Cartoon crazy youngsters will only be able to catch foreign
animations if they stay up late in the future.
Thanks to a new notice from the State Administration of Radio,
Film and Television (SARFT), no TV stations will be allowed to
broadcast foreign cartoons before 8 PM, starting from September
1.
SARFT has told stations that prime time TV, from 5?PM to 8
PM, will only be allowed to show Chinese cartoons, China News
Service reported yesterday.
The notice was not published on SARFT's website, but staff at
southwest China's Guizhou Provincial Television Station, who spoke
on condition of anonymity, confirmed to China Daily that
they received it more than two months ago.
"Everyday between 5 and 8 PM, no foreign animation, or programs
about foreign animation, can be broadcast," the China News Service
quoted the notice as saying.
Sino-foreign joint productions will need approval from SARFT to
be shown during the three-hour period, according to the notice.
The notice has been widely seen as one of a series of efforts by
the administration to boost the development of the domestic
animation industry.
The first major step was taken in 2000, when SARFT requested
that all foreign animations get its approval before being broadcast
on Chinese TV. It was followed by a notice in 2004, which
stipulated that domestic animation should take up no less than 60
percent of all the cartoons shown on each channel each season.
Since 2004 the administration has also built 15 animation
industry incubators around the country.
These measures have triggered a rise in private investment in
animation production, according to the SARFT website. Its
statistics said the length of domestic animations made in 2005 was
around 40,000 minutes more than the total in the 11 years from 1994
to 2004.
Despite its rapid growth "the domestic animation industry is
still a baby and the whole society should be responsible for
nurturing its creativity," said Liu Jun, an associate professor at
Beijing Film Academy, at an industry forum in 2005.
The development of the domestic animation industry is important
for preserving ancient Chinese civilization because children and
teenagers are supposed to learn traditional values from their
favourite TV programs, he added.
But industry insiders doubted whether the government's nurturing
efforts will promote the sustainable development of the domestic
animation industry.
"After all it is creativity, rather than money, that has been
lacking in animation in China," said Xu Jiang, president of the
China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang
Province, where dozens of animation production studios have been
set up in recent years.
Produced in large quantities, domestic cartoons are sometimes
sold at less than 1 per cent of their cost, according to the Xinhua
News Agency.
Many local television stations are only willing to pay around 10
yuan (US$1.25) per minute for domestic animation, while buying
foreign animations, like Japan's "Slam Dunk," for as much as 5,000
yuan (US$625) per minute, said the Xinhua report.
Domestic animations have to first of all become interesting if
they are to be popular, according to Yang Yunxia, a Beijing fashion
analyst with a four-year-old daughter. "Children are not going to
fall in love with something simply because they have no other
options," she said.
(China Daily August 14, 2006)