Cartoon crazy youngsters will only be able to catch foreign animations if they stay up late in the future.

Thanks to a new notice from the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), no TV stations will be allowed to broadcast foreign cartoons before 8 PM, starting from September 1.

SARFT has told stations that prime time TV, from 5 PM to 8 PM, will only be allowed to show Chinese cartoons, China News Service reported yesterday.

The notice was not published on SARFT's website, but staff at southwest China's Guizhou Provincial Television Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed to China Daily that they received it more than two months ago.

"Everyday between 5 and 8 PM, no foreign animation, or programs about foreign animation, can be broadcast," the China News Service quoted the notice as saying.

Sino-foreign joint productions will need approval from SARFT to be shown during the three-hour period, according to the notice.

The notice has been widely seen as one of a series of efforts by the administration to boost the development of the domestic animation industry.

The first major step was taken in 2000, when SARFT requested that all foreign animations get its approval before being broadcast on Chinese TV. It was followed by a notice in 2004, which stipulated that domestic animation should take up no less than 60 percent of all the cartoons shown on each channel each season.

Since 2004 the administration has also built 15 animation industry incubators around the country.

These measures have triggered a rise in private investment in animation production, according to the SARFT website. Its statistics said the length of domestic animations made in 2005 was around 40,000 minutes more than the total in the 11 years from 1994 to 2004.

Despite its rapid growth "the domestic animation industry is still a baby and the whole society should be responsible for nurturing its creativity," said Liu Jun, an associate professor at Beijing Film Academy, at an industry forum in 2005.

The development of the domestic animation industry is important for preserving ancient Chinese civilization because children and teenagers are supposed to learn traditional values from their favourite TV programs, he added.

But industry insiders doubted whether the government's nurturing efforts will promote the sustainable development of the domestic animation industry.

"After all it is creativity, rather than money, that has been lacking in animation in China," said Xu Jiang, president of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, where dozens of animation production studios have been set up in recent years.

Produced in large quantities, domestic cartoons are sometimes sold at less than 1 per cent of their cost, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Many local television stations are only willing to pay around 10 yuan (US$1.25) per minute for domestic animation, while buying foreign animations, like Japan's "Slam Dunk," for as much as 5,000 yuan (US$625) per minute, said the Xinhua report.

Domestic animations have to first of all become interesting if they are to be popular, according to Yang Yunxia, a Beijing fashion analyst with a four-year-old daughter. "Children are not going to fall in love with something simply because they have no other options," she said.

(China Daily August 14, 2006)