East China's garden city of Hangzhou is to host the first China International Animation Festival, an event designed to foster the country's budding animation industry.
 
"The festival aims to be a platform for exchange and investment activities, and will therefore stimulate the formation of an animation industry with advanced technologies and a mature market system," Hangzhou Mayor Sun Zhonghuan told a press conference in Beijing yesterday.

The festival, from June 1 to 5, will include expositions, a display of classic animation films and meetings of animation businesses, according to Sun.

China's cartoon industry is worth billions of yuan and side-products include computer games and mobile phone messages.

The domestic industry is still only young, considering the US$500-billion-strong output of animation-related products worldwide in 2004.

Chinese animation companies produce about 29,000 minutes of cartoon programmes each year, compared with a market demand of more than 268,000 minutes.

(China Daily March 21, 2005)