In the first half of this year, top 10 online games businesses at Beijing has a revenue of approximately 3.1 billion yuan.

At the seventh annual meeting of the Chinese game industry, vice minister of Municipal Propaganda Department of the Beijing municipal government – Dong Chen said government vigorously promoted cultural and creative industries. Seen from the statistics of first three quarters of this year, the city’s cultural and creative value added 96.5 billion yuan, with a price growth rate of 9.7%, accounting for 16.1% of the 3rd industry, accounting for 11.8% of the city’s GDP, a record high.

Animation game industry is an important component of the cultural and creative industries in Beijing, according to statistics, from 2006 to 2009 there were 47 priority projects directly supported by special Beijing’s cultural and creative industries development funds alone, with a fund of 196 million and social capital investment of nearly 2 billion yuan invested. Good origninal works such as “Jian Xia Qing Yuan”, “Zhu Xian”, “Perfect World” were launched in Beijing and well received, and “Perfect World” were exported to 40 countries and regions, with the actual sales of more than 20 million U.S. dollars. Beijing’s original PC games, online games and mobile games accounted for 70%, 50% and 60% of the overall share of the country.

ChinaToon will show the one-hour, all-Mandarin-language block of cartoons in 13 territories, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

To premiere on July 5, ChinaToon will launch with Creative Power Entertaining?s Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf and Zhejiang Zhongnan Group Animation Video?s Magic Wonderland.

?Chinese-produced animation is now world-class, and it?s important to provide a springboard to launch it into the international marketplace,? added Mei Yan, the managing director of MTV Networks China and chief representative of Viacom Asia In China. ?Creative Power Entertaining and Zhejiang Zhongnan Group Animation Video are two excellent examples of how efforts to nurture the Chinese animation industry has led to success in the development of locally-produced programming.”

To continue supporting the Chinese animation industry, which is large and profitable, China is holding a nationwide contest, the China Cultural Heritage Comic Competition, to find outstanding cartoons and comics featuring its cultural heritages.

Initiated and organized by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), the contest will run six months and is open to “anyone able to paint, write or use a computer.”

China currently has up to 6,000 companies making cartoons and comics, with more than 200,000 people employed, the Ministry of Culture (MOC) said in March.

However, according to the MOC, about 85 percent of those companies are not yet profitable.

The exception was last year’s “Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf”, a 6-million-yuan (about 877,000 U.S. dollars) production telling the story of several goats fighting their enemy, Big Big Wolf, who covets fresh mutton for his family.

The film made 8 million yuan on its opening day and some 80 million yuan within three weeks.

Of the 16 animated films China made last year, only the goat and wolf combination was a hit. One reason is that most people favor cartoons made in other countries.

A poll done by the China Youth Daily in November 2008 showed that only 14.2 percent of the nearly 3,000 people polled liked Chinese cartoons the most.

In contrast, about 62.4 percent of respondents said their favorite animated films were U.S.-made. Another 45.9 percent chose films from Japan.

Source : Konaxis