According to statistics collected until early 2008, China boasts over 30 animation industrial bases, 5400 animation companies, 450 high schools teaching certified animation courses, 460,000 students studying animation related subjects and 15,000 websites discussing animation. This was an increase of over 36% in comparison to 2006.

The growth of the China animation industry is simply astounding.

But two grim facts of China’s animation landscape remain still.

One – getting a foreign animation content to broadcast on China’s national TV is almost next to impossible.

Since 2004, the control over broadcasting foreign animation content has been tightened. Prime time slots are strictly reserved for China produced content and not more than 40% air time can be given to foreign animation content. Schemes were also hatched to give incentives to local companies to produce animation content.

This is done to encourage local Chinese companies to produce their own animation content and to leverage on the growing economy of China through licensing and merchandising with successful broadcasting.

Although officially there is a 40% allowance for foreign cartoon content to be broadcasted, the fact is, many of these content showing in China are old cartoon properties like Mickey and Donald and the Looney Tunes. There is obviously a massive barrier to newer cartoons and many foreign cartoon producers have spent years trying to get their shows to broadcast in China with little success.

Two – China produced animation content is still finding difficulties in finding its way into English-only speaking markets.

Now, it is not difficult to understand why China’s animation content is not popular with English-only speaking territories. Many of the Chinese cartoon properties are based on Chinese culture, heritage and humor and are hardly what you can call international.

The main reason for this is due to the fact that the Chinese cartoon producers have not been seeing a lot of modern foreign cartoon content! They simply have not seen enough to step out of their own culture and present something that is acceptable to both the East and the West! Meanwhile, big local corporations and the Chinese government continue pumping money into the animation industry believing that Chinese animation content would somehow find its way into the international marketplace.

It may also be worthwhile mentioning that despite all these efforts by the Chinese government to encourage the growth of the local animation industry and despite the fact that the animation industry has indeed grown in size; current local animation content only occupies an estimated 1% of the total air-time in demand!

The other 99% can easily be filled up by foreign cartoon properties but apparently, that is not going to happen in the near future unless the Chinese government loosens up on its broadcast policies. And until then, the landscape of the Chinese animation industry is going to toddle along at its own speed.