Thu, 23 Feb 2006

China Bans Cartoons That Blend Animation

Conservatives are constantly complaining about the "Hollywood elite" and their often rabid support of protectionist measures and general anti-globalization attitudes. They don't seem to understand that Hollywood is acting in it's own economic self-interest in these initiatives: it's frequently American cultural products (such as the ones being banned here) that bear the brunt of foreign protectionist measures.

Nobody has yet explained to me what's free about trade that allows China to sell their products here, and also allows them to ban imports of our products. I'm sure that the US Trade Representative will engage in "serious negotiations" with the Chinese on this issue - for at least ten years, with the Chinese dragging their feet all the way. By that time their native animation production facilities will have overtaken ours, by way of having a captive audience in the worlds largest market. We'll finally reach an agreement allowing the import of our films into China, but we won't have any to sell. The whole incident will be declared a "victory for free trade" ... and another American industry will be left in shambles.

Is it any wonder that Hollywood uses it's political influence to try and stem the tide? There can be no such thing as free trade on a one way street.

AP - "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" could be out of the picture in China — along with many other cartoon favorites.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

/Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time