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."

Comments

[Douglas Fletcher]

I'm wondering if China is capable of coming up with a cartoon character with the kind of appeal Bugs Bunny has had.

If not I suppose they're doomed to watch stuff on the level of all those great French cartoons we all know and love.

[hannah]

Sounds like a nice euphemism for "domestic abuse," in a different context.

[Adam]

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

They're going to have the best damn flipbooks in the world.

[Mark Borok]

I don't know about China, but my old Soviet homeland produced some excellent animation. Varied, creative, artistically adventurous, subversive (one of the only ways you could criticize the Soviet system was through cartoons) and quite popular. My mother recently told me about the time her entire class played hooky to go see an animated short. Of course, it would have been nice if there had been more foreign cartoons besides "Mighty Mouse" for us to see. However, the quality of homegrown product did not suffer due to lack of competition.

I'm wondering if China is capable of coming up with a cartoon character with the kind of appeal Bugs Bunny has had.

That's the problem with American animation. We're used to one type (gag cartoons centered around appealing characters) and only think of animation in those terms. The rest of the world also enjoys animation that is dramatic, surreal, abstract, lyrical, etc. We got that with "Fantasia", but that was an exception and didn't do too well at first.

[bubba]

4:6? Have the Chinese not learned how to reduce fractions?

[Akira MacKenzie]

You know, I keep wondering when the so-called defenders of traditional American culture (i.e. Pat Buchanan, Bill Bennett) will demand that the government do something about those filthy Jap-po-nee cartoons that are driving American cartoons off the market and polluting our values.

If Mickey Mouse was good enough for our grandparents, they by Golly it should be good enough for kids today! First those filthy "Nips" bombed Pearl Harbor, now they're after Bugs Bunny!

[Douglas Fletcher]

Hollywood killed the American cartoon industry all by itself -- look at those lame 1950s Popeye cartoons, for instance. Cheap and dull.

[Scenescent]

No, no, no, I'm surprised no one's pulled out the proper libertarian analysis - Washington killed the American cartoon industry - but Reagan saved it.