Hangzhou Festival: Comics & Animation in China
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on May 1, 2007 Sign up now!
by Kai-Ming Cha, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 5/1/2007
The third annual China International Cartoon and Animation Festival kicked off this past weekend in Hangzhou, China, to fireworks, musical performances and a parade. Children and their parents, as well as teens and grandparents, crowded the sidewalks on Huan Cheng East Road, the main street outside the National People's Convention Center in downtown Hangzhou, to watch the passing floats and elaborately attired dancers. Local police, government soldiers and special security reinforcements were on hand to manage the crowd that measured well into the tens of thousands.
Subsidized by the Chinese government, the festival is intended to establish Hangzhou as the comics and animation capital of China. "We're trying," said Ching, who said that many comics and animation companies are already based in Hangzhou. He also added that Zhejiang province, of which the city of Hangzhou is the capital, has many different kinds of factories and production facilities. "Here we can produce a lot of comics and cartoons—and all the merchandise related to it."
While government-sponsored comics may sound a bit strange, Ching said that comics and cartoons are a part of China's cultural industry. "It's important to expand and develop our culture," Ching said.
The exhibition hall where the festival is taking place has four wings—one for industry, another for career development, a third for exhibiting illustrations by popular artists from within China as well as outside. And there's a dealer's room, where attendees can buy merchandise related to their favorite comics and cartoons.
At the Creative Korea booth, Miki Jin, assistant manager of business development for Jess Media, was hard at work promoting Korean licenses. "Manhwa, animation, merchandise—we'd like to license it all to China," she said. The Chinese government is also mounting a campaign to restrict the amount of foreign animation broadcast on Chinese television in hopes of promoting local animation production. Asked how the government's campaign affects Jess Media's licensing efforts, Jin said that despite the campaign, there was still demand for foreign content. "The government wants local production for the local audience, but many companies still license material from other countries," said Jin. "China wants to create comics for their people, but it's a very slow process. They can copy quickly, but creating it themselves—it's very slow here."
Across the hall, another exhibitor, Roger Kao, secretary general of Taiwan's Chinese Comic Publisher Association, expressed some frustration with Chinese government policy. "Taiwanese comics and Hong Kong Comics aren't allowed into mainland China," he said. "We're seeking a Chinese partner that will help us get our comics into the country," Kao added. "If we try to do it ourselves, we won't make it inside." CCPA is an umbrella organization for Taiwanese comics publishers Tohan, which handles Taiwan licenses for the superstar Japanese manga collective CLAMP, and King Comics. Asked why CCPA is so intent on gaining a foothold in mainland China, Kao said the reason is obvious. "It's a big market."
Back in the dealers room, posters based on Nana, the bestselling Japanese manga series, attracted a lot of attention as did notebooks based on Death Note, another hit manga series. Japanese and Korean comics both have a strong presence at the con. Illustrations by Sooyeon Won, creator of the manhwa series Let Dai from Korean publisher NetComics, were featured alongside illustrations by artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China (commonly referred to by the Chinese as the three Chinas). Outside of exhibitors from Japan, Korea and the three Chinas, a French animation company also attended. "It's not much," Ching said, but adding that he hopes and expects much more of an international presence next year.
Look for more coverage of the China International Cartoon and Animation Festival in next week's PW Comics Week.
