Confronting the Problems of Chinese Animation Industry Today Chinas animation industry is the biggest animation industry in the

world surpassing the United States and Japan in animated minutes produced each year. Yet, despite being the biggest industry, in reality Chinese animation faces various problems, such as quality versus quantity and a shortage of creative animators. Due to these and other persisting problems, Chinese animation is left in the shadows with a vast potential within and outside the country and unique historical development of animated work left unrecognised. Thus, it is important to have a look at the problems the industry has to deal with and the ways to improve the situation. The history of Chinese animation began in 1922 with a cartoon advertisement for the Shuzhendong Chinese Typewriter made by Wan Laiming and with this first step, probably the most significant and most challenging emergence of animation in China has begun. From the early beginning, first animators in China had to deal with handful of problems. Firstly, the government has showed only very little support and most of the time animators had to work in very poor conditions with only homemade equipment. Secondly, and probably most importantly, European and American animators did not want to share their animating techniques with Chinese animators, meaning that Chinese animators often had to come up with solutions to various technical difficulties themselves (Lent & Ying, p. 22). Such poor conditions and separation from the overseas animation industries led artists to search for original and unique ways of creating and representing Chinese animation. From the very beginning, the leaders of newly forming animation industry, the Wan brothers, wanted to have Chinese animation purely based on Chinese stories and traditions, sense of humour and way of thinking (cited in Lent & Ying, pp. 22-23). Later on, Te Wei, the most successful animator of the 1960s, as well had a strong conviction that Chinese animation had to reflect countrys traditions and folklore. Te Wei together with his staff set on a quest to explore national ways and styles for animation, such as putting Peking opera movements in animation or creating outstanding water and ink films. The idea behind this thinking was that the more national animation got in its historical and cultural forms, the more international it would become (Lent & Ying, p. 25). Another important idea defining Chinese animation was the aim of making all animated shorts educational. Unfortunately, at the time the purpose that these educational shorts were serving was reflecting patriotic and antiJapanese ideas (Lent & Ying, p. 23). Chinese animators started producing propaganda animation and admiring Soviet animation in its technical aspects and contents. Although still inspired by the West and the animation produced there, the Chinese animators aimed at creating national animation. At the same time, it was also one of the tools for propaganda and expansion of Communist ideology, reflecting modern class struggle and problems.

However, the general trend towards the vision of making national animation quickly started to change after dismantle of planned economy and countrys shift towards capitalism. Small studios began intensely competing with each other in order to support themselves. The market became open to foreign investments and new foreign animation studios started to emerge offering young artists simpler and faster ways of earning money. In order to adapt to the changes, many Chinese studios, such as the Shanghai studio, had to adjust their ideas of artistic and educational animation to more commercial selection (Lent & Ying, p. 29). Unfortunately, this change came at a cost of killing creativity and creating a gap between younger and older generations. Younger artists started to treat animation as film, concentrating on visual effects and details, while older artist tried to focus on spontaneity and treat it as a form of art. The older generation stressed out the importance of story and characters, and artists individual approach. Idea was more important than technical skills and animation was just a tool to show it rather than it being an idea in itself. This way theatrical animation and artistic short films were the main types of animation used by these early artists. However, nowadays younger artists are no longer enthusiastic about such kind of artistic animation, since it takes a long time to produce and it brings less money in the end. Instead of preserving traditions of Chinese animation, animators prefer imitating successful foreign styles, such as Japanese anime. In order to appeal to broader foreign audiences, young Chinese animators choose to follow already successful yet no longer original animation patterns and simpler stories (Hays, 2008), losing all the aspects of animation, which older generation was trying to develop for many decades. Yang Ye, a business manager at an animation studio, commented this lack of innovation and originality: "Chinese animators don't have their own thoughts. If you tell them to make something round, they'll make it round, but they won't ask, 'Why is this round?'" (cited in Hays). Other inside problems of the industry include poor quality and small quantity domestic animation, lack of traditional Chinese stories, lose of domestic market to foreign market, and lack of experienced professionals (Lent & Ying, p. 34). Also, even without inside problems, industry as well has to face the outside problems, such as publics concern towards childrens addiction to animation and loss of mature audience towards which only very few animated films are aimed (Lent & Ying, p. 34). On the other hand, what these young animators managed to achieve by adapting to the new ways is the astonishing numbers in production: 250,000 minutes of the annual production capacity of the animation industry in China (Xiyuan, 2013) and 4,927 animation and comics enterprises (Lent & Ying, pp. 31-32), making Chinese industry the biggest animation industry in the world. Although the problems discussed already have strong roots and all solutions could be implemented only in long terms, nevertheless it is possible to look at some reasons lying behind these problems and the ways they should be treated. One of the main constrains on creativity can be considered

system of education, which does not emphasise imagination, and government censorships (Peskin, 2013). Although the education system in China is slowly improving and more effort is being put to try matching international standards, the government censorship is still relatively strict. Loosening some restrains and allowing more artistic freedom on various political and historical moments could encourage more artists to express themselves in form of animation and attract more international attention (as it can be seen in examples of most famous politically active Chinese artists, such as Ai Weiwei). Another reason discouraging artists from upholding traditional animation and shifting away from the commercialization is weak copyright protection. Numerous cases on copyright infringement discourage foreign organisations from getting involved and young artists from trusting the companies they work for (Peskin). The ways Chinese government tries to directly encourage domestic animation are by supporting various international animation festivals or by banning big channels, such as Disney, from national television and enforcing a law on limiting the amount of foreign cartoons shown to 40 percent (Lent & Ying, p. 34). Since the government currently sees the Chinese animation also as a perfect tool for implementing its Soft Power policies, it is fully willing to invest as much as needed at the moment: from providing various new faculties and animation industrial parks to guiding the production of original animation creation, as it is stated in governments newest five-year plan (Lu, 2012). The latest changes in Chinese animation came together with rapid widespread of computers. This sudden digitalization proved to be two-sided. On the one hand, software programs provided new tools for animating films and made the creation process cheaper and faster. On the other hand, the excessive use of computers became one of the main factors why animation got less spontaneous, more closed to experimentations, and more formulaic. These factors are the reason, which, as older generation of animators believe, led animation to becoming too detailed and less creative, and detached the creators from their creations by making them feel more as a part of a bigger collective program and no longer feel the responsibility of creating the character (Lent & Ying, p. 36). Despite the problems brought up by digital technology, it also gave a rise for independent animation, created by animation students, individual professional and self-taught animators. These independent animators, creating works for non-profit, are aiming to use the advantages of digital technology and bring Chinese classical art and literature to a new light (Lent & Ying, p. 36). Their way of treating animation can be considered as one of the alternatives to withering traditional animation and countervailing the commercialization. To sum everything up, before the shift from planned to open economy, the newly developing Chinese animation was developing in a unique way bringing some fruitful results and contributing to the creation of national animation. However, after the capitalisation of the market and the beginning

of a new era of digitalisation, Chinese animation was inevitably confronted with series of different problems. Despite governments efforts to support the growing industry, rather than trying to bring back the idea of animation being purely a form of art, it is still treated as money-making industry. However, all these changes challenging the traditional forms of animation show than in the evergrowing and expanding industry the inevitable clash of traditions and modernity has to happen. It is only possible to hope that in the end this will lead to the new and unique blend of traditional and modern animation and dynamic interactions between China and the West. This is also the vision, which prospective and talented independent animators are trying to push domestic animation towards now.

Bibliography
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