Doh! The ever-subversive Simpsons, along with other foreign cartoons such as Pokemon, Doraemon, Mickey Mouse and the Teletubbies, are to be banned from the mainland's prime-time television - between 5pm and 8pm - from next month.
Media regulators are concerned that homegrown animation programmes have been losing market shares for years, to the extent that they are becoming dinosaurs - but without the extinct creatures' enduring cartoon appeal. By some estimates, foreign cartoons now command 90 per cent of the market. In other words, mainland cartoon productions 'suck big time', as Bart Simpson might say.
Instead of encouraging competition by opening markets - as the mainland has done in so many key industries under World Trade Organisation rules - state media regulators are hinting darkly at the undesirable influence of foreign cartoons on mainland children. Homemade cartoons, they say, such as the Monkey King, should be promoted in their place - they have greater educational value.
This does not bode well for the mainland industry. Thru the Moebius Strip, billed as the mainland's most expensive animated feature to date - at a cost of 130 million yuan - has bombed at the box office this month.
The prime-time ban, issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, will affect all TV stations. Mainland media pundits, appropriately, are already heaping scorn on the latest example of communist bureaucratic ineptitude. Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis News thundered: 'This is a worrying, short-sighted policy and will not solve the fundamental problems in China's cartoon industry.'
The irony is that the mainland has an army of talented animators. Most of them, however, are employed by foreign giants such as Disney, Warner Bros. and big-time Japanese studios.
But, like all things on the mainland, there may be a hidden political dimension. Some may think that mainland censors are using the blanket ban as an excuse to get rid of the Simpsons, undoubtedly the most subversive of the lot.
