China's animation industry confidently goes global

China's animation industry has stepped up efforts to go global in recent years and this has received widespread attention from the international community.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that the Chinese animated drama "Art College 1994" was added to the competition of the Berlin International Film Festival. Japanese anime director Makoto Shinkai recently said that the quality of Chinese animated movies is improving rapidly.

An exhibition of animation scripts at the Suzhou Art Museum, Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province attracts hordes of animation fans. (Photo/Que Mingfen)

The animated film "Superhero Monkey King-Qi Tian'er," produced by Chinese and American production teams, entered the European Film Market, the business arm of the Berlin International Film Festival, and showcased the cultural elements associated with the Chinese classic novel "Journey to the West" to global audiences.

Over the past 20 years, China's animation industry has made remarkable achievements, the first being the increase in production. In 2000, domestically produced animation amounted to just several thousand minutes, but in 2011, that exceeded 260,000 minutes, accounting for nearly 70 percent of the global total that year.

After 2012, the policy priorities of China's animation industry shifted from boosting production to improving the innovation capabilities and quality of animation.

Thanks to the mechanism which encouraged innovation, various animation resources were better integrated, which resulted in a number of high-quality Chinese animation seen abroad.

Chinese animated films produced during this time, including "Ne Zha," "The Legend of Hei," and "Legend of Deification,” won widespread acclaim overseas.

In the meantime, the position of China in the global industrial chain rose prominently and Chinese animation studios started to entrust foreign production teams, including those from Japan and South Korea, with the production of the content for their animated works.

Many factors have driven the development of China's animation industry, including the constantly evolving policies, the formation of innovation-driven industrial clusters which help improve the quality and efficiency of the industry; the rising level of awareness of intellectual property protection and related mechanisms, which help the industry fully release its innovation vitality; and constant emerging talent, who inject energy into the long-term development of the industry.

In the future, China's animation industry can take further efforts in improving the incentive mechanism which puts creators in front, and in strengthening coordination between policies regarding cultural communication and further giving play to the role of China as a huge market. Efforts are also needed in promoting the allocation of animation resources in an efficient manner.