China ban foreign animation

Paul

Ghost of Animes
Administrator
According to AnimeOnDVD, the Chinese government have banned all TV shows and movies that blend live action actors with standard animation (ala Teletubbies and Roger Rabbit). This move is largely put down to worries that foreign pop culture could somehow effect Chinese viewers, not to mention that China is actively encouraging the increased production of home grown animation series to the point where 60% of all animation broadcast in China must be created at home.

It is rumoured that a complete ban could be imposed on all foreign animation broadcast during primetime in China once their animation industry is strong enough (in terms of quantity and quality) to support public demand.
 
A novel way of improving a countries film/animation industry, wouldn't you say?

I'm looking forward to seeing what is produced in the hole left by foreign pop culture; it could either result in a great breading ground for fresh Chinese talent or a slew of sanitised propaganda.
 
Given the Chinese government's track record on information control, I'm going to go with the sanitised-propaganda route. I -hope- they'll surprise me. I'm -guessing- they won't.
 
i do hope it's for a genuine interest in keeping their own animation industry alive, but if it's just through fear of foreign influence it seems pretty shallow and i dunno, racist? that just seems like a step toward keeping all outside influence, out.

i don't know where i'd be without the influence of foreign cultures. obviously i'm my own person, but the culture we have isn't one of the most desirable... certiainly not the media aspect of it. celebrity magazines, tabloid newspapers, television news... and they basically directly influence a lot of popular opinion anyway.
and don't you really need the influence of other cultures to essentially cope in the world? you can't go anywhere expecting it to be like home, you have to be prepared for preconceptions about your own culture and background as well.
i'm getting into a bit of a rant here... i just really hate unnecassary censorship.
 
The far-east has alway been very insular. It is only in the last half century that Japan has really made an effort to integrate with the world at large and in true Japanese style they have done so with a passion.

China, despite the numerous changes the country has gone through, seems to be trying to grasp desperately at its past and retain its identity in a world that is constantly shrinking. It is a really strange balancing act that China is currently going through; on the one hand they are rising to prominence as a major economic power whilst on the other trying to remove all outside influence on them. Given that the two intersect one-another quite heavily it could be interesting to see how it all pans out...
 
Gawyn said:
The far-east has alway been very insular. It is only in the last half century that Japan has really made an effort to integrate with the world at large and in true Japanese style they have done so with a passion.
Absolutely. Japan was dragged out of its self-induced hiding inthe 19 century by...you've guessed it, the USA, and the East in general has always kept quite separate from the West.

However, this is increasingly difficult to do in the 21st century - technology and communications allow freer movement of information that ever before (for better or for worse) and people are more likely to cause a fuss when things are hidden from them than in days gone by.

That said, the infamous 'Great Firewall of China' has given the country quite a bit of 'separateness' as far as the Net is concerned, and I find it worrying that one fifth of the world's population is being kept in isolation and relative ignorance of the world around them by their own government.
 
The great firewall of China isn't all it's cracked up to be (pun not intended). Realistically they can't keep up with everything that happens across the net, no matter how hard they try, and sophisticated they try and make it. There's already a fair amount of software out there designed to make use of proxies and other methods to circumvent it. I understand that there's even talk of a P2P proxy network that essentially removes the centralisation and ensures everyone knows when nodes go down and come back up. That's probably still at the theory stage, but I can see it becoming a reality in five years or less.

In any case, I doubt there's much that China can do to stop people watching anime. I doubt this would even stem the amount of dodgy Chinese translated anime on Ebay. :?

If I were to be honest, I doubt the average Chinese person isn't much more (if at all) out of touch with the international world than the average British, American, or any other citizen, since people in general just aren't concerned with those kinds of things, they're just trying to live as best they can in the world they're in, the same in any society. Anyone else who's got the time and the inclination already knows that what they're recieving is filtered in terms of information content. Once you realise that, it's not that far a step to knowing a) what to distrust, and b) how to circumvent the censoreship and get to information that's a bit more real.
 
I have to say that i think it's a bit stupid, but if it is a opportunity for new Chinese talent, especially if we get to see some, then it will be a good thing
 
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