China Closes Its Borders To Foreign Cartoons

Being smack in the middle of the phenomenon called globalization is tough. You have to be able to work well enough with the other nations, trade industries, create technologies, and basically just pave the way for maximum cross-cultural experiences – all these while preserving your individuality. To answer this need of identity,  a defense mechanism, dubbed protectionism, has been used from policies to business, even to entertainment.

Yes, you read it right. There is protectionism even in the good ol’ field of entertainment. Sparking up controversy in particular is China‘s decision to apply the concept of protectionism to its domestic animation industry.

Chinese officials have just decided to ban popular foreign cartoons in the desire to help out the local industry. And if helping out the local industry would cost Chinese kids the enjoyment of The Simpsons, Spongebob Square Pants (which was only recently aired there), and Pikachu, then so be it – this, thus, lead to the removal of these shows from the kid prime time hours of 5-8pm.

Eyebrows have been raised over this seeming regression of China’s integration in the international community. After all, the only way to beat the competition is by meeting it head-on. So these foreign cartoons are the giants of the industry but that should only add incentive to the Davids to defeat these Goliaths. There is no better feeling than to disappoint critics when you don’t fall down as they expected. That way, you are getting absolute training in combat by competing with the best, until later on, you become the best.

On the flipside, however, sometimes it really is necessary to prepare on your own first before going out there and meeting the competition. It is futile, after all, to keep on attacking when in fact your gameplay is not even strategically established first. Prior to this ban, local cartoons were airing side by side foreign ones. And in spite of the upgrades that they have committed themselves to – in an attempt to edge out over the foreign competition – it just does not seem to be working out. Now, you can’t really keep on doing the same thing, and then expect a different result, can you?

At the end of the day, while some will find China’s measures to be extreme, it still is rather understandable why they felt that protectionism was what they had to implement. Keeping their culture’s best interests in mind, China has its own reasons for doing what they did. And here is wishing that they achieve their goal of promoting and uplifting their local cartoon industry, so that later on, they can be truly confident to deem themselves as worthy opponents of their foreign counterparts.

Via blogs zdnet

Being smack in the middle of the phenomenon called globalization is tough. You have to be able to work well enough with the other nations, trade industries, create technologies, and basically just pave the way for maximum cross-cultural experiences – all these while preserving your individuality. To answer this need of identity,  a defense mechanism, dubbed protectionism, has been used from policies to business, even to entertainment.

Yes, you read it right. There is protectionism even in the good ol’ field of entertainment. Sparking up controversy in particular is China‘s decision to apply the concept of protectionism to its domestic animation industry.

Chinese officials have just decided to ban popular foreign cartoons in the desire to help out the local industry. And if helping out the local industry would cost Chinese kids the enjoyment of The Simpsons, Spongebob Square Pants (which was only recently aired there), and Pikachu, then so be it – this, thus, lead to the removal of these shows from the kid prime time hours of 5-8pm.

Eyebrows have been raised over this seeming regression of China’s integration in the international community. After all, the only way to beat the competition is by meeting it head-on. So these foreign cartoons are the giants of the industry but that should only add incentive to the Davids to defeat these Goliaths. There is no better feeling than to disappoint critics when you don’t fall down as they expected. That way, you are getting absolute training in combat by competing with the best, until later on, you become the best.

On the flipside, however, sometimes it really is necessary to prepare on your own first before going out there and meeting the competition. It is futile, after all, to keep on attacking when in fact your gameplay is not even strategically established first. Prior to this ban, local cartoons were airing side by side foreign ones. And in spite of the upgrades that they have committed themselves to – in an attempt to edge out over the foreign competition – it just does not seem to be working out. Now, you can’t really keep on doing the same thing, and then expect a different result, can you?

At the end of the day, while some will find China’s measures to be extreme, it still is rather understandable why they felt that protectionism was what they had to implement. Keeping their culture’s best interests in mind, China has its own reasons for doing what they did. And here is wishing that they achieve their goal of promoting and uplifting their local cartoon industry, so that later on, they can be truly confident to deem themselves as worthy opponents of their foreign counterparts.

Via blogs zdnet