Yafeng, made a song about the desire. He explains why the wolf was worthy of love. "I love you more than loving myself... although I'm very hungry, I will let you take the first bite when I catch a goat..."
There were at least eight domestically-produced animated films last year in China, making it a "blowout" year for China's cartoon films according to critics.
Yin Hong, professor and director of the Center for Film and Television Studies of Tsinghua University, said the production scale of China's cartoon industry has been expanded to more than 140,000 minutes of animation this year, which formed the foundation for many films.
He contributes the growth to the continuous efforts of the government, which set up supporting policies to boost domestic animation industry.
In 2000, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) required local TV stations to get approval from the administration and set quotas for imported cartoons to air on TV.
In 2004, it issued another regulation, stipulating that at least 60 percent of cartoon programs aired in any given quarter had to be domestic.
In September 2006, the SARFT banned all foreign cartoons from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Last February it extended the ban to 9 p.m.
Additionally, the Chinese government has made an annual investment of 200 million yuan in the animation industry since 2006.
Last July, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued a favorable taxation policy to support the development of comic and animation industry.
It seems the measures have started to pay off.
China currently has some 6,000 companies making cartoons and comics. According to a report from the Ministry of Culture (MOC) last March, the industry now employs more than 200,000 workers and yearly production of animation was up to 130,000 minutes in 2008.
However, besides the lucky "Happy Goat" and the Mainland-Hong Kong co-production McDull, Kung Fu Kindergarten, other animated films, including The Magic Aster, Happy Running, and the 3D Prequel of the Monkey King didn't do so well at box office.
A poll done by the China Youth Daily in November 2008 showed that only 14.2 percent of the nearly 3,000 people polled liked Chinese cartoons the best.
By contrast, 62.4 percent of respondents said their favorite animated films were U.S.-made. Another 45.9 percent favored films from Japan.
Chinese animation germinated in the 1920s with Uproar in the Studio a 12-minute cartoon made in 1926. The first animated feature length film called "Tie Shan Gongzhu," or "Princess Iron Fan," was made in 1941.
Before the 1980s, China made a lot of animated films. Many of them are still thought of as masterpieces today by fans, including The Monkey King, Secrets of the Heavenly Book, and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King. These were adapted from Chinese legends.
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