Cultural Protectionism in Toontown

China and the U.S. are in the midst of a vicious fight over protectionist U.S. textile policies, with billions at stake. Meanwhile, the Malaysia Star reports:

China could ban foreign-made cartoons from prime time television once the quantity and quality of domestic cartoons reach a certain level, officials at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said Wednesday.

China already limits the ratio of foreign-made cartoons to domestic ones to 4:6, said an official at the agency's cartoon department, who refused to give her name.

"We really need to encourage domestic-made cartoons,'' said Fu Tiezhen, head of the China Cartoon Arts Committee, an industry group…

Fu said he believed that the cartoon industry would best develop through the "market system,'' but in the meantime some administrative measures might help.

I guess that means the cartoons are so bad or so few they aren't yet worth protecting, but if they manage to develop even without China forcing billions of kids to watch them, it will be time to protect them, until it's time to adopt the "market system."

The state press helpfully points out that the agency plans to "vigorously carry out excellent homemade animation programs."